State Investigators Find All Sorts Of Dirty Tricks At Mercury Insurance
This summer Californians will be able to vote on Proposition 17, which if passed will allow insurers to bypass some legal restrictions on how much they can charge for auto insurance. Mercury Insurance Group is a big proponent of the proposition, but maybe that's because it's been possibly sidestepping the law in recent years anyway. Hey, making it legal will just prevent another state report like the one Carla Marinucci at the San Francisco Chronicle obtained, which contains findings that Mercury "has engaged in practices that may be illegal, including deceptive pricing and discrimination against consumers such as active members of the military and drivers of emergency vehicles." More »
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Septuagenarian Couple Scammed Inns And Hotels For Four Years
The next time you stay at a bed and breakfast and you see a kindly old couple lingering in the common room after breakfast, be suspicious! The Wolffs have been scamming inns, hotels, rented homes, and bed & breakfasts since 2005, reports the Boston Globe. They offer to pay via check, and until recently--when they stayed in one place so long that they were still around when the check bounced--nobody ever thought they might be pulling a fast one. They're due in court this month for defrauding several inns over the past summer. More »
Just The Violence From The Super Bowl Commercials
A very smart person has cut out everything except the violence from the Super Bowl commercials. This way you can see Tim Tebow tackle his mom without worrying about boring controversy. More »
Microsoft Investigating Why Songs Are Disappearing From Zune Pass
If record labels decided to pull some of their songs from the Zune Pass service in the past couple of weeks, they did a poor job telling Microsoft about it. The company seems to be as in the dark as Zune Pass subscribers about why songs, albums, or entire discographies have gone missing. Ars technica reports that a Microsoft employee wrote on a Zune forum, "We are investigating your reported missing albums indicated in this post—and will come back to you as soon as we understand why they're missing." More »
Google Doesn't Want To Know How To Make Friends With Black People
Yesterday's Google super bowl ad was a cute story about a guy falling in love with a French lady told through his searches. The trouble is, they showed the autocomplete prompts and, as anyone who has ever used Google knows, the autocomplete suggestions can be, uh, kinda weird. So, of course, some the search suggestions have been edited out. Like one about making friends with black people. More »
Mount A Laptop To An Exercise Bike So You Can Sweat While You Work
If you're stuck to a computer all day and are getting fat because of it, you might consider making yourself a laptop shelf for your exercise bike. Apparently it's not that difficult. Whether or not it'll make you lose weight - that remains to be seen. More »
Google Wants To Be Facebook, Facebook Wants To Be Gmail
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google has plans to make Gmail "more social," according to an anonymous source. The idea is to make it easier to post links and share status updates. Meanwhile, Facebook is apparently planning a "Gmail killer." More »
Rat Planter Pleads Guilty To Restaurant Extortion
(ArtBrom)
Finding frogs in your weight watchers food or snakes in your TGIF or mice in your Pepsi is one thing and alerting the authorities for infomational purposes is one thing, but please don't plant rats in your soup in the hopes of extorting a half-million. Because you will be caught, like Debbie Miller of Wisconsin. Here brilliant scheme was defeated by a microwave. More »
We Hope Your Mail Isn't On This Postal Truck
(Ethan Kavet)
...Because that sh*t is stuck. A Gothamist reader took this photo of a postal truck stuck at a crazy angle under an overpass on 10th ave in NYC. Whoopsies! More »
Bank of America Screws Even Ex-Employees Of 21 Years On Mortgages
How many different ways can you screw a man? Vince couldn't make his Bank of America mortgage, because they fired him after 21 years of service in the due diligence department. Even after he did a short sale 5 months ago, Bank of America still hasn't cleared it off their books. Now the illegal debt collection calls start. Is new CEO Brian Moynihan powerless to stop his own company from shaking down its own employees? Let's find out! More »
Disney Store Refuses Small Credit Card Purchase Because You Left Your ID In The Car
Reader Terry is annoyed because the Disney Store refused to sell his family $8.50 worth of stuff unless he went out and got his wife's ID from the car. More »
Ex-Merrill Lynch Boss John Thain Is A CEO Again
After successfully redecorating his office, merging Merrill Lynch with Bank of America, and then getting fired -- John Thain is once again a CEO. This time he'll be heading up a recently-bankrupt commercial and consumer finance company, CIT. More »
Looking For A New Snack? Try Taquitos.net
The Daily Beast has published a short profile of Jeremy Selwyn, a web developer in Massachusetts who runs the snack food review website Taquitos.net. Selwyn started the site about ten years ago, and now he has nearly 4.5 thousand different entries on various chips, candies, pretzels, and whatever else can be combined with salt and flavored powder. Naturally I immediately checked out the "Worst Chips Ever" section, which includes an awful lot of sea creature flavored abominations. Apparently sour cream and clam isn't a good idea for a chip. More »
Bundle Lets You Spy On What Your Neighbors Buy
Why should banks have all the fun monitoring consumers' purchases? Bundle is a nifty service that lets you drill down and see what people are buying in your hood. More »
Landing Gear Not Good Place For Discount Airfare, Dead Man Finds
(nateOne)
A man was found dead inside the landing gear of Delta airplane landing in Tokyo enroute from New York. Doctors speculated that he froze to death and had a shortage of oxygen when the plane reached over 30,000 feet. Sheesh, we know the seats are cramped but this is ridiculous. What happens when you climb into an airplane's fuselage and it takes off? This clip from "1000 Ways To Die" explains: More »
Whistleblower Nurse On Trial For Reporting Doctor To State Board
Knowing about this crazy trial that starts today in Texas won't directly help you find a better doctor or get better health care, but it might give you some insight into why it's important to protect whistleblowers from people in power. In this case, a nurse in a small West Texas town is being prosecuted for "misuse of official information" and faces up to 10 years in prison, writes Kevin Sack at the New York Times, because she reported a doctor to the Texas Medical Board after feeling the hospital was too slow to take action. More »
Blizzard Won't Let My Friend Get His Warcraft Hammer Back
Anonymous writes about his friend who subscribes to World of Warcraft and had his account hacked. He says publisher Activision Blizzard has frozen the account because its rightful owner is in dispute, and thus the friend has now been separated from the virtual hammer he slaughtered many an orc to attain. More »
Quick, Someone Develop Adblock For Online TV Commercials
(lumaxart)
The ratings company Nielsen--the company you can blame for bad stunt-casting and stupid plot devices during sweeps week--is going to start rolling in data from online viewings of commercials this fall, which means networks will start using online viewing stats to help sell ads this time next year. What this means: if a network uses the new Nielsen rating system, "shows seen online will have to have the same group of commercials that run on TV," reports AdAge. More »
