Consumerist
Beware The CEO Panhandlers
Enjoy your weekend, and mind your pockets when you're out and about.
Badvertising
Old Cigarette Ads: Doctors, Nurses, And Rock Hudson Say It's Good For You
Man, cigarettes were awesome in the past, if these old ads collected by Stanford University are to be believed. They calmed your nerves so you'd stop humming nervously! They soothed your throat! They made you a movie star and helped you capture animals on your big game hunt! We don't know what tobacco was made of before the mid-80s, but no wonder everyone smoked. More »
Roundups
Top Posts Of The Week
Reader Pays Off $14,330 In 20 Months With Our Tips
Lehman Brothers CEO Got Punched In The Face
The Economist Sums Up Financial Crisis: "Oh Fuck!"
The Idiot-Proof Way To Securely Use Public Wi-Fi
5 Expenses To Cut Right Now If You're In Debt
GMail's Achilles Heel: Terrible Customer Service
Get this emailed to your inbox weekly by signing up here. (Photo: lemonjenny)
Walmart
Walmart Decides To Honor DRM-Protected MP3 Purchases After All, At Least For Now
Last month, Walmart announced it was shutting down the DRM side of its online music store, and too bad if you were a customer, because they were also going to turn off the DRM server that authorized your music for playback. Apparently enough customers complained, because they came to their senses—at least for the time being—and decided to keep the server running. Read their email below. More »
Comcast
Comcast Gives Reader Hurricane Ike Refund
Reader Josh is a Comcast customer says he was without power for 7 days due to Hurricane Ike, and by calling 1-800-COMCAST he was able to get a service credit for the whole time he couldn't watch TV.
(Photo: Wayne Gunn)
Avanza
Supermarket Chain Adds 10% At Register, But Only In Some Stores
Nash Finch, a Minneapolis-based supermarket chain, adds a 10% fee to the bill at its stores catering to Hispanic shoppers in Colorado, reports 9News in Denver:
More »The Nash Finch stores Avanza, Food Bonanza and Wholesale Food Outlets add the 10 percent charge to food at the register and specialize in serving Hispanics, according to store workers.
However, the Nash Finch stores Sun Mart Foods, Econo Foods, Family Fresh Market, Pick N Save and Prairie Market stores do not charge extra at the register and do not cater to Hispanics, according to the store workers.
Mysteries
Community Outraged At Buca di Beppo Restaurant Manager's Firing?
Reports that community of Chandler, AZ is outraged at the firing of Buca Di Beppo manager Joe Busone have been popping up in our inbox. The Arizona Republic says that when he was let go, seven servers also walked out — in the middle of dinner. More »
NetFlix
$1 Netflix Price Hike For Blu-Ray Access
Netflix will be start charging you $1 more per month to offset the costs of Blu-Ray movies, starting November 5. You have to opt-in to the Blu-Ray access, and the $1 surcharge, by going to "your account" and "add Blu-Ray access." If you don't already have Blu-Ray access on your account, then your membership price stays the same. Sounds like they needed to invent a way to make more money and this fee, admittedly small, seemed the best way to go about it. Copy of the email they sent subscribers, inside.
More »
nutrition information
Lawsuits Claim Applebee's Weight Watchers Food Has Too Much Fat
Awhile back we posted about some testing done by a group of local news affiliates that showed that the actual amount of fat (and calories) in certain "healthy" menu items from a variety of restaurants was different than what was listed on the menu. More »
Flickr
Friday Consumerist Flickr Pool Finds
Here are seven wonderful photos that readers added to The Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, chosen because they're both neat and could possibly be used in a Consumerist post. Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers go and upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click "Join Group?" up on the top right, and start hitting "send to group" on your individual photos you want to add to the pool.
Title: "18:365 The choice is yours. Choose wisely."
By: unleashedlive
The panic of '08
The Top Ten Scapegoats For America's Depression
FROM GAWKER.COM: Who's to blame for this mess? That's what the American people want to know, right? Nobody wants to hear about intricate economic factors that combined in unforeseen ways to predicate an economic collapse. More »
NetFlix
Maximize Your Netflix Membership With FeedFlix
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. More »
Coupons
People Think Coupon Users Are Cheapskates, Unless You're Hot
If you use coupons in a store, your fellow shoppers are probably negatively judging you as being cheap, according to a new study. The stigma extends to those around the coupon redeemer as well. However, if you're hot, you get a reprieve. The study had people watch consumers cash coupons, and then interviewed the participants afterward for their reaction. The stigma is lessened if you don't know the person using the coupon, the coupon is of high value, if they're in a different line, and if the coupon-user is a hottie. Researchers proposed that the reason for the coupon-hating is "the modern consumer tends to prize status and luxury over thrift."
Stigma by Association in Coupon Redemption: Looking Cheap because of Others [Journal of Consumer Research] (Photo: Getty)
Comcatastrophe
Comcast Filled My House With Raw Sewage
Tressy Campbell of Woodstock, Georgia has a kitchen. In this kitchen is a lot of raw sewage. It's been this way since June. As you might imagine, Ms. Campbell is somewhat annoyed about this, and would like the Comcast contractor who drilled a hole in her pipe and ran a cable through it to pay for the repairs. More »
Scams
Fake IRS Fax Demands Your Bank Account And Passport
Nick has written in to warn us about a fake IRS scam that lately has been targeting nonresident aliens (e.g. teachers and researchers) working in the U.S., as well as American citizens working abroad. In the scam, which has been going on since at least 2002 (pdf), the target receives a faxed request from the IRS to provide his name, SSN, and pretty much every other bit of data you'd need to take over a person's financial identity. More »
Money meltdown
US Muses Backing All Deposits, No Deposit-Insurance Ceiling
In order to stem the tide of panic-stricken morons taking out all their cash from banks and further destabilizing the financial system, the US is considering a proposal to completely back ALL deposits. This would mean that there would be no deposit insurance ceiling. So even if you had more than $100,000 in the bank, even if you had $1,000,000 in the bank, the government would give you back ALL of that money if your bank failed. The proposal is only in discussions right now, and several different agencies would have to agree that there was "systemic risk" in order to enact it. Europe has already guaranteed all deposits, however, and in order to keep large corporate accounts from emigrating overseas, the US may be forced to follow suit within a few weeks.
[via WSJ]
Money meltdown
Wells Fargo Wins, Will Buy Wachovia
Wells Fargo is the winner in the battle for Wachovia, says the New York Times. Apparently, Citibank became nervous about splitting the bank when they saw the size of the "bad assets" it would have to take on, and quietly walked away. The bank will continue to seek $60 billion in damages, however. More »
Sales
Morning Deals
- Diesel: Limited-edition pair of jeans for $50 starting at 10:30am eastern, free shipping on everything else with coupon code XXX
- Lowes: Waterfall & Fountains 75% off from Lowes
- Amazon: Adidas Men's Jackets for $15+ (70% off)
- Amazon.com: Diesel Men's shoes from $30 + free shipping
- Buy.com: Bluetooth Headset Roundup: Motorola H555 for $15 + $7 s&h, more
- Target: Isaac Mizrahi for Target Dresses from $9 + $5 s&h
- onSale: Westinghouse LVM-37W3SE 37 1080p LCD HDTV for $549 w/ Free shipping after rebate.
- Circuit City: %10 OFF when you select in-store pickup and apply coupon code: C9A74ZKAHP
- Deal Extreme: Noise Isolation Earbuds For iPod for $1.99 w/ Free shipping (use coupon code: BULKRATE for bulk orders)
