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Ready to apply for Social Security benefits? You can now apply online. [UCAN via unclefatlips]
websites
Identical Fake Testimonial Diet Sites Spreading Like Herpes
By 1.9.09
On Monday, Meg alerted you to a BBB warning about Acai sellers doing scammy things to consumers. Now Donna has tipped us off to a slew of identical websites that have sprouted up online, featuring Everyday Women Like You And Me with names like Jenny, Sarah, Nancy, and Amy, and who all look like the same blonde model. They’ve all lost pounds, too! How? With “My 2 Step Formula,” that’s how!
Giant List Of Online Legal Resources Will Keep You Half-Educated, Annoy Your Lawyer
By 1.5.09
Thanks to the Internet, with a single Google search and some creative guesswork you can diagnose pretty much any disease you want. Yes, this has made the world of medicine entirely unnecessary, but what about the legal profession? Surely the web can replace that too!
By 12.27.08
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A list of online tech help sites. [New York Times]
By 11.20.08
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If you have an account with Mint, and you’ve enabled mobile alerts, you can now text “Bal” or “Balance” to 696-468 (MyMint) and receive a summary of all of your accounts. [Mint]
Home Depot Website Prices Have Nothing To Do With In Store Prices
By 11.15.08
Remember, Home Depot’s price match policy doesn’t apply to online listings, including its own website. At his local store, Michael paid more than twice the online Home Depot price for a coaxial cable, but Home Depot refused to refund him the difference. They even say as much in small print on each page of their website. With Home Depot, be sure to call and get a valid local price quote before heading off to purchase something you saw online.
Customer Service Not Working? Try GetSatisfaction
By 11.14.08
Here’s hoping for everyone’s sake that some Warbucks type buys up Consumerist, lavishes me with gifts, and allows this great blog to continue. But even so, it never hurts to know about other online services out there. GetSatisfaction.com is a kind of crowdsourced customer service forum where anyone can post about any product or company, and where companies are encouraged to join in. Since the content is grouped around those products and companies, it’s easy to drill down to relevant topics, or to find people who can help answer that customer service question you can’t seem to get resolved. Here’s a sample page on Comcast. That’s right, my first entry as a substitute Consumerist editor today and I’ve already mentioned Comcast.
Why You Should Never Order Anything From Sears.com
By 10.17.08
Mike sent us two stories of back-to-back merchandise fiascos with orders he placed on Sears.com for in-store pickup. What’s worse, the problems can’t just be blamed on a lone rotten employee, or attributed to bad luck—several Sears stores were involved. Our verdict: there’s something seriously messed up with the Sears fulfillment chain, and it’s not worth your time or energy to bother with it. But you knew that already, right?
Circuit City Promises The Same Price In The Store And On The Web
By 10.15.08
Circuit City has announced that, after extensive research, they’ve decided that consumers want to see the same prices in the stores as on-line.
Report From Finovate '08: Round 3
By 10.15.08
We spent yesterday at Finovate, a yearly roundup of new personal finance services available online. Here’s a recap of some of the afternoon presentations, including a mortgage comparison service that promises greater transparency, a new credit simulator feature from Credit Karma, and a site that uses reverse auctions to get banks to bid on your money.
Report From Finovate '08: Round 2
By 10.14.08
Round 2 of the Finovate presentations includes online financial planning, the “match.com” of stocks, and Facebook banking. Let’s dive in and find out what they’re all about:
Report From Finovate '08: The Latest Personal Finance Tools
By 10.14.08
I’ve been dispatched by our cigar-chomping editors to midtown NYC to check out the 14 new personal finance software apps getting demoed at Finovate 2008. I’ll be reporting here and letting you know about the latest tools from the frontlines of the personal finance revolution.
NWV Direct Caught Pulling Bait And Switch, Tries To Backpedal
By 10.13.08
Joshua caught New World Video Direct trying to pull a bait and switch on him with a recent order, so he canceled it and gave them a bad review on resellerratings.com. They contacted him to ask if he’d remove the rating. Joshua wrote back to decline, but he reminded them that it’s actually pretty simple to develop a decent reputation as retailer: “If you want to have anyone trust you as a business you have to only list items you plan to sell for the price you plan to sell them at.”
Maximize Your Netflix Membership With FeedFlix
By 10.10.08
We first discovered the very useful FeedFlix back in May, and since then the site’s been updated to present more data on how well you utilize your Netflix membership. By pasting in any of your private Netflix RSS feeds, you’ll see a breakdown of your activity stats, like how long on average you keep titles and your average cost-per-rental. A handy new feature is the “email alerts” function, where you’ll receive a weekly reminder if you’ve kept a title past a certain number of days. We’ve included a screenshot below.
Pandora, Other Internet Radio Stations May Survive After All
By 10.3.08
Assuming negotiations succeed, you’ll have your Pandora to listen to after all. On Tuesday, Congress passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, which gives Internet radio stations like Pandora until February 2009 to reach a new royalty agreement with copyright holders; if they meet the deadline, the government will not interfere, which is great news since it was the gov’s Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) that set the current market-killing fees in the first place.
Update: USAA Posts Notice On Website Regarding Technical Issues
By 10.1.08
Last week we raised the ire of plenty of USAA fans by posting a story about a woman’s IRA that went missing for nearly a day. We were as surprised as many of you that she’d received such poor customer service from the first CSR she spoke with, considering USAA’s usually stellar reputation. But the next day someone from USAA contacted Travis and his wife to find out what went wrong. Here’s Travis’ update.
By 9.24.08
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Wall Street Fighter has a list of 18 money management websites, to handle everything from making zero-commission stock trades to dunning your family for past-due IOUs. [Wall Street Fighter]
UltimateBet Poker Site Admits Players Cheated, But Won't Name Names
By 9.18.08
Here’s a mystery story to distract you from the U.S. Banking Apocalypse. UltimateBet.com, “one of the top 10 poker sites,” has admitted that employees manipulated the software to cheat from at least January 2005 to January 2008, when some players started noticing an unusually high rate of wins for a certain user name. An Australian player mapped that user’s wins against accounts that had played a similar number of hands, and realized that “NioNio’s” wins were “less likely than ‘winning a one-in-a-million lottery on four consecutive days.'” But NioNio is just one part of the mystery.
