How A Sheriff Uses His 10,000 Facebook Fans To Solve Crimes
(Ben Popken)
(Ivy Darling)
(Ben Popken)
(Photo: 1Happysnapper)
Update: New York customers are now able to order iPhones via AT&T's Web site. It would appear that the company has once more modified its "promotions and distribution channels." We've requested a statement from AT&T, and will update this post if and when we receive it. More »
If you have any broken, ugly jewelry lying around in a drawer somewhere, you've probably taken notice of a company called Cash4Gold that promised to pay "top dollar" for your not-so-precious precious metals. If you're like us, you might have even seen a post on ComplaintsBoard.com by a former employee exposing Cash4Gold.
The whistleblower's post appeared on ComplaintsBoard last November. We featured it this February, as part of our ongoing coverage of Cash4Gold, after the company raised its public profile with a multi-million dollar Super Bowl ad. The post was indeed written by an ex-employee, Michele Liberis, who is now being sued by the company for defamation. Recently, Cash4Gold added Consumerist and ComplaintsBoard as co-defendants in its lawsuits (PDF) against Liberis and another former employee, Vielka Nephew (PDF), in an attempt to force us to take the information down. Liberis and Nephew have chosen to stand up to Cash4Gold's legal attack, and so have we. More »
—>Well well well. New information from an inside source says that the tech threw dirt on the infamous "dusty PS3" to deny the warranty claim because he didn't feel like repairing it. Shocking! His confession, inside. More »
—>Here, catch all of our interview with Austan Goolsbee breaking down why the credit card reform act was needed. If you missed any of the clips, here's is the four-part series in its entirety... More »
—>We can yuck it up all we want about The Snuggie meme, but how does "the blanket with sleeves!" stand up to Consumer Reports rigorous testing procedures? In this delightful and informative video, Meg Marco and Ben Popken journey to the Consumer Reports labs to find out the straight dope on the fleecy wonder that has captivated the nation. More »
—>The final installment of our 4-part interview on credit card reform with Austan Goolsbee, President Obama's senior economic adviser. In this one we say, hey, what about mandatory binding arbitration? More »
—>Are credit cards set up like a horrible game of Chutes & Ladders that plays for keeps? In the 3nd of our 4-part interview series with President Obama's Senior Economic Adviser, Austan Goolsbee, on credit card reform, we ask why credit card companies can raise the APR on stuff you already charged, and go into some of the credit card companies' anti-consumer tricks like liquid and fickle terms and conditions, penalty fees that aren't trying to discourage behavior anymore, they're just pure profit, and teeny-tiny contracts written in "Bank-o-nese." More »
—>In the 2nd of our 4-part interview series with President Obama's Senior Economic Adviser, Austan Goolsbee, on credit card reform, we ask, what about the kids? Specifically, what is this bill going to do about those guys giving away shirts on campus in exchange for signing up for credit cards? Because these seems a really great service for college students, who, as we know, frequently go shirtless. Also, how one side of the debate on credit cards is essentially arguing that if you didn't want to get carjacked you should have taken the bus... because an honest business model and a profitable one needn't be mutually exclusive. More »
—>If you had problems viewing the Goolsbee interview, this here video should work for you now. [Consumerist] More »
—>We took your credit card reform questions to DC yesterday and interviewed Austan Goolsbee, senior economic adviser to President Obama. In part 1 of our 4-part series, we ask how are banks getting billions in bailouts and can turn around and cut off millions of credit cards and raise rates? How does it make sense that credit card companies can raise the interest rate on an existing balance? And, most importantly, why don't we treat credit cards more like Canadians do cigarettes? More »
—>We took your credit card reform questions to DC yesterday and interviewed Austan Goolsbee, senior economic adviser to President Obama. In part 1 of our 4-part series, we ask how are banks getting billions in bailouts and can turn around and cut off millions of credit cards and raise rates? How does it make sense that credit card companies can raise the interest rate on an existing balance? And, most importantly, why don't we treat credit cards more like Canadians do cigarettes? More »
—>How much would someone have to pay you to have your kids watch a penis? Comcast answers that question by giving a $5 one-time discount to every subscriber in Tucson, AZ who had their cerebellum gelatinized by seeing the porno movie that accidentally cut into the Super Bowl last night, according to a rumor a reporter we know overheard in their newsroom. More »
—>If you have a Circuit City refund check not deposited before 11/10, it's going to bounce. More »
—>Goldman-Sachs read my post, "Goldman Rips Off Non-Profits, Endowments, Foundations, And Charities" about a conversation I had with a Goldman-Sachs trader where he boasted about ripping off charitable organizations with excessive fees, and they're hopping mad. Here is the lovenote sent by Melissa Daly, VP of Corporate Communications: More »
—>UPDATE: Goldman Furious Over Our Posting Insider's Confession About Ripping Off Non-Profits More »
—>According to anonymous insider tips, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing from 12 markets. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. A scan we received of a letter distributed to CC employees helps corroborate the story. The tipsters say that store employees were told this morning. No information was provided at that time about severance pay. Employees in certain departments, like car installation, and Firedog, will likely be out of a job within 48 hours. Warranties will still be honored. UPDATE 6: Here's the complete official list of closing stores. More »
—>The FDIC is going to make two changes to their coverage. One affects beneficiaries and one affects trust accounts, according to a bank insider who participated in teleconference call the FDIC held banks this morning as a refresher course on FDIC coverage. The big news is that the "qualifying beneficiary" rule is gone. Here's the specifics: More »
—>In response to some of the comments posted on 12 Confessions Of A Home Mortgage Collector, the confessor has sent in a followup letter to answer your questions, and clarify some of his statements. More »
—>A former Wells Fargo Home Mortgage home collector has stepped forth from the shadows to tell you what's really going on. Here's his confession: More »
—>An Apple store insider has leaked to us what they say will be some limitations and barriers on buying the iPhone Apple and AT&T stores will apply to the new iPhone 3g that goes on sale this Friday: More »
—>It's no secret to Consumerist readers that Comcast's outsourced techs are often late, rude and incompetent, and that calling customer service is more akin to improving dialogue in a Beckett play, but as this exclusively obtained powerpoint made by a Comcast employee shows, it's no secret to the cable company either. (I know the damn thing wasn't officially created by Comcast corp. C'mon, give us more credit than that. It's pretty obvious that it's too funny to be official. I just meant to describe how it was created by a Comcast employee and passed around to other Comcast employees and came from inside Comcast. I realize now that "internal" makes it sound official, and that wasn't my intention. I apologize for the confusion.) Watch and/or download the powerpoint, inside... More »
—>Billshrink.com is going to bring a never-before-seen level of transparency to consumers looking for the best credit card offer. Think of it as a turbocharged dashboard for navigating the credit card market. The site launched earlier this year as wireless plan comparison service, but with personal debt at record highs and personal savings rates at record lows, the credit card vector is potentially even more important and useful tool. I sat down with CEO Peter Pham yesterday as he showed me the actual website in action. More »
—>A testament to the "Series of Tubes" meme's pervasiveness is its inclusion in an AT&T FastAccess business DSL tech support manual. According to a former employee, her bosses who made the manual were big nerds and read BoingBoing, Gizmodo, and The Consumerist. She also says in one of the the tech support training videos for the new customer Yahoo portal that's rolling out later this month, it shows how to create a feed for The Consumerist. Note too that the internet is depicted as a giant fluffy cloud. More »
—>These internal Verizon emails, sent by the same insider and as a a followup to "LEAKS: Insider Says Verizon Isn't Fulfilling Advertised Discounts For Tens Of Thousands," shows why some of our readers have complained about Verizon offering them one price and billing them another, and then being inflexible in offering service credits. It appears to show that Verizon mailed out a half a million "Blitz" promotional rate cards, then decided it was an error and pulled the offer from the computers. Then Verizon let people get the advertised offers, but only if the customer specifically asked for it. Around the same time, on March 3rd, management cuts the discounts reps can give to $150. Two weeks later, it's $50. Two weeks after that, it's zero. Even if a customer was overbilled and legitimately deserved a credit, tough titties, Texas, you weren't going to get it. Verizon insider's explanation, rebuttal to the response by Verizon PR pointman John Bonomo, and the internal emails, inside... More »
—>I was talking to a high-up marketing type person from Citicards recently and she wanted to know what Consumerist readers were complaining about with regards to the little plastic devil she pushes. She told me how Citicards had recently stopped doing Universal Default, which is where if you're late on your payments with one creditor, other creditors get to treat you like you defaulted with them and spike your APR. She said she was personally appalled after finding out that her company had the policy in the first place, but then struggled with how to tell customers about it, because, she said, "It's like telling people you stopped beating your wife." More »
—>Some shillyshallying office worker came across some papers jammed in the Best Buy shredder that purport to show that Best Buy is going to buy Wal-Mart. Normally I wouldn't sully the pages of The Conglomerist with such treacherous murk, but, irregardless, the news is just too good to keep to myself. If true, this would be the best thing ever to happen to consumers as two of the most kickass companies in America combine forces. Just thinking of of the cost-saving efficiencies provided by the vertical integration makes pleasure crystals ooze shoot out from my pores and explode all over my cat's face (don't worry, he's ok). Oh, and so he can be fired, this traitor's name is Ryan Smith More »
—>What does the XM-Sirius satellite radio merger mean for XM customers? Well, according to one customer service rep, it means mean prices are going to roughly double in May. Here's what she said to one of our tipsters:
This is strictly confidential, but all the paperwork is signed and ready to go, and XM has fully acquired Sirius Radio. Come May, there will be a substantial price increase for XM Radio, as it will, in June or so, host all the Sirius channels. It would be best to simply extend your XM plan as we will honor your current contract price per month before we begin hosting the Sirius stations.The tipster said he believed she said the price was going to double. Perhaps the customer service rep just wanted to score a renewal, but if true, it would certainly at least be ironic considering when the DOJ approved the deal was they said, "the evidence did not show that the merger would enable the parties to profitably increase prices to satellite radio customers." However, reader comments on this post and this post over at Orbitcast say this customer service rep is full of pure baloney. More »
—>A mysterious letter was anonymously faxed to our headquarters by a self-described "disgusted" Verizon customer service rep angry at how he/she says Verizon is screwing over landline customers. Here's the highlights of his gut-spilling:
- 30,000+ people nationwide have still not received the free HDTVs Verizon promised new FiOS triple-play subscribers
- Verizon totally screwed up the "blitz" promotion, leading some customers signing up and not getting their discounts, others getting too much discount, and others not getting their discount for months
- Employees issued over $1 million in credit in January '08, double what was given out in Jan '07
- $250 in discretionary credit has been reduced to $50
- Internally, Verizon refers to customer service reps who give out "too much" credit due are called "offenders."
—>Attention Profiled Shoppers: Consumerist is now in possession of an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype customers. While Best Buy's use of personas has been known for several years, our exclusively obtained document contains several brand-new Best Buy personas, including "Maria Middle America" and "Empty Nesters" Helen and Charlie. More »
—>Ever wonder why gadget store employees push Monster cables like they're crack? Bitchin' markups, just like you suspected (or knew) all along. That's what we found when a Radio Shack employee sent us his store's entire inventory list, which included the wholesale and retail price of every item in stock. More »
—>Countrywide Home Loans was racist and automatically put African-Americans into exotic and expensive sub-prime loans they didn't want or need, and couldn't afford, according to a former employee. This employee worked there for two years up until the sub-prime meltdown. They write:
"...a customer would be qualified for a loan because their credit score and other factors based on the written product description, however, when I went in to put their (this only happened to African-Americans) - they were not qualified for the loan product and had to be referred to Countrywide's subprime mortgage company Full Spectrum. Full Spectrum offered higher rates and fees. I got wise one day and started not inputing the race so the computer could give me "approval."More »
—>A source inside Washington Mutual has sent us the internal company policy on workplace lactation. They say that they found it amusing that the bank regulates employee's breast-milk. Overall, the policy is mainly about how one needs to go to special lactation rooms to express one's milk (for the unaware, that's what it's really called). Facility specialists are available if the lactation rooms aren't up to snuff, and company consultants are on call if you have any questions about expressing your breast milk. Elsewhere, a business writer says that, "Workplace lactation programs are inexpensive way to reduce employee absenteeism, lower health insurance costs, and improve employee retention." Overall, it's actually a pretty good policy, but it's interesting to see how they talk about breastfeeding in corp speak. Oh, by the way, if you express your milk at work and store it there, make sure to label it and take it home at the end of the day. Thanks. More »
—>We've got the CompUSA internal discount list for their going out of business liquidation sale. The discounts are mainly 10% and 20%, with some 5% and 30% in there. Audio hardware, mounting brackets and the like, is 30% off. Just because they're imploding doesn't mean they don't have some pride, as least for now. They're entitled "opening discounts," so perhaps will keep dropping week by week until all the stock is gone. Looks like for now they're using the same close-out strategy as when they closed down most of their stores before: offer crappy deals and advertise the heck out of it. More »
—>A CompUSA repair tech has leaked to The Consumerist what he says is their schedule for the liquidations happening now until they close everything down after the holiday season. This is in no way set in stone, he says, but it looks like this is how it's going to go down starting this week. (He would also like everyone to know that no one his place steals porn from customers). More »
—>After reading "How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves," another fired Geek Squad tech has chimed in to tell us how the internal witch hunt for porn thieves proceeded.
I had worked for Geek Squad for over a year, and Best Buy a year and a half before that and was recently let go. Back when they started scanning computers, they said they found downloaded music and movies on our machine and we were to send them the hard drives. So we boxed them up and sent them out. More »
—>Best Buy launched a nation-wide internal investigation after we published a video sting op capturing one of their techs stealing porn from our computer. A fired Geek Squad supervisor tells how it all went down...Innocents fired... Liars kept jobs... Store hard drives seized... Pants shat...
The start of the internal Geek Squad investigation began this summer as all of the locations throughout the country were entered through remote connection and scanned for violations. The Geek Squad "precincts" that had bench machines containing serious violations had their hard drives removed and shipped to the corporate office. All of this was done rapidly and under the watchful eye of salary managers who had their jobs threatened if this was not executed properly. My store was lucky enough to have scored well enough on the remote scans to keep our hard drives. I knew at this point that there was serious cause for concern if Best Buy was willing to spend the kind of cash necessary to execute remote scans throughout ALL of its stores in one day.More »
—>Starting today, Tmobile will charge existing customers $18 when they buy a new phone. In an email shared with The Consumerist by an inside source, Tmobile told dealers that the new fee will help underwrite the cost of selling subsidized phones to new customers. Tmobile told dealers that acting positive when mentioning the fee would help to discourage customers from raising objections. Oddly enough, if an existing customer upgrades their phone without extending their contract, the fee will not be assessed. More »
—>The Comcast insider who leaked the BitTorrent memo promises to tell all of Comcast's dark secrets at Shortnamenowitsgettinglong.com. More »
—>Comcast's download limit is 200 gigabytes, but the limit isn't everywhere, a former Comcast employee told The Consumerist. Places where the network isn't optimal, due to old hardware or too much traffic, like the Bay Area, will run into the limit. Places like Philadelphia will never run into the problem. More »
—>Looks like we got our hands on a big ol' list of Comcast contacts for every single regional division. Names and numbers listed under "Sched Install," "Complete Install," "Reschedule Install," "Billing Adjustments," "Escalation Contact," and "Retention "save" disco's" would seem to be of particular interest to consumers trying to escalate issues through the notoriously unresponsive and uncaring cable company. More »
—>In today's go-go economy, savvy companies know it's important to draft official policies for a variety of circumstances and surprises that can crop up in the middle of a busy workday, clearly communicated and readily available. More »
In it, he says, "Is it coming? Why shouldn't I be able to say, just by a little switch on my phone at home that's wired, I'm going off on the wireless now, I want to use this as I ride my motorcycle...I'm bad. Pardon me." More »
—>According to an insider, these are the tools, programs, and procedures one Geek Squad precinct exploits to snarf up your porn: More »
—>Inside, an interactive Googlemaps Mashup showing the most popular hotels from the DC Madam's phone records. More »
—>If you want to have sex with a prostitute in Washington D.C., try the Marriott. More »
—>Sprint announced Monday it was canceling the accounts of around 1,000 people who called customer service too much. At first blush, it might sound like a pretty jerk thing to do, have bad service and then punish people who complain, but we spoke with one of our most reliable Sprint insiders, who had a different side to the story: the terminated customers were scamming Sprint, calling in again and again, just to get free service credits. More »
—>Here's how we rigged our computer to make a video of itself and caught the Geek Squad stealing porn from it. More »
Unable to resist, we sent Gawker video wunderkid Alex Goldberg to tape the affair awesomeness. We hypothesize the fete was conceptually tied to Dell's new line of Insprions which come in different colors, meaning that Dell has finally caught up to Apple, circa 1998. More »
—>Congressman Dennis Kucinich is making another run at the Presidency, after a heavily criticized run the Democratic nomination last time, where he was written off as "a Howard Dean without the poll numbers," whatever that means. Now, he faces a primary in his home state by another Progressive politician upset with Kucinich's absences from their Ohio district. More »
—>At least 60 Wiis will be arriving and selling at Target stores this Sunday, according to an inside source. More »
—>We just received the court transcript detailing former Geek Squad Agent Hao Kuo Chi "no-contest" plea in the case of his alleged setting up a cameraphone while on call in a customer's house and recording a young woman taking a shower. More »
—>Ariel's wealthy aunt died. When his mom went to open her safe deposit box, which was supposed to hold $300k in bonds and jewels, it was empty. The bank clerk said that it had been emptied that morning, by the aunt... More »
While we agree with Mr. skeptical glasses in the video that it's a good PR move for Home Depot, and coincides with the launch of their "green label" line of "eco-friendly" products, you know, consumers need a push with this issue. It's hard for the shoppers at large to understand that while they cost a little bit more than your basic bulb, they will use less energy and save you money in the long-run. They also look funny. More »
—>Vincent Ferrari uploaded his famous AOL cancellation call on June 13th, 2006. A screenshot from AOL's internal database shows that 10 days later AOL revised its policy for what reps should do if a customer says they're recording the phone call. More »
—>When former Geek Squad Agent Hao Kuo Chi appeared in court on April 3rd, 2007, he plead "no contest" to one count of unlawful invasion of privacy, according to the LA County DA's office. He received this sentence: More »
—>56% of Geek Squad employees responding to a poll on a company online forum said they found "no reason" to use anti-static wrist straps when repairing customer's computers. More »
—>Here's 6 more Geek Squad manuals. Combine this with the 6 we've already posted and soon we'll have enough info to open our own franchise. More »
—>Here's 5 more Geek Squad manuals. They're not a fascinating as the troubleshooting manual, but perhaps if you use the Geek Squad you can use them to make sure they're doing their job right. Or you could learn how to open up your own Geek Squad store. Sort of like a lemonade stand, except instead of turning lemons into a tasty beverage, you turn laptops into lemons. More »
—>We made a graph comparing the rate of change in price of cable, telephone, and wireless service to inflation rate from 1996-2005. More »
—>Microsoft is sending ALL of its XP and Vista tech support calls to India starting March 29th, according to a call center insider. Previously, the call volume was split between a site in North America and locations in Deli and Bangalore. More »
We have removed the slides. More »
—>According to a company insider, Aveda recently pulled a hair product from their shelves because it contained too many or too high a concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can be nasty pollutants. More »
—>CompUSA is closing 128 of 229 stores, a source familiar with the proceedings tells The Consumerist. More »
—>CompUSA had a 53 week year last year, allowing upper management to reap large bonus checks, according to a company insider. More »
—>CompUSA will close 100 stores this year, according to an industry insider speaking to us under conditions of anonymity. More »
—>We've got a directory of contact info for the offices of 14 top Verizon executives, with full name, position, address, email address, phone number and fax number More »
—>The office was decidedly busier on our callback. [Editor's note: this material was written prior to today.] One person was being interviewed while another waited next to us on the sofa. More at ease, we enjoyed our second look at the office. The waiting room walls were covered with pictures of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. "Bigger. Better." or something like that. The receptionist had a giant stack of papers on her desk and was busy on the phone as pop music blared in the background.... More »
—>115 West 30th Street is the unassuming address for an unmemorable building that serves as the headquarters of Midtown Promotions, a "marketing solutions" company that solves markets for IDT. We interviewed with them as part of Consumerist's continuing efforts to expose IDT's deceptive practices. More »
ConEd customer's personal information is in grave danger. ConEd's online account system is easily crackable, only requiring entering an account number. More »
—>After attempting to use the, "Script For Escaping Cingular Contracts Without Fee, Based On New Arbitration Clause," some readers reported failure, but we've got a possible solution. More »
—>UPDATE: We added case law to throw back at Cingular if they try to argue the change in arbitration agreement is not a material change. More »
We've written about how IDT Energy tries to con ConEd customers into switching their electrical contracts, but they also sell calling cards... More »
Best Buy calls 911 after Consumerist reader RJH asks for a refund on a nonworking Tony Bennet CD. More »
—>Exactly on year ago today, former Consumerist writer John Brownlee mocked these painted nails with words like: More »
—>In the correction Cingular offered on our, "Break Your Cingular Contract Without Fee, Thanks 2 Txt Msg $ Raise" post, Cingular contends that text-messaging is not a service that users "subscribe" to. More »
Cingular sent us this email in response to "Break Your Cingular Contract Without Fee, Thanks 2 Txt Msg $ Raise." More »
—>This is what Cingular will probably tell you if you call up trying to get out of your cellphone contract and service without paying an early termination fee based on their recent text message rate raise. More »
The McKenzies ordered two TVs from ShopNBC three months ago. The boxes arrived damaged and the family sent them back for a warranty replacement, which has yet to materialize. As such, the McKenzies haven't paid for the tv sets. More »
—>Reader Nolen decided to harass/contact Greg Meyerkord , the guy whose name appears on the PSP flog domain registration.... More »
Google Checkout looks like a Paypal-killer, but will it stand up for consumers when transactions go wrong? Google says yes. More »
UPDATE: The 807 comments that were on the Dancing Petey video, after the jump. More »
—>We found the Myspace profiles for most of the the marketing douchebags who appear on the PSP flog, pretending that they are kids who want their parents to buy them a PSP for Christmas. More »
Costco is making its liberal return policies stricter, according to a little birdy. Previously, you could return anything, except computers, at anytime, with or without a receipt. More »
Chase yesterday decided to put the screws harder to its most struggling credit card customers, an insider tells us. More »
The holiday party invite from TBWA\Chiat\Day, NYC, has the answer, and it's not pretty. More »
—>We asked JSH&A for a comment regarding the McDonald's flogs, and we got it: More »
4railroads follows "Stanley Smith," obsessed with getting all four railroad pieces. The site also boasts a series of cinema verite videos purporting to document Stanley's exploits. More »
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Here's the essential differences between AOL's cancel script, the sheet pasted over every AOL cancel reps cubicle to tell them how to handle your cancellation request, from two years ago and today's. —>Inside, full images of both. More »
Another fine example of people using their cars as anti-corporate billboards. What really makes this one, however, is what the owner decided to park his car in front of. More »
—>After we talked about a bogus gift card site and mistakenly implied that the fellas listed as authors in the source code were involved with defrauding consumers, one of the came forward to clear up the facts. More »
At his peak, our interviewee "saved" over 87% of the people who called him up to cancel their account. We're still working on editing the whole thing, and in fact, have to get on the phone with another consultant in a second here, but we wanted to share this teaser clip with you. More »
