It Looks Like Starbucks May Be Changing How Customers Earn Loyalty Program Rewards Points

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If you’re a member of the My Starbucks rewards loyalty program, you’re used to earning one point — or Stars, as they’re called in this case — every time you buy anything from the company, whether it’s a sandwich and coffee in a store or a mug online. It seems that system could be changing as of April, if a photo of an informational pamphlet proves to be the real thing.

The Starbucks Geek Twitter account posted a photo of a person who appears to be in a bathroom or a kitchen holding what looks like a flyer from Starbucks alerting MSR members of the change: starting in April, instead of earning one Star per purchase, members will instead rack up two Stars per $1 spent.

MSR changes seem to be confirmed. New plan goes into effect in early April. http://pic.twitter.com/xoIFFKucwG

— Starbucks Geek (@SbuxGeek) February 19, 2016

In the notice, Starbucks says this is the “#1 member-requested update,” adding that there will be other changes made to the program to accompany the new points system. For one, Starbucks will remove the Welcome level “so so all new members see Green-level benefits right away,” which, if nothing else changes about the Green level, basically means you don’t have to wait 12 months and earn at least five points in order to get free in-store refills on hot or iced brewed coffee and tea.

The company is also adding more ways to collect Stars, the pamphlet says, including Double-Star Days for Gold members every month.

As one would expect, the threshold to earn rewards has also been raised — otherwise it’d be pretty easy to reach reward levels with a single purchase. For example, in the old system, it would take you 30 purchases to earn 30 stars and reach the highest level of rewards members, whereas now you could buy espresso drinks for a few friends and hit 30 stars during one visit, and 300 stars to reach Gold level.

There’s a handy chart included, which we’ve recreated below:

TODAY	APRIL
1 Star per visit	2 Stars per $1 spent
30 Stars to Gold level	300 Stars to Gold level
12 Stars for a free reward in Gold level	125 Stars for a free reward in Gold level
Welcome, Green & Gold levels	Green & Gold levels, (plus new Gold benefits

Because the value of each Star you’ve currently got in your account won’t matter much when the change hits, the notice says that Stars in user accounts will multiply on launch day to reflect the update.

“Be sure to check your email in the upcoming weeks for more information on what this change means for you, plus ways to make the most of your current Stars [finger covering words] new program launches,” the notice reads.

There’s also a website for questions, which, at the time we checked, resulted in a blank page in Chrome and an error message in Firefox: http://ift.tt/1SXbvWC.

Again, we can’t be sure this photo is the real deal at this point. We’ve reached out to Starbucks to confirm the changes indicated in this photo, and will update this post when we hear back.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Tesla Finally Acquired The Tesla.com Domain

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If you want to find the websites for Ford, Chevy, or Dodge, you just add a “.com” to the name. But not so for Tesla, which had long been unable to acquire the user-friendly Tesla.com domain name. That’s finally changed, though no one is saying how.

Bloomberg reports that Tesla Motors acquired the Tesla.com domain from the Silicon Valley engineer who had owned it for 24 years, but had let it sit unused for much of that time.

Now the URL redirects to TeslaMotors.com, the domain that Tesla has been using since it couldn’t get the simpler name.

Acquiring the domain opens the door for Tesla to create a catch-all website for its endeavors, which not only includes electric vehicles, but batteries via the Tesla Energy brand.

Bloomberg speculates that the new domain could lead the company to change its name to simply Tesla, a move that Musk said wasn’t possible before due to domain issues.

A lawyer who previously represented the original domain owner tells Bloomberg that over the years the man was approached by many people about acquiring the name.

“[The man] is an engineer and a big fan of Nikola Tesla,” the lawyer said. “He’s had it, and now Tesla the auto company got it. I would surmise that this was a voluntary arrangement,”

A Tesla spokesperson declined to comment to Bloomberg on the domain change other than to say the company had acquired it.

Tesla’s Musk Gets Tesla.com Domain Name After Waiting a Decade [Bloomberg]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Home Renters Pay Up to 47% More For Car Insurance Than Homeowners

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Renting a home means that you’re not responsible for fixing the leaky roof or replacing the broken furnace, and you aren’t wedded to a mortgage for the rest of your life. But according to a new analysis of auto insurance rates, it also means you could be paying a lot more to insure your car.

The Consumer Federation of America recently tested auto insurance rates from the nation’s largest providers in ten different cities from coast to coast, and found that some renters are paying upwards of 47% more for basic liability coverage than homeowners.

The CFA analysis used a fictional driver — 30 years old, female, with a 2005 Honda Civic, a high school diploma, a clerical job, and a “Fair” credit rating. This fictional driver has been licensed for 14 years without any lapses in coverage, and without being involved in any accidents, moving violations, or having her license suspended. The only thing that changed in the test was whether she rented or owned her home.

Using this persona, researchers obtained quotes from State Farm, GEICO, Allstate, Progressive, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, and Nationwide in ten different ZIP codes: Baltimore, Tampa, Louisville, Chicago, Newark (NJ), Houston, Phoenix, Syracuse, Portland (OR), and Oakland.

On average, renters paid 6% more than homeowners for basic liability coverage, but that’s including the results from Oakland, where California state law prohibits insurers from considering homeownership in setting auto insurance rates.

Several insurers increase their rates well above that average when the driver is a renter. For example, in the nine non-California cities, Liberty Mutual charged an average of 19% more to renters, with increases ranging from as little as 4% in Syracuse to nearly 26% in Newark.

More perplexing is Allstate, whose insurance rates for renters were often below the national average (in Chicago, Allstate actually charges renters less than homeowners), but which jacked up rates by 19% for renters in Tampa.

The largest overall increase came from Farmers, where Louisville renters will pay 47% more than homeowners.

The only insurer to not account for homeownership in any of the markets was GEICO, which quoted the same rate regardless of whether the driver rents or owns.

The CFA contends that using homeownership as a factor in setting insurance rates unfairly puts lower- and moderate-income Americans at a disadvantage, citing Federal Reserve Board data showing that, in 2013, the median income of renters in the U.S. was $27,800, compared to $63,400 for homeowners.

“To raise people’s auto insurance premium because they can’t afford to buy their homes unfairly discriminates against lower-income drivers,” said J. Robert Hunter, a former Insurance Commissioner for the state of Texas and the CFA’s Insurance Director. “A good driver is a good driver whether she rents or owns her home.”

Additionally, purchasing a home often requires the buyer to save up a significant amount of cash in order to make the down payment on a loan. Moderate-income Americans may be able to afford the monthly payments, but could lack the ability to put together the down-payment.

“Virtually every state requires drivers to buy insurance, but we shouldn’t force them to buy a home in order to get the best price,” said Hunter, who is calling on state insurance commissioners and legislators to put an end to this practice.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

CVS Customer Buys Heating Pad, Finds Box Full Of Family Keepsakes Instead

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Usually when we write about someone getting home to find out that the item they just purchased contains something unexpected, it involves an iPad box full of notepads or rocks, or a block of wood instead of a PS4. But a CVS customer in Boston got a more intriguing surprise inside her heating pad box: someone else’s family keepsakes.

The woman tells CBS Boston that what she thought was a newly purchased heating pad was, in reality, letters, documents, a passport, and photographs of another woman.

“I didn’t want to take it back to CVS just to have them throw it away,” the woman says of the documents that were all in Russian.

Instead, she decided to contact the local police department.

There an officer was able to run the name on the letters through a computer database, locating the woman’s daughter who still lived in the town.

The daughter’s boyfriend told police that the woman who owned the letter had passed away two years before, and the items were simply forgotten during an estate sale, CBS Boston reports.

Just how the box made its way to the CVS shelves is still a mystery, the customer said in a Facebook post about the discovery.

Watertown Woman Finds Family Keepsakes In Heating Pad Box [CBS Boston]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

In Wake Of Additional Deaths, NHTSA Being Pushed To Reopen Jeep Investigation

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Three years after Fiat Chrysler and federal regulators agreed to a recall to fix more than 1.56 million Jeep SUVs that could catch fire in the event of a rear-end crash, safety advocates are calling on the government to reopen an investigation into the alleged defect, claiming that an additional 11 fatalities, possibly more, have occurred since that recall was initiated.

From model years 1993 through 2007, some Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty  SUVs were made with plastic gas tanks mounted behind the rear axle. In a collision, these tanks could rupture possibly catching fire.

A 2013 recall fix was supposed to minimize the danger of a gas tank fire, but the Center for Auto Safety says that since the recall process began, 11 people have died from fires in the recalled Jeeps.

In a letter [PDF] to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, CAS calls on the government to reopen its investigation into the Jeep defect.

NHTSA and Chrysler have been involved in a bit of back-and-forth with regard to the Jeep vehicles with rear-mounted fuel tanks that sit too low and put the vehicle at risk of catching fire if involved in a rear-end explosion.

Chrysler has maintained that the millions of Jeeps do not have a safety defect. However, at the time, safety documents showed that the issue has resulted in nearly 75 deaths.

During the summer of 2013, the car manufacturer and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agreed to a remedy for the issue that involved equipping vehicles with a trailer hitch that could reduce the risk of fires.

NHTSA tested the hitch fix and determined that “the risk of fuel tank ruptures and fires in lower to medium-speed rear-end crashes will be successfully reduced by the remedy.” However, the agency did not test what would happen in collisions at speeds greater than 43 mph.

In the letter to Secretary Foxx, CAS contends that “more people will die from fire in recalled Chrysler Jeeps because the recall remedy negotiated behind closed doors … is totally ineffective.”

The group calls on the government to “obtain a remedy that saves lives versus the fire deaths that will continue to occur if Fiat Chrysler is left alone.”

 

NHTSA spokesperson Gordon Trowbridge told the Associated Press on Friday, that he couldn’t comment on the letter, saying he had just received a copy.

Last spring, NHTSA chief Mark Rosekind announced that the agency would consider reopening the investigation, noting that he’d created a group of regulators at the agency that will focus on the Jeep issue following additional deaths and a jury verdict that found Chrysler acted with reckless disregard for human life by selling the family a 1999 Jeep with a gas tank mounted behind the rear axle.

Since then, regulators have fined Fiat Chrysler $175 million in the last year for its slow-moving pace to fix recalls, including Jeeps linked to the fiery crashes.

Additionally, the Jeep issue was the subject of a contentious fight between NHTSA and Fiat Chrysler last summer, when the regulator expressed concerns that the fix was taking too long to occur.

In July 2015, Fiat Chrysler agreed to make trade-in offers to the Jeep owners or pay them to have their hitches installed somewhere other than a dealer, the AP reports.

Despite those initiatives, the AP reports that just 35% of the recalled Jeeps had been repaired by the end of 2015.

[via The Associated Press]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Would You Pay $600 A Year For Adidas Workout Gear?

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Because sometimes shoppers don’t feel like making decisions or leaving home, subscription box services have become a popular way to get regular deliveries of beauty samples, personal grooming products, and clothing. Jumping on the subscription box bandwagon recently is Adidas, which hopes customers will feel like forking out $600 a year for workout clothing, shoes, and other gear.

Adidas is calling the service Avenue A and charging $150 per box delivered quarterly filled with sneakers, apparel, and anything else you might need to get your athleisure look on. Oh, and actually work out, if that’s your thing.

The items in the box will be a surprise until you open it, but Adidas says all pieces will be seasonally appropriate.

This isn’t the first company to offer subscription boxes of workout gear: Fabletics also offers shoppers athleisure wear on a subscription basis, with VIP members paying $49.95 monthly that is credited toward whatever purchases they make on the site.

On the one hand, $600 sounds like a lot of money for workout gear. But active folks who go through shoes, sports bras, and other workout necessities often could see it as a steal of a deal. I’m not one of those people, so I have no idea. Let’s vote instead, shall we?

(h/t Washington Post)

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

In Midst Of Disney Lawsuit, Verizon Creates FiOS “Custom TV” Package That Includes ESPN

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ESPN is easily the most expensive single channel in any basic cable lineup, accounting for around $5 of the average cable bill just on its own. Cable companies are also contractually barred from putting the all-sports network on any sort of premium tier, which is why it was big news last year when Verizon FiOS announced a new “Custom TV” pricing model that made ESPN completely optional for everyone. That’s also why ESPN’s parent company Disney sued Verizon, alleging breach of contract. Now, Verizon has revised Custom TV to include ESPN and other sports channels for customers who want them.

In fact, Verizon’s update to Custom TV makes the whole idea significantly less customizable.

The concept announced last spring was that customers would pay $55 for a core package of a few dozen basic cable channels. Everything else, including ESPN, could be added on by selecting niche-targeted bundles of 10 or so stations each. At the time, the $55 price included two of these add-on bundles, meaning a FiOS subscriber could mix and match as they saw fit.

But the new model for Custom TV, which Verizon will officially begin offering Sunday, limits customization to choosing between two packages.

As its name implies, the new Custom TV Sports & More package piles on ESPN, FOX Sports 1, NBSCN, and other sports channels that had been relegated to sports-themed add-on bundles under the initial Custom TV offering.

The full lineup for the Sports & More option includes the broadcast networks, whatever regional sports station(s) FiOs carries in your area, and: AccuWeather, AMC, ASPiRE, AWE, Big Ten 1, Big Ten 2, Big Ten Network, Bloomberg TV, Blue Highways TV, Cartoon Network, CBS Sports Network, CCTV News, CNBC, CNBC World, CNN, Comedy Central, C-SPAN, C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN 3, Daystar, Disney Channel, ESPN, ESPNU, ESPN2, EVINE Live, Family Net, Food Network, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, FX, FXX, GSN, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, HGTV, HSN, Longhorn Network (TX only), Liquidation Channel, Mnet, MTV, Music Choice, NBCSN, NFL Network, Nick Jr., Nick Toons, Nickelodeon, POP, QVC, QVC Plus, RLTV, Rocks TV, SEC Network (TX and FL only), Syfy, TBS, TeenNick, TNT, truTV, USA, Velocity, and VH1

Custom TV Essentials adds on a bunch of big-name basic TV favorites (Discovery Channel, Lifetime, History, Bravo, Fox News) to what had been the core channels in the current Custom TV plan.

So in addition to the local broadcast TV networks, this package includes: A&E, ABC Family, AccuWeather, AMC, American Heroes Channel, Animal Planet, ASPIRE, BET, Bloomberg TV, Blue Highways TV, Bravo, CCTV News, Centric, CMT, CNBC World, CNN, CNN HLN, Comedy Central, C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, C-SPAN3, Daystar, Discovery Channel, Discovery Family Channel, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, E!, Esquire Network, EVINE Live, Family Net, Food Network, Fox Business Network, Fox News, FX, FXM, FXX, GSN, Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, HGTV, History, HSN, IFC, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime, Liquidation Channel, LMN, Mnet, MSNBC, MTV, MTV2, Music Choice, National Geographic, National Geo Wild, Nick Jr., Nick Toons, Nickelodeon, One America News, Oxygen, POP, QVC, QVC Plus, RLTV, Rocks TV, Spike, Sprout, TeenNick, TLC, Travel Channel, Turner Classic Movies, TV Land, UP, USA, Velocity, VH1, VH1 Classic, and We TV

Both of these packages go for the same $55/month rate that Custom TV subscribers already pay. As you can see by comparing the two full lineups, the Essentials option provides about 20 more total channels than the Sports option. That should give you some idea of just how expensive sports programming is for pay-TV companies to carry.

A rep for the company tells Consumerist that the idea is to present customers with a “simpler choice than the first version of Custom TV,” but that these new packages maintain the spirit of the original idea.

In spite of the high-profile pending legal action from Disney, Verizon maintains that the change to Custom TV is not a response to the ESPN lawsuit.

Whether or not this shift placates Disney remains to be seen. According to the contracts that ESPN has with pay-TV providers, the channel must be included as part of the basic programming package. By only including ESPN on one of two Custom TV options, customers still have the choice of whether or not to pay for the channel.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

USPS To New York Town: Hey, Sorry For Delivering Blood-Stained Mail

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Sometimes mail shows up ripped, twisted, soaked through, or otherwise damaged and you think, “Man, this is a bummer.” But residents of one New York town found their mail had been altered in a more disturbing way: it was smeared with blood.

The United States Postal Service issued an apology to residents of the town of Olean who complained about getting mail stained with blood, the Olean Times Herald reports.

A spokeswoman said that a mail carrier had cut his hand on the job on Tuesday, leaving evidence of his injury on the mail of numerous townsfolk along his route. He thought the bleeding had stopped, and didn’t realize it was getting on the mail.

“One of our vehicles was involved with a swipe … with another commercial vehicle, and what was damaged was the mirror on the side,” said the spokeswoman for the Western New York district of USPS. “The employee went to adjust the mirror and cut his finger. It wasn’t anything (then) that needed medical treatment.”

The postmaster called the carrier back to the office after several customers complained, so he could treat his finger.

For customers concerned about any possibly infectious blood, the USPS says it has “no indication” the mail carrier involved has “any significant illness” capable of transmission through blood, the spokeswoman said, and that the health risk would be minimal, “especially if it’s dried blood.”

“We did touch base with our medical staff just to get an idea of what the protocol is in that regard,” she said, adding that customers with concerns should call the post office. “I don’t want to discount that people have legitimate concerns.”

Anyone who has soiled mail should throw it out in a plastic bag in appropriate trash receptacles, the spokeswoman advised.

“The blood on the mail is not anything that we would want to have happen, and we sincerely apologize that customers were inconvenienced by that,” the spokeswoman said.

Postal Service representative apologizes for bloody mail [Olean Times Herald]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Hoverboards That Don’t Comply With UL Safety Standards Now Considered Defective, Hazardous

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Amid multiple reports of “hoverboard” batteries exploding or catching on fire, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has determined that the self-balancing scooters are not safe unless they meet certain standards. 

The CPSC recently sent out a notice [PDF] to retailers, manufacturers, and importers, regarding this decision. It explains that the devices must comply with safety standards set by the Underwriters Laboratory.

UL, an independent safety consulting and certification company, announced last month that it would open the door to product submittals of self-balancing scooters, often called hoverboards, for “construction evaluation, testing, and/or UL certification,” noting that recent news reports of hoverboards catching fire show a need for the service.

The certification company’s standards and tests came after at least one hoverboard maker was accused of putting counterfeit safety marked on its products.

The scooters will be tested and certified using UL 2272, which covers the electric drive train including the rechargeable battery and charger system combination. UL has been evaluating, testing, and certifying battery cells and packs for years, as well as battery chargers and power supplies, the company said in a press release.

The CPSC on Thursday urged hoverboard makers and sellers to voluntarily take non-UL compliant scooters off the market immediately.

The CPSC “considers self-balancing scooters that do not meet the safety standards referenced above to be defective, and that they may present a substantial product hazard,” the notice states. “Consumers risk serious injury or death if their self-balancing scooters ignite and burn. … Should the staff encounter such products at import, we may seek detention and/or seizure. In addition, if we encounter such products domestically, we may seek a recall of these products.”

The notice, which makes it clear that if companies don’t fallow new safety standards they can face enforcement actions, such as seizure of products and civil or criminal penalties, aims to hold device makers accountable for failing to comply with the safety standards.

“From Dec. 1, 2015 through Feb. 17, 2016, the CPSC received reports, from consumers in 24 states of self-balancing scooter fires resulting in over $2 million in property damage, including the distraction of two homes and an automobile,” the notices states. “We believe that many of the reported incidents and the related unreasonable risk of injuries and deaths associated with fires in these products would be prevented if all such products were manufactured in compliance” with UL safety standards.

The agency on Friday released a video detailing some of the tests it conducted of hoverboards.

CPSC chairman Elliot Kaye tells Mashable that the notice is the agency’s way of “drawing a line in the sand.”

“From our perspective, a smart retailer will put in place a stop sale to find out if their inventory complies with our standard. If they are certain that it doesn’t, they should then issue a recall proposal,” he said.

Mashable reports that the CPSC came to its decision, in part, after conducting a series of tests on hoverboards that including monitoring the voltage of devices while in use, inspection of circuit boards and batteries, examination of previously burned boards, and scans of the boards’ batteries.

While none of the tested hoverboards caught fire, the CPSC believes it had enough evidence to issue notices to manufactures and retailers about the devices’ safety, Mashable reports.

[via Mashable]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Virgin Galactic Introducing New Version Of Space Tourism Rocket Plane For Its Return To Testing

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It’s been two years since Virgin Galactic has been able to test its rocket plane designed to carry tourists to space, after a 2014 accident that destroyed the original aircraft and killed one of its pilots. Richard Branson’s company is ready to take to the skies again and return to testing with a new version of the rocket plane.

Virgin Galactic is introducing its SpaceShipTwo space tourism rocket today at California’s Mojave Air & Space Port, where it was put together. It’s designed to have a crew of two and carry up to six passengers on sub-orbital flight that reaches the edge of space, at an altitude of more than 62 miles, reports the Associated Press. Passengers will get a few minutes of giggling gleefully while weightless at that height.

The first SpaceShipTwo broke apart in October 2014 during its fourth-rocket powered flight, when the co-pilot prematurely activated a system used to slow down and stabilize the craft as it re-enters the atmosphere. The co-pilot was killed, but the pilot parachuted to safety.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation found that a company that was working on the rocket with Virgin Galactic and was responsible for its test program should have had systems to compensate for human error. Virgin Galactic has now assumed full responsibility to complete the test program.

“Our team’s job is to plan out not just the obvious tests but also the strange and inventive ones, to conduct those tests, and to use the data from those tests to re-examine everything about our vehicle to ensure we can take the next step forward,” Virgin Galactic said in a statement.

As for when you can start packing your bags for space, we still don’t know when the first rocket will actually take off with tourists inside. Virgin Galactic says its ”new vehicle will remain on the ground for a while after her unveiling, as we run her through full-vehicle tests of her electrical systems and all of her moving parts.”

Virgin Galactic to roll out new space tourism rocket plane [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

FanDuel CEO Admits: Maybe They Might Have Overdone It A Bit With The TV Ads

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For several weeks during the recently concluded NFL season, either FanDuel or DraftKings were the top spenders on TV advertising, interrupting seemingly every show to tout how easy it is for the average Joe to win big at daily fantasy sports (assuming that the “average Joe” is in the elite tier of DFS players). That doesn’t include official sponsorship deals with teams, TV networks, and pro sports leagues (or that shoehorned-in DraftKings-sponsored subplot during the final season of The League). Looking back on it now, the CEO of FanDuel confesses that maybe they should tone it down a bit with the advertising going forward.

Speaking yesterday at the Re/code Code/Media conference, FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles said that the recent onslaught of TV advertising was successful at reaching the core audience for DFS, but that it had the unintended effect of annoying people who had no interest in playing.

“There’s nothing more interesting in life than your fantasy football team, but there’s nothing less interesting in life than your buddy’s fantasy football team,” Eccles explained. “I think what we did was we reminded you about your buddy’s fantasy football team every fifteen seconds for several months.”

Eccles also admitted that going full-throttle with these ads might have had a little bit to do with the fact that multiple attorneys general around the country are now investigating whether or not DFS sites are illegal gambling operations.

As a result, the CEO says “We’re definitely going to spend differently [on ads], it probably won’t be as much.”

So, in that regard, maybe we are all big winners thanks to FanDuel?

Just for giggles, let’s take another look at the DFS ad that John Oliver, et al, created a few months back:

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Traveler Complaints About Airlines Increased Nearly 30% Last Year

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While airlines might not be leaping at the chance to tell customers how to file complaints about their service, that hasn’t stopped more travelers from sharing their tales of woe with the Department of Transportation. In fact, the number of complaints filed by beleaguered passengers increased by nearly 30% last year. 

That figure comes from the Department of Transportation’s recently released Air Travel Consumer Report [PDF] that found the DOT’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division received 20,170 complaints from consumers in 2015, representing a 29.8% increase from the 15,539 complaints received in 2014.

According to the DOT, the complaints cover a wide range of issues including flight problems, baggage, reservation and ticketing, refunds, customer service, disability, and discrimination.

American Airlines received the most complaints across many of the DOT’s categories: 1,094 for flight problems, 152 for oversales, 506 for reservations, 479 for fares, 415 for refunds, 601 for baggage, 426 for customer service, and 183 for disability issues.

While the number of complaints filed against American outpaced other airlines, Spirit Airlines had the highest rate of complaints at 10.97 complaints for every 100,000 passengers. In all the airline collected 2,069 complaints.

The next closest complaint rate was for Frontier Airlines, which saw 5.09 complaints for every 100,000 passengers.

The DOT’s report also highlights other performance data for airlines including on-time performance, cancellations, delays, and mishandled baggage.

When it came to on-time performance, carriers posted a rate of 79.9% for the entire year, up from 76.2% in 2014.

The airlines with the highest on-time rates were Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Delta Air Lines. Those with the lowest rates were Spirit, JetBlue Airways, and Virgin America.

In 2015, carriers canceled 1.5% of their scheduled domestic flights, the DOT reports, representing an improvement from the 2.2% of flights canceled in 2014.

Envoy Air, ExpressJet Airlines, and SkyWest Airlines had the highest rate of canceled flights, while Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Delta Air Lines had the lowest rate.

In 2015, there were 61 domestic flights with tarmac delays longer than three hours and 15 international flights with tarmac delays longer than four hours at U.S. airports. Each of these reported extended tarmac delays were investigated by the Department.

But despite the sometimes long delays for airlines, the DOT report found that airlines lost slightly fewer bags in 2015.

Carriers posted a mishandled baggage rate of 3.24% per 1,000 customers, down from the 2014 rate of 3.61%.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Jewel-Osco Pulls House Brand Of Grated Cheese Over Wood Pulp Concerns

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As reports spread of federal regulators cracking down on Parmesan cheese products that contain a bunch of a wood pulp and other fillers, one national grocery chain says it’s pulling its house brand of grated cheese from shelves amid concerns about the food additive.

Cellulose is often used in grated cheese products to keep it from clumping, but a years-long investigation by the Food and Drug Administration found that one company was shilling grated Parmesan product that contained a lot of wood pulp and zero Parmesan cheese.

Bloomberg News tested other brands in its investigation, including Jewel-Osco’s Essential Everyday 100% Parmesan Cheese, and found high levels of cellulose in some of those products. For example, Jewel-Osco’s offering had a level of 8.8% cellulose. As much as 4% cellulose is deemed acceptable to meet the FDA’s regulations for what can bear the label Parmesan.

The grocery chain recalled the product from all of its 185 stores on Wednesday, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg. It’s phasing out the brand and replacing it with its Jewel-Osco Signature Brand.

“Our supplier of the Parmesan cheese is aware of the issue, and we look forward to learning more about their investigation,” the spokeswoman said, without identifying the supplier in question.

Bloomberg says other retailers with Parmesan products that contained more than 4% cellulose said they’re also looking into things, including Walmart.

Parmesan Cheese With Too Much Wood Pulled From Grocery Shelves [Bloomberg]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

European Wireless Carriers Want To Block Customers From Seeing Ads On Smartphones

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A growing number of people are choosing to use ad-blocking technology to prevent ads from loading on their smartphones, resulting in billions of dollars of unearned ad revenue by publishers. But what if the choice to block ads wasn’t yours, but was a network-wide ban on ads from your wireless carrier?

Earlier today, a pair of European Wireless carriers — Three UK and Three Italia, both owned by Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson Holdings — announced they are planning to roll out a mobile platform that actively prevents users from seeing online ads when they are using the carriers’ networks.

The company claims that its goal is not to end online advertising, but to make advertisers pay for the gigabytes of data that those ads gobble up.

For example, if you use your phone to read a news story that doesn’t include any sort of video, odds are that the most data-heavy items on that web page are the ads. Three says that it’s unfair for users to be hit with data charges for content that they don’t want in the first place.

“Irrelevant and excessive mobile ads annoy customers and affect their overall network experience,” explains an executive for Three UK, which currently has around 9 million users. “We don’t believe customers should have to pay for data usage driven by mobile ads.”

In response to the recent increased use of ad-blocking tech, the online ad industry issued a mea culpa last year, acknowledging that its advertising had become too pervasive, invasive, and data-heavy. An industry trade group is working on a new “LEAN” standard intended to curb consumers’ desire to block ads, but one thing the industry has not yet suggested is that it should carry the cost for actually delivering those ads to end-users.

While the concept of blocking ads network-wide is an interesting idea, we’re not sure the concept would stand up to a legal challenge, at least here in the States. Content providers would undoubtedly try to claim copyright infringement on the part of any network that blocks ads at the network level. That would be like your cable company simply deciding to replace all the ads sent out by the TV broadcasters.

In fact, the TV networks did sue Dish over its Hopper DVR that provided users with ad-free recordings of prime-time TV shows. That case never came to trial, but all of the networks eventually reached deals with Dish that minimized the Hopper’s ad-skipping abilities.

[via WSJ.com]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Volvo Will Sell Cars With Smartphone Keys Starting In 2017

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Smartphones can do just about anything: open your hotel room door, or unlock your front door. Starting next year, the device will do even more if you’re in the market for a Volvo. 

The carmaker announced Friday that it would forego traditional car keys in favor of digital keys that live inside an owner’s smartphone via a dedicated app.

Volvo, which is billing itself as the world’s first car manufacturer to offer vehicles without keys, says that digital keys will allow users to do everything a regular key can do: unlock/lock the doors, opening the trunk, and starting the engine.

Customers who don’t want to deal with a digital version of their key can opt for a traditional key.

“The innovative Bluetooth-enabled digital key technology will offer Volvo customers far more flexibility, enabling them to benefit from entirely new ways to use and share cars,” the company says.

Digital key users will be able to receive more than one key on their app, Volvo says, allowing them to access different Volvo cars in different locations.

For example, the company says people could potentially book and pay for a rental car anywhere and have the digital key delivered to their phone immediately.

It’s unclear if the app includes security features to prevent someone from using the digital key if a phone is lost or stolen.

The new technology is also a key factor in Volvo’s other new venture; a car sharing service called Sunfleet.

The service will pilot digital keys this spring in Sweden.

“Volvo Cars’ digital key means that sharing a car will become both simple and convenient. Volvo owners will be able to send their digital key to other people via their mobile phones so that they can also use the car, this may be family members, friends or co-workers in a company,” Volvo says.

[via Business Insider]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

IRS: Email, Text Scams Targeting Taxpayers Up 400% This Year

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It’s tax season, which means it’s the prime time for scammers to crawl out from underneath their scammy rocks and try to nab taxpayers’ personal info. So far, this year’s electronic tax scams are even more prevalent than before, the Internal Revenue Service says, surging 400%.

The agency has seen a jump in phishing and malware attacks at this point in the 2016 filing season, many of which pass themselves off as official emails from the IRS or others in the tax industry, like a tax software company. Once a user clicks on an email link, they’re sent to sites that mimic the real thing, like IRS.gov, and ask for Social Security numbers and other personal info.

Those sites might also carry malware, which can infect a victim’s computer and allow hackers to waltz right in and access your files, or watch your keystrokes to steal your passwords, PINs, and other info.

These scam attempts can arrive via text messages as well. The IRS says it’s hearing reports of such scams in every part of the country.

“This dramatic jump in these scams comes at the busiest time of tax season,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in a consumer advisory issued by the IRS Thursday. “Watch out for fraudsters slipping these official-looking emails into inboxes, trying to confuse people at the very time they work on their taxes. We urge people not to click on these emails.”

Scammers use victims’ personal tax information to help them file false tax returns, thereby stealing the funds from their rightful owner.

The IRS says there’s been an increase in reported phishing and malware schemes this year:

• There were 1,026 incidents reported in January, up from 254 from a year earlier.
• The trend continued in February, nearly doubling the reported number of incidents compared to a year ago. In all, 363 incidents were reported from Feb. 1-16, compared to the 201 incidents reported for the entire month of February 2015.
• This year’s 1,389 incidents have already topped the 2014 yearly total of 1,361, and they are halfway to matching the 2015 total of 2,748.

“While more attention has focused on the continuing IRS phone scams, we are deeply worried this increase in email schemes threatens more taxpayers,” Koskinen said. “We continue to work cooperatively with our partners on this issue, and we have taken steps to strengthen our processing systems and fraud filters to watch for scam artists trying to use stolen information to file bogus tax returns.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

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Here are seven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, 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

Petsitter Sues Couple For $6,766 Over Negative Yelp Review

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So you hired a pet sitter to take care of your companions while you were out of town, but you weren’t happy with the service you received. You’re free to go online and publicly share your thoughts about that experience, as long as what you write is truthful. But you still might be sued by that pet sitter if your contract included a clause forbidding you from posting anything negative about the company.

A couple in Plano, TX, tell CBS Dallas that they weren’t thrilled about the service provided by a local petsitting service.

In a Yelp review posted last October, they raise questions about the company’s fees and billing, the apparent lack of updates from the sitter, the fact that the sitter didn’t leave the house keys behind as requested (which results in additional fees), and what they contend was potential harm done to their fish.

The company subsequently responded to that review, answering each of the pet owners’ concerns. But CBS reports that the petsitting business followed this up with a cease and desist directing the couple to remove their Yelp review.

When the Yelp writeup remained online, the petsitting company filed a lawsuit in small claims court, claiming “Intentional misrepresentation and fraud by omission,” and seeking $6,766 for violating a “non-disparagement” clause in their contract.

That’s right — those “gag” clauses that California outlawed in 2014, and which may soon be made illegal nationwide if the federal Consumer Review Freedom Act passes. The U.S. Senate unanimously signed off on this legislation in Dec. 2015, and it’s currently being considered by the House of Representatives.

Interestingly, a good chunk of the clause used in the petsitting contract was apparently copy/pasted from one of the more notorious gag clauses — the one formerly used by online accessory retailer Kleargear.

In that case, Kleargear tried to invoice a customer for $3,500 for allegedly violating a clause stating that “your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits your from taking any action that negatively impacts Kleargear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.”

When the customer challenged that penalty, Kleargear didn’t defend itself, resulting in the court determining that the customer “does not now, and never did, owe KlearGear.com or any other party any money based on KlearGear.com’s ‘non-disparagement clause’ or any money based on [the Plaintiff’s] failure to make any payment allegedly owing under that clause,” along with a subsequent $306,000 judgment against the company.

We’ve also seen non-disparagement clauses in everything from sketchy online retailers to wedding contractors to landlords to makers of weight-loss products.

When challenged, many of these clauses fail to stand up to legal scrutiny, with courts deeming them unenforceable, but lawyers we’ve spoken to say that companies use gag clauses in the hope of preemptively scaring the customer from even thinking about bringing the case before a judge.

In a statement to CBS Dallas, the petsitting company defends the non-disparagement clause.

“We are honest people seeking protection from dishonest individuals, not other honest ones,” reads the statement. “Fair and honest feedback is not the issue here.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

No, Pepperidge Farm’s Milano Cookies Aren’t Victims Of The Grocery Shrink Ray

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Chris wrote to Consumerist upset about one of his favorite desserts, Pepperidge Farm’s Milano cookies. The cookies seemed smaller, he said, estimating that they had “reduced the size of the cookies by about 25%.” Was that true? We took his question to the brand’s headquarters, which is not in a farmhouse in Maine.

We asked whether the Milano line had recently been repackaged or reformulated, which is usually when the Grocery Shrink Ray strikes. No, they said. “We take great pride in the history of our brand and are using the same style of white bakery bag that has been used for the past 60+ years as a part of Pepperidge Farm’s heritage,” Pepperidge Farm’s Senior Brand Manager, Elizabeth Suchy, told Consumerist in an e-mail. “Our traditional Milano cookie retains the same number of cookies in their white fluted cups.” The package size, the company said, hasn’t changed.

What does lead to some variation in Milano bag sizes are different lines of cookies. The standard cookie lineup is like this:

• The original version of the cookie comes in a 6-ounce bag.
• Flavored versions come in a 7 ounce bag.
• The double chocolate version comes in a 7.5-ounce bag.

Now, wait a minute: this sizing scheme means that the double chocolate version of the cookie is exactly 25% larger than the original version. An original cookie is that much smaller by weight if not by volume, and would seem different.

We’re happy to report that Milano cookies haven’t been Shrink Rayed, though.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Mother Says American Airlines Failed To Tell Her When Unaccompanied Daughter’s Flight Was Diverted, Canceled

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You put a lot of trust in an airline when you hand over your unaccompanied child for a solo flight. At the very least, you’d hope that someone might let you know when your kid’s flight is diverted and then canceled. A North Carolina family says American Airlines failed to notify them about a significant change in their 11-year-old daughter’s flight, telling WSOC-TV that the only way they learned her plane never landed in Charlotte was because the young lady called from her cellphone.

 

The family’s ordeal began Monday evening when the girl was scheduled to fly unaccompanied from Syracuse, NY, to Charlotte, where the girl’s parents were already waiting.

However, as sometimes happens in the winter, the flight encountered inclement weather and was diverted to Columbia, SC, a change the girl’s mother says she was never informed about by American.

Instead, the woman said her daughter called saying the plane had landed in Columbia, the trip to Charlotte was canceled, and she was being removed from the flight.

“I’m getting frantic, because I have no idea who took her off (the plane), where she is, what she’s thinking,” the mother tells WSOC-TV, explaining that she lost contact with the girl for more than an hour, during which time the family began driving to Columbia to pick up the girl.

About halfway into the drive, the woman says she finally received a call from American informing her the flight wasn’t canceled and that the girl was safely on the plane that would land in Charlotte.

At that point, around 2 a.m., the family began driving back to Charlotte, only to receive a call from the airline with different information.

“The agent comes on and is apologetic (and says), ‘I’m sorry ma’am, that flight was canceled. Your daughter is in Columbia,’” the woman tells WSOC-TV, noting that the American rep said the girl was in a room for minors.

Minutes later, though, the woman said her daughter called saying she was still on the plane.

“They lied to me about where she was,” the mother says. “I think parents need to know. Maybe this is ill-placed trust. It certainly is ill-placed money.”

The family arrived in Columbia and picked up the girl around 4 a.m. Tuesday.

The woman tells WSOC-TV that while she would like for American to refund her the $300 unaccompanied minor fee – $150 for each leg of the trip – she wants to make sure an ordeal like this doesn’t occur to another family.

“I don’t want another parent to go through this. They need to look at this system they have in place. They’re charging people $300 for and they need to examine where it failed because it failed drastically,” she said.

American Airlines tells WSOC-TV that it is working directly with the family to resolve the issues, but that the Airline did everything it could.

“Upon landing in Columbia, an indicator light went off that caused a maintenance issue,” an American rep tells WSOC-TV in a statement. “The customers stayed on the plane for a while after they landed in CAE because they thought they were going to be able to fix the maintenance issue. The customer service team did bring the customers water at that point. When the supervisor came on to bring the water, the flight attendant called [the girl] up to the front so she could call her mother. The mother offered to drive down to CAE and the supervisor said that would probably be the best course of action since we weren’t sure if or when the plane would be fixed. The flight finally had to cancel when the issue wasn’t able to be fixed at 2 a.m.”

The airline said the girl was then brought to a manager’s office where she waited with a female employee until her parents arrived.

“Weather and maintenance are certainly never things that we want to affect our operations, but we always have the safety of our customers as the top priority, so we were unable to fly the aircraft back out that night,” the rep said in a statement. “We apologize to the [family] for the diversion and inconvenience of having to drive to Columbia.”

Mother says she was not contacted about 11-year-old’s diverted flight [WSOC-TV]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Ghostbusters Tie-In Beverage Hi-C Ecto Cooler Is Really Coming Back

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Back in the ’80s, Coca-Cola’s Hi-C brand agreed to develop a citrus-flavored drink to promote the cartoon series The Real Ghostbusters. The drink was a green-colored citrus-flavored sugar concoction called Ecto Cooler. Now, it appears that Ecto Cooler is returning to shelves to promote the new Ghostbusters movie.

Some people are skeptical of the reboot, which cast the Ghostbusters as women, and we’ll find out whether the film is any good once it’s released. What’s really important here to people of a certain age is that the movie means Ecto Cooler is coming back.

An online frenzy began when fans learned that Coca-Cola had applied to renew the beverage’s trademark back in September. Like Surge, the product had built a strong following of young adults lobbying for its return.

A can of the upcoming NEW-FOR-2016 Ecto Cooler has snuck onto eBay?!! HOLY. SHIT. (Thx @protoncharging for the tip!) http://pic.twitter.com/sxXgzsUvRL

— Dinosaur Dracula (@DinosaurDracula) February 18, 2016

A can popped up on eBay this week and then the auction quietly ended, probably because the product isn’t supposed to be available for sale yet.

Production samples of the juice boxes have leaked out, too, though without the branded packaging. I just need a PB&J, a handful of Cool Ranch Doritos, and a box of raisins to relive my school lunches circa 1988.

What do we have here? A test box! Marked Ecto Cooler. From September. 😍😍😍 http://pic.twitter.com/LRxnoBraXJ

— Resurrect EctoCooler (@ResurEctoCooler) February 18, 2016

We contacted Coca-Cola, owner of the Hi-C brand, for confirmation that we could look forward to green citrus-ish beverages in our lunchboxes soon. They didn’t get back to us. We’ll update this post when or if they do.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Lawsuit Claims AMC Theatres Makes It Hard For Blind People To Enjoy Going To The Movies

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A trip to the movies can be a fun family outing, but if you miss part of the on-screen action, it’s a lot harder to enjoy the experience. That’s why a San Francisco man is suing AMC Theatres — he’s blind, and claims that the chain routinely deprives him of enjoying the movies he goes to with his family by providing shoddy audio-description services.

Despite the fact that AMC Theatres is one of the nation’s top movie theater chains, it’s doing blind patrons no favors when it comes to audio equipment, routinely, the man, the California Council of the Blind and others say in a federal class action filed Tuesday, reported by Courthouse News.

“AMC supposedly offers audio-description devices to blind customers. However, AMC rarely provides appropriate, functioning audio-description devices to blind customers,” the man says in the lawsuit. “Instead, AMC routinely provides the wrong technology when customers request audio description devices, or audio transcription devices that are nonfunctioning or so malfunctioning that they are useless to blind customers.”

He and others say the devices will often be unavailable, drained of battery, or will play the entirely wrong audio descriptions, among other issues. That’s not all — the lawsuit claims AMC staff will sometimes hand them devices intended for deaf people.

“If a blind customer gets the correct device at all, it is usually because AMC staff sought assistance from management, which takes additional time” and makes them late for the opening scenes, he says in the complaint.

Going to the movies without these devices — which are headsets that blind people use to listen to synchronized audio descriptions containing narration and visual elements of what is being shown on the screen — leaves blind people out of the loop. Therefore, audio description is “essential for blind viewers to understand movies,” the complaint says.

The plaintiff says AMC owns and operates more than 300 movies theaters across the country,and also has the top share the nation’s three largest local movie theater markets. And yet, despite providing entertainment to millions, “AMC fails to provide equivalent services to individuals who are blind or visually impaired,” his lawsuit states.

The lawsuit is seeking a court declaration that AMC discriminates against blind and visually impaired movie patrons, an order that AMC ensures its equipment works properly, and attorney’s fees and legal costs for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

We’ve reached out to AMC Theatres for comment and will update this post when we hear back.

AMC No Help to Blind Moviegoers, Class Says [Courthouse News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist