Friday, December 5, 2014
#NewsAlert By @balleralert: “Anyone in LA watching the...
#NewsAlert By @balleralert:
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Who Invented Roadside Arm-Waving Air Dancers?
Where did the inflatable dancing man come from? You know what we mean: the tall fabric puppets that you attach to a fan and let loose to dance in the air, capturing the attention of people passing by. Where did the air dancer come from? They’ve been around for less than 18 years, and have an origin story involving three countries and the Olympic Games.
The immediate ancestor of the air dancer that we know and love from the modern roadsides are massive inflatable puppets that were part of the opening ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The project had a true international spirit, originating in fabric dancing puppets that are part of celebrations in the Caribbean. An Carnival parade artist from Trinidad, Peter Minshall, came up with the original concept for humanoid marching puppets filled with air. Israeli artist Doran Gazit, who specializes in inflatable forms, figured out the practical side, and the ancestors of the Air Dancer…Tube Guy…whatever you call them, was part of the opening ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics.
From there, the story develops complications: Gazit patented the men without Minshall’s permission, but they ultimately did not fight this out in court. The air-dancer technology has been licensed to a variety of companies, eventually devolving into the distracting balloon-puppet things that we see on roadsides to this day.
Episode 143: Inflatable Men [99% Invisible]
Biography of an Inflatable Tube Guy [Re:form]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
RadioShack Will Stop Matching Workers’ Retirement Contributions Next Year
Bloomberg News got hold of a memorandum from the company’s chief executive officer, where he explains that the company is reviewing its health insurance options, but that it will end matching of employees’ contributions to their 401(k) and 1165(e) retirement accounts as of February. What we don’t know is how many employees that includes, or exactly how much money they would save by ending those contributions. Employees could, of course, continue to fund their own retirement accounts.
The company did not elaborate on the contents of the memo other than to confirm that they are indeed looking for ways to cut costs. The company received a letter this week from one of its lenders that it is in default on a $250 million loan, but they are working with that lender, Salus. The company’s original solution to its financial problems was to close 1,100 stores, but its lenders rejected that plan.
Radio Shack hasn’t turned a profit in ten quarters, or more than two and a half years.
RadioShack to End 401(K) Retirement Matching to Cut Costs [Bloomberg News]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
Security Video Shows Thief Apparently Hypnotizing Shopkeeper Before Picking His Pockets
Yes, this is a thing people are believing, after a wine merchant found himself “stunned” by the theft of hundreds of pounds in cash, reports the London Evening Standard.
In the video, a man brushes past the shopkeeper and taps him on the arm. He then goes through a series of motions and gestures, ostensibly to put him into the hypnotic state. The shop owner does appear dazed and stands very still in the video, while the thief reaches inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet before walking out.
The shopkeeper then appears to snap out of whatever waking snooze he was having, and runs out after him.
Scotland Yard released the shop’s CCTV footage this week, showing the bizarre Sept. 11 incident in a search for the suspect.
“The victim remained motionless and unable to stop the robbery taking place. He said that he was momentarily unaware of what had happened to him,” a detective sergeant said.
“The suspect’s distraction tactics appeared to have worked as he robbed the victim of cash from his pocket.“
A BBC magician weighed in, saying the man might’ve previously been hypnotized by the suspect in order to implant “trigger” words into his subconscious, making it easier on this subsequent trip to get him into a trance.
“You can never hypnotize someone on the first go, you warm them up,” he explained to the paper. “I would have thought he has already gone in there before and done some pre-suggestive stuff.”
Maybe this means that the hypnotist I allowed to fake hypnotize me onstage at a tourist resort in Mexico wasn’t actually a total sham and is now going to reappear and rob me. That’s what this story has taught me. Never get hypnotized on vacation and later brag that it didn’t work (it didn’t) because it might just be an elaborate set-up.
Shopkeeper ‘placed in trance by hypnotist’ during theft in north London [London Evening Standard]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
Cracker Barrel Waitress Scores Ultimate Tip: A Car
After seeing the woeful state of their waitress’s car parked outside the Branson, MO, Cracker Barrel where she worked, a couple from Arkansas decided to leave her a pretty nice tip — in the form of a car.
The couple, who only knew the waitress in passing, say they first noticed the car a few months back and thought it had been abandoned because it was in such bad shape.
The waitress tells KOLR-TV that her old wheels were still running okay, but that she’d had a few too many run-ins with deer. In fact, she claims to have hit five of the antlered animals with her car over the years.
When the Arkansas couple came back again to Branson and saw the car still sitting in the lot, they asked around the restaurant to find out who the battered vehicle belonged to.
“I talked with my wife about it,” says the husband about the decision to help the waitress out. “And I said, ‘something has to be done.'”
And so the couple decided to come back and surprise her with their four-wheeled gift (it looks like a Ford sedan in the Facebook video recorded by the couple’s daughter), complete with a red ribbon on top.
“I was in a spot where I was depressed,” the waitress reveals, “Just feeling like nobody cares. It’s very different now.”
She says the gift has restored her faith in humanity, adding that “everyone I talked to says the same thing.”
Back in 2012, we told you about the waiter in Houston who received a $5,000 tip — on a $27 bill — from some regular customers who wanted to help him get a new car.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
Tesla Batteries Might Be The Next Big Threat To Electric Companies
Electric cars might not be great for gas companies, but they feel like a net win for the electric utilities: after all, if you’re plugging in a Tesla in the garage every night, that’s a little more juice they can charge you for using. Tesla’s goal, though, isn’t just to make cars less environmentally hostile, but to make everything else that way too. And that might just be a huge problem for existing electric utilities.
Most electric utilities aren’t quite caught up to what Tesla’s doing, but the ones that have should probably be scared, Bloomberg reports.
The electric-car company is breaking ground on a battery “gigafactory” in Nevada. The factory itself is being designed to have essentially zero emissions and be as eco-friendly as possible. It will not draw power from the electric grid, instead generating its own wind and solar power on site — making the Nevada desert a perfect location.
The factory will not only be making batteries for use powering Tesla’s current and future lines of all-electric cars, but also for the “storage market.” That storage line gets thrown in quickly and then passed over in most press releases and media stories but, Bloomberg says, it’s actually a huge deal.
Those batteries can be paired with home solar panels, which are also getting less expensive every year. A homeowner who installs solar panels (also conveniently made by an Elon Musk company) and can store the excess energy for later use in a rainy week, using one of Tesla’s batteries, suddenly doesn’t even need to be connected to the local grid even for backup.
One analyst told Bloomberg that battery storage is “the Holy Grail for renewables,” because “the energy is intermittent. Finding a way to store that is very powerful.”
Another consultant described the potential to Bloomberg as a “mortal threat,” saying, “That [battery and solar panel package] is an unregulated product you can buy at Home Depot that leaves the old business model with no place to hide.”
Of course, just because people can go installing new energy systems at home doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to do it… but they certainly might.
About 40% of all plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. go to Californians, Bloomberg says. And in California, roughly half of all those 100,000 people who have electric cars either already have solar power at home, or have plans to install it.
California has over 38 million residents, so the 50,000 homeowners who want to use solar power aren’t exactly an existential threat just yet. And Tesla’s factory won’t be online and operational for years yet to come.
But the future can come quickly. Right now, at $70-$100k, Teslas are too pricey for most folks. But with a $30,000 model launching in a few years, electric cars will become more accessible to millions more families. And economies of scale are a real thing: the more widely a technology gets adopted, the more efficiently a company can manufacture it, and the less expensive and more widespread it can continue to become.
Analysts think that the industry is drastically underestimating just how far Tesla has already come, Bloomberg writes. They quote Morgan Stanley analysts, who said “There is not sufficient appreciation of the magnitude of energy storage cost reduction that Tesla has already achieved, nor of the further cost reduction magnitude that Tesla might be able to achieve once the company has constructed its gigafactory.”
Ultimately, Bloomberg concludes, the landscape is changing. So far, electric utilities can do what they like because most consumers don’t exactly have a way to make their own electricity at home. But soon, many of us might. At that point, utilities are going to have to change somehow… whether or not they want to.
Why Elon Musk’s Batteries Scare the Hell Out of the Electric Company [Bloomberg]
by Kate Cox via Consumerist
Why Are 100,000 People On A Waiting List To Buy Duck Boots From L.L. Bean?
Like most trends that are making people miserable, the experts blame millennials. Specifically, high school and college students and urban-dwellers who have suddenly decided that classic waterproof footwear is back in style. The boots cost $139, but are one product that L.L. Bean still manufactures in the United States, so it was a decent choice of footwear to suddenly make trendy again.
It’s not like the company can just hire more workers and crank out enough boots to feed the trend until Christmas is over, either. “Making more boots is also a slow process given the specialization needed to produce the hand-crafted boots,” a company spokesperson explained to Yahoo Style, presumably while strapping on some snowshoes to go visit the boot warehouse. It takes a new boot-maker 26 weeks to master the stitching, so those darn kids really should have given the company at least nine months’ notice before turning the boots into a hot item. So rude.
Yahoo reports that the company is on track to sell about 450,000 pairs of boots this year, and the waiting list stands at 100,000 right now.
L.L. Bean’s Already Sold Out of Snow Boots [Yahoo Style] (via Racked)
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
For-Profit College Hired Exotic Dancers As Admissions Reps
According to a lawsuit [PDF] filed earlier this week by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida against the operators of the FastTrain chain of colleges, the school used exotic dancers to entice young males to apply to the school.
“FastTrain employed female exotic dancers as admissions representatives… to lure young male students,” reads the complaint, which says that admissions directors then “encouraged them to dress provocatively while they recruited young men in neighborhoods to attend FastTrain.”
The goal, alleges the suit, was to get as many students enrolled in the school as possible in order to get these students to take out federal student loans. That money would go to the school, and the student is left on the hook whether or not they graduate, get a decent education, or ever have the ability to repay.
Before it closed in 2012, FastTrain operated seven campuses in Florida’s Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval counties.
According to the complaint, starting as far back as 2009 FastTrain “knowingly submitted, or caused to be submitted, numerous false claims” for payments through the U.S. Dept. of Education’s student aid programs.
FastTrain allegedly lied about students’ eligibility for aid, claiming these students had high school diplomas (or equivalents) when they did not.
The government says that FastTrain admissions personnel coached prospective ineligible students to lie on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid form “in order for FastTrain to secure more federal funding for students than the students were eligible to receive.”
FastTrain allegedly took in more than $4.3 million in federal student loans and another $2.21 million in Federal Pell Grants that shouldn’t have been given.
“Federal financial student aid programs are designed to assist students obtain an education. Those who misuse federal funds will be brought to justice and held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Ferrer.
While Florida AG Bondi says that “Taking advantage of students in order to exploit federal financial aid programs is reprehensible, and we will continue to work with our federal partners to protect Florida students and the integrity of federal financial aid.”
The school’s owner, Alex Amor, and other individuals associated with FastTrain were charged earlier this fall in a 15-count indictment with conspiracy to steal government funds.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
Sprint Exec Admits That “Half-Off” Offer Will Likely Only Result In Savings Of Around 20%
Earlier this week, Sprint introduced a new offer for current Verizon and AT&T customers looking to switch service — same amount of data at half the price. We noted at the time that the major catch to this deal is that you have to pay full price for your new phone when you switch (or pay $200), but how much would that cut into your savings? According to one top Sprint exec, quite a lot.
As we pointed out in our original story, getting the half-off deal from Sprint requires that you not just jump ship from AT&T or Verizon but that you also get a new phone through Sprint using either its Easy Pay system (which charges full price but in monthly installments) or by paying full sticker price for your new phone outright.
Even though AT&T and Verizon have been nudging customers into similar installment programs like AT&T Next and Verizon Edge, most current subscribers are still on plans where they buy discounted phones in exchange for agreeing to two-year contracts with their provider. By one estimate from Verizon, only around 2% of its customers are on Edge.
So while jumping to Sprint would indeed cut the monthly amount customers are charged for data/voice/text, those savings would be partially offset by the added cost of paying off a full-price phone.
Speaking earlier this week at a Merrill Lynch conference, CFO Joe Euteneuer admitted that a switching customer’s savings would not be exactly half of what it was at AT&T or Verizon.
“They are still probably getting a 20% sort of net discount,” he explained.
For 20% off their bill, we could imagine lots of people jumping ship between AT&T, Verizon, or even T-Mobile, as they all provide high-speed LTE service. But until Sprint can get demonstrate that its LTE network is reliable and fast, it will probably only win over customers looking to save a bit of money in exchange for a possible loss in service quality.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
Don’t Want To Buy An Ugly Holiday Sweater You’ll Only Wear Once? Now You Can Rent It
The folks who rent designer dresses with hefty price tags at Rent the Runway have launched an Ugly Holiday Sweater collection to help those in need of an atrocious item of clothing on the cheap.
Sweaters vary by your location, for a total of 12 in the collection whose sole purpose is to make you look as fashionably idiotic as is possibly this holiday season.
You want a bunch of teddy bears? Got’em. A creepy 3D Christmas clown sewn onto your chest, adorned with a red tinsel fringe? Okay then, wear that and try not to have nightmares later.
This is what I dream of when I drink too much egg nog.
Sweaters only come in one-size-fits all size, at a four-day rental cost of $15.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
Starbucks Wants To Open A Chain Of Even More Upscale Coffee Shops
You may have thought that Starbucks was already an upscale coffee chain. Perhaps it is, compared to brewing your own Folgers at home, but there are even pricier coffee shops out there that offer even finer coffees. Starbucks wants to compete with these shops, which you haven’t heard of because you can’t afford to visit: even if you can, you probably don’t want to pay $45 for a pound of roasted beans.
Maybe we’re generalizing about Consumerist readers: if so, and if you crave a gourmet coffee experience, maybe Starbucks’ new venture is for you. In Seattle, the chain has opened the first store of its planned mini-chain, the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room. There, you can find single-batch coffees that come from just one farmer.
One difficulty with this business model is that people who seek out an even more upscale coffee experience do so because they look down on Starbucks’ products and ubiquity. If there’s a Reserve Roastery in every large and medium-sized city, that doesn’t make their local roaster unique. Patronizing a corporate coffee shop means losing some credibility as a coffee snob and person who specifically seeks out a more expensive experience that is not Starbucks.
One consumer expert explains to the New York Times that what customers really want are “singular experiences” with their food and drink when a consistent experience is what chains like Starbucks are about. Yet CEO Howard Schultz says that he has been brewing this idea for most of the last decade, keeping track of ideas in scrapbooks. The company has invested millions in this new singular coffee experience, but will a chain where people can buy pricey beans and pay $4 to $7 for a cup take off nationwide? The growth of specialty roasters nationwide indicates that coffee drinkers might. The important hurdle might be getting past their possible distaste for the Starbucks brand, like selling $8 higher quality burgers at McDonald’s.
Starbucks, Facing a Saturated Market, Looks to the High End [New York Times]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
Cat Owners Who Value A Smell-Free Home Should Thank This Guy For Inventing Kitty Litter
Cat owners: There is a debt of gratitude to be paid. Every time you walk into a home with a cat that doesn’t smell like cat pee, and every night that you spend comfortably in your bed with your favorite feline friend snoozing cozily on your feet is all because of one guy, when you get right down to it. He is the guy who invented kitty litter.
Seriously — the past was terrible before kitty litter. Sandboxes didn’t mask that awful ammonia scent that is the scourge of every cat owner, thus requiring many people to put kitty out for the night to do his bathroom business.
But then a man with an idea for chicken nesting material came along and changed everything, reports Businessweek.
A Michigan man named Ed Lowe in 1947 had the idea to take fuller’s earth, a kind of clay, and sell it to farmers for chickens to nest in, calling it Chicken Litter. Farmers weren’t biting however, but someone else had a need for a pile of dirt.
A local woman dropped by his dad’s delivery businesses in need of some sand for her cat box, as it was January and time for Mr. Whiskers to come in for the cold. Inspiration struck, and he offered her the fuller’s earth instead.
As it turns out, the stuff absorbed the ammonia stench, and the woman came back for more, bringing all her cat-loving friends.
And so it began — Lowe put fuller’s earth in bags, labeling them KITTY LITTER, and started selling it at hardware stores, supermarkets and pet stores.
He kept expanding his business in the face of new competition (anyone can sell dirt in a bag with the right customers), until his Tidy Cat brand officially launched in 1954, cementing Lowe in the Cat Owners’ Hall Of Fame forever.
“We aim to stay No. 1,” he said, “in a No. 2 business.”
The next time your foot falls asleep on a cold winter’s day because Sir Fancymittens cannot be disturbed from his slumber on it, just thank Ed Lowe. Because when a cat’s gotta go, he’s gonna go and it’s not going to smell nice if there’s no kitty litter.
The Birth of Kitty Litter [Businessweek]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
26-Year Delta Air Lines Vet Says He Was Fired After Criticizing Baggage Handler Pay
There is a game of he said/airline said going on between a baggage handler who was recently fired after more than two decades on the job. He claims he was fired for speaking out publicly on his co-workers’ wages while Delta maintains that the man’s statements were untrue and in violation of company policy.
In a recent video for a group called Workday Minnesota, the veteran baggage handler made the statement that “A lot of the Delta workers make… under $15 an hour,” estimating that around half of them make below that $15/hour mark.
Some believe that this remark, along with the man’s history as a labor activist, that led Delta to fire him.
Federal labor laws generally prohibit retaliation against employees for making statements about wages., but the airline claims that the longtime worker was dismissed for making disparaging and untrue remarks.
“Delta regrets any instance where a longtime employee is terminated,” reads a statement to the Pioneer Press. “However, Delta requires all employees to meet company performance and conduct standards. This includes upholding our core values of respect and honesty in any communications regarding Delta.”
The airline says it “invites healthy, constructive discussion across all areas of its business,” and that it applies “policies consistently and in a nondiscriminatory manner, based on an individual’s conduct and record of job performance, without regard to anyone’s personal views.”
The fired employee maintains that his statement about Delta wages is accurate when you factor in pay for contract workers.
[via Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal]
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
Sears Holdings Admits Plans To Close 105 More Stores, Won’t Say Which Ones
Last week, we shared an updated version of a list naming 109 Kmart and Sears stores reported by employees or local media outlets to be closing by early 2015. While Sears still won’t confirm or deny these reports on a company-wide level, the company did tell investors as part of its quarterly earnings report this week that it plans to close 105 more stores by the beginning of next year.
Closing stores that aren’t profitable is part of any turnaround plan when a retail chain is in trouble, and as Sears finds itself in need of more cash to stay in business, the company is picking up the pace of store closings. The company is considering forming a real estate investment trust and selling some stores to it, has borrowed a large amount of money from its own CEO with store buildings as collateral, and has been been working out deals to rent or sublease all or part of any store in which other retailers show interest.
Still, some experts believe that the retailer remains in a death spiral, and that efforts to sell or spin off Sears Holdings assets that still have value (like store buildings and the Lands’ End brand) are only an attempt to salvage something from the pieces of a company that was once a global retailing icon.
Sears Holdings Reports Third Quarter 2014 Results [Sears Holdings]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
Singapore Airlines Accidentally Sells 900 Business Class Fares At Economy Price
Travelers who thought they’d lucked into some magically low fares on Singapore Airlines are in for a disappointment — the airline says that after a computer glitch allowed Australian travel agents to sell 900 business class fares at economy prices, the agents will either have to provide the difference in fare, or passengers will have the option of flying economy or getting a full refund.
The flights between Singapore and Europe weren’t loaded into the system correctly by the airline, reports News.com.au, allowing for a whole bunch of cheap fares flying off the digital shelves between Saturday and Monday this week.
A spokeswoman for the airline confirmed that it had “recently reassigned a booking subclass originally designated to economy class bookings to be used for business class bookings from December 8, 2014.”
“We have been notified that a small number of travel agents have sold tickets against this reassigned business class subclass, at an economy class fare level,” said the spokeswoman. “The airfare conditions for the fare clearly stated that it was only valid for economy class travel.”
Agents who don’t want to face collecting more money from their customers to make up the difference in price can pay it themselves, or offer passengers a full refund.
“We are working with our travel agent partners to ensure that our customers are notified of this issue so that steps can be made to ensure there is no disruption to their travel plans,” the spokeswoman said.
Singapore Airlines blames agents for selling business class fares at economy rates [News.com.au]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
FCC Releases Massive Study On Mobile Phone Theft, Asks Wireless Companies To Start Making Changes
Smartphones are amazingly convenient: tiny little hand-sized computers that make it easy to organize our lives on the go. They’re also amazingly good targets for theft: tiny, portable, expensive, and full of personal information. Mobile device theft is on the rise, just as mobile devices are, and the FCC has been trying to find ways to protect consumers when their devices get yanked from their hands.
The commission formed a working group earlier this year, which has been churning their way through all of the data on mobile device theft for months. This week they came up with a final report (140-page PDF) on the matter. The report had a few key findings on reducing and handling smartphone theft.
First: it’s really hard to know just how many phones are stolen. There is no national-level data. With approximately 18,000 separate law enforcement agencies operating in the nation, the aggregation of data is “a significant challenge.” On the one hand, the actual number of incidents may be lower than the best estimates consumer advocates have come up with so far. But on the other hand, a significant number of thefts may be going unreported.
Second: It’s really hard to know what happens to phones after they’ve been stolen. Where are they sold? To whom? Who’s making money? Nobody really has any clear data. Anecdotally, the report says, it seems likely that significant numbers of stolen phones are resold in nations “that are both geographically and politically remote from the U.S.” That means that addressing the problem top-to-bottom in any meaningful way will require a lot of international cooperation.
Third: Tech and telecom companies can’t exactly stop someone from running up and snatching an iPhone from a passenger waiting on the subway platform, but they can take steps to make those phones a lot less useful to re-use or resell. And those steps will help to protect consumers.
In that third bucket, the working group ultimately came up with a few recommendations for things that mobile companies can do:
- Making lock/wipe/restore functions enabled by default on all devices they sell
- Making the electronic “fingerprints” (unique identifiers) of phones secure so that thieves can’t “re-flash” them
- Making sure that wireless company retail store employees double-check appropriate databases to make sure the consumer-owned phones they’re activating aren’t stolen property, and
- Making sure those databases about stolen phones are actually up to date with accurate information.
These changes are not exactly optional: FCC chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday sent letters to the top executives of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon giving them thirty days to respond to the report with a list of “measurable steps” that the companies will take. The goal is to have the mobile companies begin implementing the changes by the end of next year’s first quarter.
by Kate Cox via Consumerist
Secret Santa Gifts $15K To Pay For Strangers’ Walmart Layaway Items
It’s that time of year again, when generous folks around the country pop in to their local retailers and plunk down a pile of cash to make strangers’ holidays happier by paying for their layaway purchases. This time, some secret Santa in Ohio left a substantial $15,000 gift under shoppers’ trees.
“Don’t say miracles never happen,” says one customer who had her layaway purchases at a Moraine, OH, Walmart paid for by the mysterious benefactor. “Whoever did this, they’re great.”
The surprise was even sweeter for her family as it comes shortly after her husband had been laid off from his job. They decided the safest route was to put Christmas gifts for their grandkids on layaway until they could pay for them.
Then someone who didn’t want to be identified offered to pay off $15,000 worth of layaway purchases.
The Walmart manager tells WDTN-TV that others have paid off layaway bills for strangers at the store before, but never in this amount. He describes this anonymous donor is “Just someone wanting to do that for someone they don’t know, it’s more the spirit of Christmas.”
In this case, the secret Santa told the manager that they wanted the money to go primarily toward toy purchases and other gifts for kids.
We’ve always been curious how someone could try to ensure that their generous gift isn’t just going to pay off TVs or other big-ticket purchases that shoppers are making for themselves. And the manager tells WDTN that “There’s a computerized process we can do where we can put in certain parameters and pull those layaways forward.”
One shopper had her grandkid’s bike paid for by the gift.
“There’s an angel out there,” says the shopper. “We’re so appreciative. It’s awesome. I actually cried. It’s amazing.”
While $15,000 is a significant chunk of change — and can buy an awful lot of gifts — it’s not the largest one we’ve written about. In 2011, when these “layaway angels” began showing up everywhere, a California man paid nearly $16,000 for shoppers’ purchases.
And then a year ago, an anonymous donor in Florida paid $20,000 to brighten up the holidays for Walmart shoppers.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
Lazy Trendsters Can Take The Easy Way With Tweed Jacket Already Imbued With The Scent Of Whiskey
Picture yourself in a tweed jacket. Are you leaning against a shelf, sipping whiskey and quoting that line from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy about having “many leather-bound books” and how your apartment smells of “rich mahogany”? Are you also very lazy? Boy, someone out there’s got you pegged.
Spirits purveyor Johnnie Walker has teamed up with clothing company Harris Tweed Hebrides to create the trendster’s shortcut to acting like some kind of classy gentleman/academic/ultra cool intellectual/hipster/grandpa anymore with a new line of tweed jackets that arrive already smelling of whiskey, reports Metro UK.
Because it’s just so hard to buy whiskey and spill it on yourself (actually, wait…), the textile reportedly features rich malt and dark chocolate tones with golden vanilla. Jackets come with blue, pink or yellow highlights and can be dry cleaned without losing that manufactured whiskey scent.
“The process we have devised for Johnnie Walker means that this scent is layered into the fabric throughout the finishing process and is permanently imbued in the tweed,” explains Donald Mackay, head of the finishing department at the Harris Tweed mill.
Meanwhile, someone has yet to invent bed sheets that smell like cheddar cheese. And taste like it. Edible sheets, is that so much to ask?
Designers create a tweed jacket that naturally smells of whisky [Metro UK]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
Chick Fil-A Customer Sues Chain Over Milkshake She Claims Led To A Heart Attack
How can a milkshake lead to a heart attack? Not through the arteries in the long run, but by way of a maraschino cherry, according to one Chick Fil-A customer’s new lawsuit.
A woman who visited a Texas Chick Fil-A in May claims in a lawsuit filed in a State District Court in Dallas County that biting into an “improperly de-pitted” maraschino cherry that came on top of her milkshake, reports the Houston Chronicle.
She says biting the pit caused damage to two of her teeth, fracturing them below the gum line. An unspecified short time later, she developed gum infection and sepsis, followed by a heart attack that she claims is related to the tooth trouble. The teeth in question were recently removed.
She’s also suing the company that provided the cherries, a New York businesses, claiming that the company, “as a producer, supplier and distributor of maraschino cherries to restaurants or food establishments throughout the United States, including Texas, failed to use that degree of care that would be used by a marschino cherry de-pitting owner or company of ordinary prudence under the same or similar circumstances.
She’s seeking damages between $200,000 and $1 million.
Chick-Fil-A milkshake blamed for woman’s heart attack [Houston Chronicle]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
Teen-Targeted Retailer dELiA*s Is bANkruPt. Will Close Stores, Liquidate Merch
The NYC-based company said this morning that it will begin selling off its merchandise as soon as today, with the intention of paying off its creditors, but without any hope that the store will be resurrected.
In its announcement, dELiA*s says that it had failed to find a merger partner or convince any larger retailers that it should be acquired.
So people who live near any of the 100+ soon-to-close dELiA*s stores may be able to get some decent deals as the company liquidates its merchandise.
However, as we’ve seen in other liquidations of chain stores like Borders and Circuit City, the prices on these items are not always that great — and remember that you can’t return them.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
Amazon Dangles The Option Of Upscale Diapers To Lure New Premium Customers
It’s not always easy convincing people to pay $99 a year for anything, but if you can tap into an existing need, the customers will often come running. And in the case of Amazon Elements, the new program rolled out to lure in new Premium subscribers, that prize it’s dangling is upscale diapers and baby wipes.
Amazon announced its plan to herd customers through its Premium sign-up plan yesterday, touting Amazon Elements as a program that’s exclusive to Premium subscribers and full of all the magical wonder and delight that ethically sourced baby products can bring.
So what makes these diapers so special? Amazon says they’re “ultra-absorbent and have a breathable outer cover, advanced super-absorbent polymers, stretchable waist band and leg elastics for better fit, an umbilical notch on Newborn diapers, and a pocketed waist band in sizes newborn through 2.”
Diapers and wipes are just the first offering to roll out under the Elements flag, with Amazon pushing the project as “a new line of premium, everyday essentials with transparent origins.”
“Our obsession with customers and drive to continuously innovate on their behalf has led us to create Amazon Elements. The two things customers told us they want are premium products that meet their high standards, and access to information so they can make informed decisions, Amazon Elements offers both,” said Sunny Jain, Amazon.com Consumables Vice President in a press release. “We’ve leveraged our strengths in technology to bring customers an unprecedented level of information about these products, all with just the click of a button. We’re excited to offer Amazon Prime members added selection, beginning with diapers and baby wipes.”
Basically, the products page for each item has a bunch of information included about where the items come from and why they were made the way they were. Each package comes with a scannable code that can be fed into the Amazon mobile shopping app, so customers can track its ingredients and their origins, as well as date and place of manufacture, date of delivery, “best by” date and other things.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
Nationwide Data Breach Hits Clothing Retailer Bebe, Payment Card Info Stolen
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: when consumers nationwide can find out that their credit and debit card information has been lost to hackers right when they’re trying to get all of their holiday shopping done. This week’s unfortunate victims? Consumers of women’s clothing retailer Bebe, found in malls nationwide.
The report comes from security expert Brian Krebs, who in the past year has broken the stories of the Target and Home Depot breaches as well as many others. Krebs heard from banks about a new pattern of fraudulent transactions. The banks looked for a pattern in the fraud and sure enough, found one connecting thread: all of the affected cards had been used at Bebe stores in November.
Today, Bebe stores confirmed the breach.
The breach affects customers who shopped at Bebe locations between Nov. 8 and Nov. 26 of this year. Data that was stolen includes cardholder name, account number, expiration date, and verification code. The breach appears to have affected all 200 of the chain’s retail locations in the U.S., but not the company’s international stores or web storefront.
In a statement, company CEO Jim Wiggett said, “Our relationship with our customers is of the highest importance. We moved quickly to block this attack and have taken steps to further enhance our security measures.”
As is now typical for this sort of thing, the company is offering free credit monitoring protection services to their customers. The company’s statement also includes a state-by-state breakdown of additional actions that affected consumers can take in some areas.
The retailer is working with their payment processor to notify the banks that issued affected cards but in the meantime, standard advice applies: retail hacks are inevitable. Assume your card can be compromised, and always keep a close eye on your statements.
Banks: Credit Card Breach at Bebe Stores [Krebs on Security]
by Kate Cox via Consumerist
Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds
Here are eleven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last two weeks, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.
Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers 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. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist