bad-company
—>Once again, Verizon has been caught leaving its vans parked in front of fire hydrants. More »
—>Mark Hampton has posted a video response to his dealership getting totally snagged by a customer who stashed a hidden camera in his vehicle and caught mechanics doing some dirty deeds. More »
—>We write often about companies' sleazy approaches to online reviews. Some companies bribe users for positive feedback. Others sue over negative reviews. Direct Express Auto Transport, however, is the first company we've seen that responds to bad reviews by sharing users' personal information. More »
—>Brett has now been the victim of two failed rebate attempts through Canon. They ignored the first one, and rejected the second one with a claim that he can clearly disprove. He's trying again. Unfortunately, it looks like Brett's experience with Canon isn't unique. More »
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—>Last week a Florida journalist busted Burger King VP Stephen Grover for using his tween-aged daughter's email account to slam a farm workers group—but that wasn't the only weird email event related to this story. Now Burger King is taking steps to officially distance itself from Grover's actions and the other internal emails by announcing it's launched an "internal investigation" into all three. More »
—>The next time Burger King VP Stephen Grover goes online to spread FUD about labor advocates, he should probably leave his daughter out of it. For one thing, she's a horrible accomplice and will spill her guts to the first reporter who calls. For another thing, this forthrightness clearly makes her too ethical to smear a group that's trying to bring pay for tomato pickers up to living wage levels. More »
—>Today, MP3tunes' CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service. (And we're not using a euphemism here—it really is a backup/place-shifting service and not a file sharing site in disguise.) More »
—>Ashoka just found out that Bally never canceled his membership, even though they cashed his $50 cancellation check a mere 5 days after he mailed it to them last year. They've said there was no date on the paperwork, but Ashoka has a printout that proves otherwise. And they said they tried to contact him last year about the "problem," but not by phone—even though they called him promptly this month when he changed his credit card info and the automatic billing didn't go through. Bally, just admit it: nobody gets out, ever. More »
—>Matt's mom, a longtime Qwest customer, called up the company to switch her long distance over from AT&T. The CSR suggested she switch over to a bundled package that would save her $11 a month and offer faster Internet connection speeds. What the CSR didn't mention was that the new package required a 2-year commitment, that it wouldn't work with her current DSL modem, and that it actually came out to about $3 more per month. More »
—> A paper written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist (we're still not quite sure what that means, other than it's considered slightly controversial), recounts Wal-Mart's relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina (PDF) and points out that private businesses, along with the Coast Guard, did far more than any "official" government agency in providing immediate, on-the-ground assistance to victims. His argument is that something as complex as a relief effort is more efficient when it's decentralized and involves private businesses. Horwitz has also, separately, supported the idea that Wal-Mart should win the Nobel Peace Price. Hey, we told you his school of economics was controversial. More »
—> Jesus from South Texas signed up for credit monitoring at the notoriously scammy FreeCreditReport.com. He never received the confirmation email and wasn't able to access his account, so he never used it, but forgot to call to cancel it. After three months he realized he was being charged $15 a month as per their terms of service, so he went to their site to retrieve his login credentials and was told the account didn't exist. After that, it took him 4 calls to get the account canceled, and they would only refund him for one month of service. One of their CSRs tried to scare Jesus into keeping the account open because there had been some "suspicious activity" in his credit history that he'd be wise to monitor. Then they told him there is no phone number or email for their "customer satisfaction department"—it can only be reached through snail mail. More »
