Consumerist
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fraud prevention
Shop Online Safely With Temporary Credit Cards
Almost every time we write about fraud or identity theft, savvy readers will point out in the comments that many card companies offer temporary credit cards—virtual accounts tied to your real one that expire after one use, or a few days, or after a certain spending limit is reached. We thought it might be a good time to remind readers about these services, as well as password-protected and so-called "anonymous" credit cards. More » -
tools
Tape Customer Service Calls With RecordMyCalls.com
RecordMyCalls is a super-easy way to record your customer service calls. Just sign up, call their 1-800 number, then call the number on which you wish your call to be recorded. After the call is over, the recording is immediately available on the site for review, downloading, and sharing. The main drawback is that it will cost you a $4.95/month or $9.95/month subscription plan, with recording rates of 20 cents and 15 cents per minute, respectively. We personally prefer using Skype + HotRecorder but for lazy people or those with no technical aptitude or really need to record a call and are aware from their "base" computer, RecordMyCalls is a viable option.
Note: Every time we offer a tool for recording calls, a lot of people whine about whether it's legal or not... More »
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psychology
Thinking About Financial Portfolios Makes Shoppers Spend More
Consumers can be cued to spend more through a series of simple "priming" questions. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research split subjects into two groups. One was asked a series of questions about the contents of their wallets: Did they have any library cards? Did they carry pictures or cash? How many other wallets did they own? The other was asked about their financial portfolio.
The group primed to think about their wealth spent an average of 36% more. So then, if you want to curb your spending, before entering the store, spend a few moments visualizing the contents of your wallet!
It's How Much You Think You Have [NYT]
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personal finance
Save Up For Purchases Using Replacement-Planning
These days, when some people want to buy stuff, they whip out the plastic. For life's emergencies, this is sometimes unavoidable (if you don't have an emergency fund), but there's some items you know will need to be replaced and you have a decent idea of when. In those cases, Bankrate writes, you can borrow a technique used by condo-associations called replacement planning. To wit: More » -
identity theft
How To Freeze Your Credit Report
Red Tape Chronicles has a good guide for how to set up a credit report freeze at each of the three major credit bureaus.
A freeze means no one can access your credit report unless you "thaw" your report. This means no new credit cards, loans, or mortgages, either by you, or by a potential identity thief. You will need to freeze the report with each bureaus. Not surprisingly, after fighting with Congress for four years against allowing for consumer freezes, the bureaus have made it difficult, requiring the mailing of certified letters, utility bills, different kinds of personal information, and charging fees. Here's the step by step: More »
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telephony
Get Free Long Distance And International Calls With Talkster
Talkster lets you make international and long-distance calls for free. The only catch is that it's more complicated than making a regular phone call and you have to listen to a short advertisement.
Their "how it works" page will tell you just about all you need to know. Basically, you enter in the number you want to call. Both parties get assigned a new number. Then you call the 2nd party on their assigned Talkster number and tell them to hang up and call their special number, while you stay on the line. When they call the number, they hear the advertisement, then you're connected and can talk for free, forever. If you're doing it by cellphone, however, your standard airtime minutes will still apply.
If you're willing to do a little work, Talkster sounds like a cheap way for far-flung families and friends to stay connected.
Talkster [Official Site]
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how to
How To Find The Cheapest Roaming Solution When Traveling Abroad
Having the ability to make calls all over the world is a pretty amazing communications milestone, but that doesn't mean it's cheap and easy. The Consumerist is filled with stories of poor fools who come back from parts unknown with thousand-dollar roaming bills—and it doesn't just happen to clueless iPhone users. Here's our attempt to help make some sense out of the mess. More »
4:05 PM on Wed Oct 31 2007
By Chris Walters
2,766 views, 16 commentsLatest by jamar0303: Yes. Quite a bit of Asia and South America has CDMA coverage. more »
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how to
The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back (Revised Edition)
We've posted recently about how to fight back when a business screws you over, and we've posted a lot of executive contact info over the years. Now we're packaging the two together into one big mega-post of usefulness: a one-stop-stop for figuring out what you need to do to start a customer complaint, or how to escalate a stalled one so that it can be resolved. More »
11:00 PM on Mon Oct 29 2007
By Chris Walters
101,029 views, 9 commentsLatest by DonaldMagumpus: I LOVE YOUR SITE. Thank you so much for it. After searching for the name of DirectTV's CEO, more »
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electronics
How To Extend Your Battery Life
Reader Don felt compelled to share this tips about proper love and care of your electronic items' batteries so they last longer and you don't have to buy more unnecessarily... More »
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how to
Live Without Credit Cards
The best way to escape from our mindless purchase economy is to ignore your credit cards in favor of pure, reliable cash. Credit cards undoubtedly have value - purchase protection, rewards, convenience - but only for consumers who use credit responsibly. No Credit Needed wrote a useful guide for anyone willing to live the credit-free life. More » -
deals
Quickly Find Good Deals On SlickDeals And FatWallet With WiredDeals
One of the sites I visit every time I scour for items for Morning Deals is WiredDeals, a free registration site that tries to aggregate the best deals from the SlickDeals and FatWallet forums. More » -
insurance
6 Things To Know Before Getting Angry With Your Health Plan
The NYT read the Consumers Union's, "A Consumer Guide to Handling Disputes With Your Employer or Private Health Plan," and here's their distillation of how you can avoid out of pocket expenses and frustration by making sure you know the following: More » -
cellphones
Painlessly Divorce Outlook And Your Crackberry
Mike Elgan describes how he was able to dump outlook, move all his data to online services, and can now use any phone he wants:
1. Replace Outlook e-mail with Google Gmail
2. Replace Outlook Contacts and Notes with Plaxo
3 Replace Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar
4. Replace Outlook Tasks with Gubb
5 .Replace phone typing with Jott
6. Rename the .PST file.Now not only is he free to choose from a wider variety of handsets, his life is no longer destroyed if he ends up losing his phone. In the article, Elgan describes each step and its reasons more in-depth.
How to get rid of Outlook, move all your PIM info online and use any phone you want [ComputerWorld]
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reviews
Validas Analyzes Your Cellphone Bill For Potential Savings
Validas is a new service that aims to help consumers save on their cellphone bills by analyzing their cellphone bills and providing suggestions about how they could adjust their plans and save money. To use it, you create an account, validate your email address, download your cellphone bill from your cell provider's website, upload it to Validas for processing, then wait a few seconds for your report.
We gave it a whirl and it seemed decent, though since we already do what Validas, except WITH OUR BRAIN, it didn't offer much in the way of improvement opportunities, though it did note we should get rid of VCAST and offered a few free phone number lookup services to use instead of 411. More »
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unscrewed
The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back
If you have a legitimate grievance with a company that they're not helping you solve, here are 15 hand-picked articles of ours that will be your blueprint to kicking ass. They're arranged in 3 escalating tiers, depending on how far you want-to/have-to take it. If you're ready to stop getting mad and start getting results, check out the posts inside... More »
4:19 PM on Mon Oct 8 2007
By Ben Popken
46,682 views, 21 commentsLatest by jbchiu1018: In an attempt to resolve a billing dispute I'm having with T-Mobile. I have contacted Customer Service, been yelled more »
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budgets
Mint.com Initial Review
Mint.com, a new free personal finance management site, is easy to get started, though we're not sure we're completely satisfied with where we end up. More » -
money
8 Personal Finance Lessons Learned From Monopoly
Remember those cold winter nights when your family stayed up late and fought to bankrupt each other? Recall the number of times you cheered a little metal dog (or hat or thimble) to move around a square board quickly? Recollect regularly screaming "come on seven!" only to roll a six? Who knew that all that time you were really learning about personal finance? Well, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity now knows this was the case. He's detailed eight personal finance lessons he learned from Monopoly. More » -
customer service
How To Apologize
Some companies just don't know how to say they're sorry when they flub up customer service. Since we know many of them read our blog, here's a primer from wikiHow on how to go about your next mea culpa. More »
lifehacker
New York, 6:48 PM
Mon Nov 23
20 posts in the last 24 hours
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