Target Shutting Down Curbside Pickup Pilot Program Effective June 15

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If you were hoping that Target’s curbside pickup would eventually reach your city, your hopes are for naught: Target tells Consumerist the pilot program will be discontinued effective June 15.

After Consumerist received word that the program — which kicked off in October 2014 with partner Curbside, and was being tested in 121 stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles — would be shut down, we reached out to Target headquarters.

The company confirmed what we’d heard, saying in an emailed statement that it had “learned a lot” from the pilot, but “as we’ve shared for months now, at this time Target is focused on making sure we deliver and execute on retail fundamentals.”

That includes devoting more of its resources toward “enhancing” its “core of digital-stores offerings such as Cartwheel, Order Pickup and shipping online orders from stores.”

“The pilot with Curbside will be discontinued in mid-June as part of those efforts,” Target says.

Because we’re feeling nostalgic, here’s a (very brief) timeline of events that led up to the program going kaput:

August 2014: Target and Curbside launched their pilot program at stores in the San Francisco Bay area. (Warning: auto-play video at that link)

October 2015: Target and Curbside expanded their partnership to an additional 100 stores, bringing the service to select stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

May 17, 2016: Target digital chief Jason Goldberger told Re/Code that customers shouldn’t expect to see an increase in partnerships with startups like Curbside and Instacart.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Verizon Strike Appears Near End After Unions, Management Reach Agreement In Principle

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After more than six weeks, thousands of striking Verizon workers may be heading back to work soon. According to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, the telecom giant and union leaders have reached an agreement in principle.

In mid-April, around 39,000 Verizon employees — members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions — went on strike as contract negotiations fell apart, affecting millions of landline phone and FiOS customers in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

“Today, I am pleased to announce that the parties have reached an agreement in principle on a four-year contract, resolving the open issues in the ongoing labor dispute between Verizon’s workers, unions, and management,” said Perez in a statement Friday afternoon. “The parties are now working to reduce the agreement to writing, after which the proposal will be submitted to CWA and IBEW union members for ratification.”

Perez did not disclose any of the terms of the agreement, but did praise both labor and management for working with federal regulators over the last two weeks to reach this point.

“The parties have a shared interest in the success of Verizon and its dedicated workforce,” says the Secretary. “Indeed, these two interests are inextricably intertwined.”

Perez says he expects the striking Verizon workers to be back at work in the coming week.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Some Health Providers Are Sharing Patients’ Info Online In Reaction To Bad Yelp Reviews

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Now that we live in a world where it seems everything can be rated — from your restaurant experience to your root canal — privacy issues are popping up in unexpected places. Like in health care providers’ responses to negative reviews from patients on Yelp, for example.

ProPublica teamed up with The Washington Post and found many situations where doctors and others zapped by negative reviews have replied to those patients’ negative reviews online, and in doing so, revealed details of medical treatment.

Yelp gave ProPublic access to its public reviews, totaling more than 1.7 million, and let the group research them by keyword. ProPublica identified more than 3,500 one-star reviews in which patients mentioned privacy or HIPAA (otherwise known as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 which outlines patients’ rights to privacy, among other things [PDF]).

There was a dentist’s reply to a patient who blamed him for losing a molar, which read: “Due to your clenching and grinding habit, this is not the first molar tooth you have lost due to a fractured root. This tooth is no different.”

Or a chiropractor who disagreed with a mom’s reviewing claiming that he’d misdiagnosed her daughter with scoliosis: “You brought your daughter in for the exam in early March 2014,” he wrote. “The exam identified one or more of the signs I mentioned above for scoliosis. I absolutely recommended an x-ray to determine if this condition existed; this x-ray was at no additional cost to you.”

Affected patients say they suffer doubly in theses cases: first there’s the poor service or care, and then the pain that comes with the disclosure of information they thought was private. Sometimes, the shock of having such details revealed works, and patients back off.

“I posted a negative review” on Yelp, a client of a California dentist wrote in 2013. “After that, she posted a response with details that included my personal dental information. … I removed my review to protect my medical privacy.”

The patient took their story to the Office for Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPAA, ProPublica reports, and the office warned the dentist about posting personal info in Yelp reviews. It’s also currently investigating a New York dentist for disclosing personal info about a patient who complained about her care.

Health professionals responding online to reviews are allowed to speak generally about how they treat patients, but must get permission to discuss individual cases, HHS says. Rating your health provider doesn’t give them the right to rate you in return, basically.

“If the complaint is about poor patient care, they can come back and say, ‘I provide all of my patients with good patient care’ and ‘I’ve been reviewed in other contexts and have good reviews,’ ” Deven McGraw, the office’s deputy director of health information privacy told ProPublica. But they can’t “take those accusations on individually by the patient.”

For the most part, however, reviews of doctors and dentists stick to a few common themes that aren’t about health care delivered, but rather things like the office wait, the front desk staff, billing procedures, or bedside manner, according to Yelp’s senior director of litigation, Aaron Schur.

Many providers are appropriate in responding to online reviews, he says, while some don’t respond at all.

“There’s certainly ways to respond to reviews that don’t implicate HIPAA,” Schur told ProPublica.

For more on ProPublica’s report, check out the source link below.

Stung by Yelp Reviews, Health Providers Spill Patient Secrets [ProPublica]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Drug Companies Subpoenaed Over Questionable Charity Connections

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Whenever there is a report of a drug company jacking up the price of a prescription medication, the pharma industry is often quick to point out that there are non-profit charities ready and willing to help patients get these drugs at a more affordable rate. However, those charities may have very close ties to the drug maker that could not only help the company turn a profit, but avoid some tax obligations. In recent months, several large pharmaceutical companies have been subpoenaed as part of an ongoing federal investigation into these connections.

It works like this: Bob’s Drug Company acquires the rights to prescription drug Gleemonex and decides to jack up the price 500%, knowing that some people will not be able to afford the co-pay. However, it’s in the interest of Bob to keep as many patients using Gleemonex as possible, so it looks for ways to make the drug more affordable to those most in need: low-income patients on Medicare.

Now, Bob’s Drug Co. can’t directly fund the co-pay of a Medicare patient. That would effectively be Bob paying Bob, which is an illegal kickback under federal law. What Bob can do is call Sally’s Drug Charity, which will cover the Medicare co-pay on certain drugs.

So Bob makes a sizable donation, which Sally can then use to make Medicare co-pays, meaning patients continue using Gleemonex.

Thing is, while the Medicare patient isn’t having to go broke paying for Gleemonex, taxpayers might be. After all, the co-pay is usually only a fraction of the full amount that Medicare pays to the drug maker. Thus, Bob continues to get the full Medicare payment and enjoy the tax write-off from his donation to Sally’s charity.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently published an entire cover story on how the pharma industry uses these charities for their own financial, tax, and public-relations benefit. You should definitely check it out.

Today, Bloomberg published a story on the string of subpoenas issued to four high-profile pharma companies — Valeant, Gilead Sciencse, Biogen, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals — since last fall, mostly by federal prosecutors out of Massachusetts.

The nature of the subpoenas is vague, though they do reference investigations into the companies’ relationships with co-pay charties.

With Medicare on the hook for the balance of these prescription payments, the federal government is taking a particular interest in the possibility that drug makers have exerted too much influence over these charities as donations have grown.

Since 2010, donations to the seven biggest co-pay charities have more than doubled, reaching $1.1 billion in 2014.

Going back to the above fictional example: Under the law, Sally is not supposed to be swayed by Bob or other donors when it comes to which drugs it chooses to cover, which patients to accept, or how much of each drugs co-pay it will subsidize. So if Sally is covers co-pays for a competitor to Gleemonex, she can’t be swayed by Bob’s big bucks to give preferential treatment to his drug.

Recent reports indicate that some charities’ practices may have been motivated by donor money. For example, former employees at one charity told Bloomberg that when patients needed Jazz narcolepsy medication Xyrem, they were processed in a time manner, while patients seeking co-pay help for competing narcolepsy drugs were sometimes steered away or wait-listed if that other company wasn’t also donating to the charity.

The charities have denied allegations of favoritism of bad practices.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Technology That Improves Phones Also Means Scam Calls Are Easy And Dirt Cheap

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The same technology that means you can talk to friends or loved ones anywhere in the world for pennies per minute or for free has a harmful downside: it also means that scammers anywhere in the world can call you cheaply, too, using overseas call centers and an utter lack of human empathy to drain the pockets of victims, who are mostly senior citizens.

We’ve shared stories about most of these scam types in the past, from IRS scams to grandparent scams to lottery scams and tech support scams. The fraudulent calls simply don’t stop, and experts agree that the best way to get rid of them is with robocall-blocking devices, to keep them away from vulnerable people altogether.

The combination of cheap technology to make calls and block one’s number is perfect for scammers, who once would have had to invest tens of thousands of dollars for a system to block or to “spoof” their caller ID. Today, robocalling technology is cheap. It’s hard to catch phone scammers and harder still to prosecute them when they work abroad.

Members of the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging have been encouraging phone companies to add robocall-blocking, as have our policy-minded colleagues down the hall at Consumers Union.

How bad is the problem? The Federal Trade Commission reports that they received a record 1.7 million complaints during the first four months of 2016. Those are just the people who took the time to complain.

Part of that may be greater awareness of the problem and more people reporting the calls they do receive to the FTC, but the calls simply aren’t going away.

One woman who fell for a tech support scam went along because the scammer sounded competent and authoritative. “He sounded like he knew what he was talking about,” she told the Wall Street Journal, “so I just kind of followed along.”

Phone Scam ‘Onslaught’ Has Authorities Scrambling [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Ticks Are Your Enemies. Here Is How To Destroy Them With Your Dryer

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If you’re going for a hike this holiday weekend to enjoy the beauty only nature can provide, there is one thing you should know: ticks are your enemies, they’re out for your blood, and it’s up to you to destroy them.

The Centers for Disease Control has some handy tips on how to prevent tick bites — walking in the center of trails, using strong repellants containing DEET, treating clothing with permethrin products, etc. — but even the best laid battle plans can’t always keep one of the little suckers from hitching a ride home with you.

To rout out any ticks that may have latched on while you were out tramping through the woods or other brushy areas, the CDC recommends you bathe or shower as soon as you can after you come inside, preferably within two hours, and conduct a “full-body tick check” with a hand mirror.

Don’t stop there, because the ticks certainly won’t: leaving clothing around that may be hiding ticks is also a bad idea. If you can’t wash your clothing in hot water, you can at least tumble dry clothes in a dryer on high heat for 10 minutes (damp clothing will take longer), which will kill off any ticks stuck on clothing, the CDC recommends.

Simply washing/dunking clothes in cold and medium temperature water won’t do the trick either, the CDC warns. If you don’t have hot water and need to wash your clothing, make sure to tumble dry on low heat for at least 70 minutes or high heat for 40 minutes. The clothes should be warm and completely dry.

Notable tick borne diseases these steps will help prevent include: Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme disease, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Over 427M Hacked Myspace Passwords Set Loose Online

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Okay, okay, we know what you’re thinking: “Myspace?” you scoff, “It’s 2016! I haven’t had a Myspace account since I was a kid! My gosh, what’s next, CompuServe?”

And, yes, we get it — MySpace isn’t exactly the new hotness these days. It’s barely even the old hotness. It’s more like an old, forgotten sock in the laundry room. But the leak, reported by Motherboard, of 427,484,128 passwords is still a big honking deal.

For one thing, although Myspace is the punchline of any internet joke, it still boasts 50 million unique users per month — not a number that holds a candle to Facebook’s 1.6 billion, granted, but still no small feat.

But there’s an even bigger reason, aside from those 50 million loyal users, that this is a problem: because we, as a cultural beast, kind of completely suck at password management practices. We reuse them, even when we know we’re not supposed to. We use bad ones, even when we know we ought not. We — especially if we are teenagers or young adults signing up for an early social network — follow predictable patterns.

So maybe, in the year of our Facebook two thousand sixteen, you don’t care what someone does with your old Myspace account. But the 360 million e-mail address/password combos in the leaked data are certain to yield at least a few active, useful combinations that work on other sites.

As Motherboard also points out, if the numbers pan out then this would be one of the largest password heists ever on record… and somehow, over the course of nearly 13 years of continuous Myspace operation, has never once been mentioned before. That means one of two things: either Myspace never figured out they were being hacked, or did, and chose not to disclose it ever. Both options are awful for users of the site.

Also, in case you are curious, many of the passwords in the database are, indeed, terrible. “password1” ranks right near the top, as do “abc123,” “123456,” and “myspace 1.” Perhaps also reflecting the site’s demographic base, “f*ckyou1” and “iloveyou1” also both appear more than 120,000 times.

Hackers Claim to Have a Stunning 427 Million Myspace Passwords [Vice Motherboard]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Chicago Officials: TSA Wait Times Have Dropped To Less Than 10 Minutes At City’s Airports

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After weeks of excessively long lines at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints plagued travelers going through Chicago’s airports, the city’s officials says wait times are down to less than 10 minutes.

While everyone hates unending lines at the airport, Chicago’s had it pretty bad recently, including a backup at O’Hare International Airport that was so bad, 450 American Airlines passengers were stuck overnight.

Things are looking up at the start of the Memorial Day weekend though, as officials in the Windy City say aver security wait times at O’Hare have dropped to eight minutes, and to nine minutes at Midway, the Chicago Tribune reports.

This isn’t some kind of ancient travel god magic, of course, as TSA has been yelled at by pretty much everyone recently for the heinous wait times at airports all around the country. To alleviate the excessive issues at Chicago airports, the agency recently sent additional screening staff to the city’s airports , and is expected to send additional staff next month.

Delays started to ease earlier this week, when officials reported that wait times had been trimmed down to 15 minutes.

Let’s keep this going guys — let’s aim for NO waiting at all. Now that would be some ancient travel god magic.

After shake-up, TSA wait times in Chicago drop to less than 10 minutes: city [Chicago Tribune]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Is Facebook Trying To Scuttle Facial-Recognition Lawsuit By Changing Illinois Law?

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Earlier this month, a federal court gave the go-ahead to a lawsuit alleging that Facebook’s photo-scanning, facial-recognition feature violated Illinois state law. Having lost that legal battle, it looks like Facebook may be trying to get out of the lawsuit by simply changing that Illinois law.

The law in question is the Biometric Information Privacy Act, which sets restrictions on the collection and storage of biometric data.

At issue is whether Facebook’s Tag Suggestions feature — which scans users’ photos and then tries to match that data to previously tagged users — should be considered as biometric data under this law.

The BIPA does currently state that “photographs” do not count as biometric identifiers, but does that mean a physical photograph or any image of a human? Is there a difference between a photo that is archived without any sort of analysis or data gleaned from it, versus a photo that is scanned, analyzed, and compared to millions of other similarly uploaded images? The BIPA does not say, and that is a dispute that would likely make for lively debate at hearings or in a trial.

However, yesterday, some members of the Illinois General Assembly introduced a rider — piggy-backed on a bill about unclaimed property — that amends the BIPA in such a way as to effectively win Facebook’s case before it gets to court.

First, the amendment revises the term “photographs” to make it clear that it means both “physical and digital photographs” are exempted from the definition of “biometric identifiers.”

The rider then goes on to clarify that you can’t create a biometric identifier from these photographs, meaning all data collected from scans of Facebook photos is exempted from the law.

Perhaps most importantly, the rider adds an entirely new definition to the law. If passed, a “Scan” would only refer to “data resulting from an in-person process whereby a part of the body is traversed by a detector or an electronic beam.”

Thus, Facebook would not be “scanning” users’ photos under the law, because it would be taking information from a digital version of a photo.

The Illinois legislative session is drawing to a close in the coming days, so this rider will likely come up for consideration soon.

Facebook has not yet replied to Consumerist’s request for comment on this story, but we will update if we hear anything back.

The social media site had previously tried to get the Illinois case dismissed by arguing that all the plaintiffs had, by okaying the Facebook terms of use, agreed that California law governs any disputes with the company. California does not have a law similar to BIPA.

While the court found that the plaintiffs had indeed agreed to the Facebook terms of use, it ultimately determined that Facebook could not use this clause to negate the Illinois state law.

“There can be no reasonable doubt that the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act embodies a fundamental policy of the state of Illinois,” explained the court, noting “if California law is applied, the Illinois policy of protecting its citizens’ privacy interests in their biometric data, especially in the context of dealing with ‘major national corporations’ like Facebook, would be written out of existence.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Mayborn USA Recalling More Than 3M Spill-Proof Cups Because Drinking Mold Is Gross

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Before you hand that sippy cup over to your toddler, you might want to take a minute to make sure it’s not one of three million spill-proof vessels being recalled due to risk of mold. We may not know everything about kids here at Consumerist, but we’re will to bet swallowing mold wouldn’t be a popular experience.

Mayborn USA is calling back three million Tommee Tippee Sippee cups because mold can develop on a removable, one-piece valve inside the cups, if the piece gets wet (which it will if you’re using it) and stays wet, and is “infrequently cleaned,” the Consumer Product Safety Commission says.

The cups have a 7 to 10 oz. capacity and were sold for children ages 4 to 12 months. They were sold in a bunch of places: BuyBuy Baby, CVS, Giant, Kohl’s, Marco Baby, Marshalls, Meijer, Sam’s Club, Ross Stores, Target, Bealls Outlet, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and other mass merchandise stores nationwide, as well as online at Amazon.com, Babyhaven.com, and Diapers.com from December 2014 through May 2016 for between $4 and $7.

“What’s a little mold?” you might be saying. Well, it might not make you feel very good, the CPSC says, noting that ingesting it can pose “a risk of gastrointestinal symptoms and infections in consumers with compromised immune systems.”

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled Sippee cups and contact Mayborn to receive a free replacement cup.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Yep, Blueberry Pie And Non-Branded Fruity Pebble Oreos Are Real Things

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Just about any dessert-themed flavor is now plausible when it comes to novelty Oreo flavors and other stunt food, and it’s difficult to surprise us. Yet we were sort of surprised at one of the new flavors that Nabisco plans to release in June, since it’s sort of a type of cereal, and sort of not.

Fruity Pebbles, you may recall, are a brand of cereal from Post. Yet here are cookies with the theme of Fruity Pebbles Oreos that are totally not official Fruity Pebbles.

The flavor will hit stores next week, and will be available in a wide variety of grocery stores: Nabisco lists Ahold, Wegmans, HEB, AWG, HyVee, Winn-Dixie, Bi-Lo, Giant Eagle, Price Chopper, and Meijer, but “wherever you normally get your Oreos” is probably a fair guess.

The other new flavor is more conventional, by Oreo standards, and is blueberry pie. That’s not what we’d think of as a traditional summer flavor, but it still sounds good. That novelty Oreo is an exclusive to Target, and will hit stores the week after Fruity Crisp, or the week of June 6.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

CDC Director: Drug-Resistant Superbug Means “Medicine Cabinet Is Empty”

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You know that scene in action movies where the hero has fired every bullet, thrown every piece of throwable furniture, set off every explosive, but still the bad guy lurches forward? At that point, there’s nothing left for the hero to do but run and pray. After the recent discovery in the U.S. of a bacteria that is resistant to a vital last-resort antibiotic, some scientists believe we’re inching dangerously close to that run-and-pray moment in the world of medicine.

“We risk being in a post-antibiotic world,” Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters yesterday after military researchers confirmed the first-known U.S. instance of the MCR-1 gene, which provides antibiotic resistance to colistin, a drug of last resort. “That wouldn’t just be urinary tract infections or pneumonia — that could be for the 600,000 patients a year who need cancer treatment.”

Added Dr. Frieden, “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients.”

For decades, doctors have treated multi-drug resistant bacteria with a class of antibiotics known as carbapenems. But the more you use a drug, the more the pathogens adapt to survive, so now there are carbapenem-resistant bacteria (CRE). Colistin, a potent antibiotic that had long been shelved because of its potential for kidney damage, has come back into use in recent years as a last-resort treatment for CRE infections.

While the bacteria found this month in the Pennsylvania woman is resistant to colistin and many other antibiotics, it is sensitive to carbapenems. However, now that the MCR-1 gene is stateside, some are very concerned that we’ll inevitably see bacteria that are resistant to both CRE and colistin.

“We are one step away from CRE strains that cannot be treated with antibiotics,” Dr. Lance Price, a researcher at George Washington University, tells the NY Times. “We now have all the pieces in place for it to be untreatable.”

Dr. Beth Bell of the CDC likens this fully resistant superbug to a nearly completed puzzle.

“You need lots of different pieces to get a result that is resistant to everything,” she explains to the Times. “This is the last piece of that puzzle, unfortunately, in the United States. We have that genetic element that would allow for bacteria that are resistant to every antibiotic.”

Bloomberg News today looks at the death of a child in India whose infection could not be treated by colistin.

“That is a warning to us that maybe we’re already losing this drug,” a hospital official tells Bloomberg. “If we lose colistin, we have nothing. It’s an extreme, extreme worry for us.”

Not every doctor is beating the doom-and-gloom drum about this discovery.

University of Pennsylvania hospital infectious disease specialist Neil Fishman tells Philly.com that the news is “not a death star, but a very strong warning that we really do have to be careful with antibiotics and use them optimally.”

While across town, Temple University Hospital specialist Tom Fekete cautions that he’s “not giving up the ship,” and notes that people have been declaring a “post-antibiotic world” for 20 years.

Earlier this month, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report showing that now new types of antibiotics have been discovered in more than 30 years, raising the concern that resistance — in the absence of new drugs — could wipe out the utility of the ones we’ve been using since the golden ages of antibiotics research in the mid-Twentieth Century.

“This is definitely alarming,” said Pew’s David Hyun about yesterday’s announcement. “The fact that we found it in the United States confirms our suspicions and adds urgency to actions we need to work on antibiotic stewardship and surveillance for this type of resistance.”

The discovery of the MCR-1 gene in the U.S. has resulted in renewed calls for improved antibiotic oversight, particularly in farm animals, who consume the overwhelming majority of antibiotics in the country, primarily for the non-therapeutic purpose of growth-promotion.

“I have been sounding the alarm for years, and now, what we’ve been dreading has happened,” said Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, who also happens to be a trained microbiologist. “We have an antibiotic-resistant superbug that can’t be killed by any known drug. We need swift, aggressive, global action to stop this in its tracks—now.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

How To Finally Get Insurance To Approve A Wheelchair For A Kid: Go Viral On Twitter

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Kids grow. This may not come as a surprise to most of us, who were ourselves children one, but health insurance companies are not necessarily prepared for this facet of reality. And where reality and bureaucracy can really come into hard conflict is when kids who need durable medical equipment might — gasp — outgrow the tech, which doesn’t grow at all.

The Atlantic tells the story of one girl who suffered a sudden, virus-related paralysis. While it took some time for doctors to come to a final verdict on diagnosis and treatment, one short-term goal seemed clear: since the girl couldn’t walk, she’d need a wheelchair to get around.

The girl’s medical team wrote a prescription for a wheelchair, but the family hit a snag when it came to insurance: without a formal diagnosis of the problem, they wouldn’t pay for any equipment.

It took a crowdfunding campaign from friends and family to buy the girl her the first chair, but that one — secondhand, and adapted for someone else’s very different needs — proved to be a bad fit for the active nine-year-old.

Getting a properly-fit medical device, like a wheelchair, for an adult is one thing. But for a kid it’s a whole separate set of issues, because kids are constantly growing. At 29, your leg length, arm length, and shoe size probably aren’t going to change much in the coming weeks. At 9, though, there’s no such guarantee.

That means that one GoFundMe — even if it reaches its goal — isn’t going to be enough. A child with a disability who needs mobility aids is going to keep needing new ones for years to come — some kids, after all, are still growing as late as college.

A family seeking medical treatment for pediatric disability may find themselves having to go through the process of getting a wheelchair prescription nearly yearly… and every single one of those requests can be a lengthy back-and-forth with doctor’s offices and insurance. The longer it takes, the worse the problem gets, because a kid keeps growing — and outgrowing the requested replacement gear — while adults are arguing about the logistics.

So what is a parent to do when repeated requests from their child’s pediatrician and specialist, with literal reams of proof attached, keep getting denied? Go out-of-pocket — and go social.

Susan Mahoney, a specialist who worked with the families interviewed for the story, told The Atlantic that some families go through as many as six levels of appeals. “By the time you hit a certain level of appeal, you’re looking at six months to a year. It’s unethical,” Mahoney said. And that leaves only one venue for rapid change: “I tell the families to go to the media, if they can.”

Twitter, Facebook, and crowdfunding sites are where families in need end up going. According to The Atlantic, there are currently over 15,000 wheelchair-related campaigns happening on GoFundMe. In fact, medical expenses are far and away the most popular category of donation-seeking campaigns, accounting for 15% of all the money given on the site. (In 2012, that was worth more than $6 million.)

When multiple appeals for getting the partially paralyzed nine-year-old were denied, her mom took to Twitter and told the world about the situation with a hashtag that went viral. Cable news picked up the story, and an escalation expert from the insurance company appeared like magic to solve the family’s problems and get the girl’s new chair approved.

When the family finally got the wheelchair they had been requesting for their daughter, they didn’t stop. The mom who won the day with a blog post and twitter fight is now doing the same work on behalf of other families.

“I’m willing to loan my soapbox to anyone who needs it,” she told The Atlantic. “If they’re having trouble with their insurance company, they can come and stand on my mountain and yell.”

One Parent’s Twitter Campaign to Get Her Daughter a Wheelchair [The Atlantic]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Uber Testing Feature That Lets Riders Compare UberPool, UberX Prices

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In some cities, Uber customers can choose to get a ride with UberPool, which allows users to share a car with strangers who are traveling along (or close to) their route. It seems the ride-hailing company is trying to nudge folks toward selecting that option, with a new test of an “upfront pricing” feature that displays prices for both UberPool and the more expensive option, UberX.

In an attempt to push UberPool, Uber is testing a version of the app that includes the “upfront pricing” feature during booking in cities including San Diego, Miami, Philadelphia, Seattle, and some New Jersey markets, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Here’s how it’ll look, as seen in a screen grab we took using the app in Philadelphia — note that UberPool is the selected option by default:

In comparison, a New Yorker trying to get somewhere would have to toggle between the UberPool and UberX options to get a price estimate for each trip — though again, UberPool is the default selection:

Upfront pricing calculates things like time of day, distance to the destination, traffic conditions, surge rates and other factors to arrive at a total cost, and customers will never pay more for a ride than the price displayed, unless you choose to change your route and go somewhere else. Rides could be cheaper than advertised at first, however, which no one would complain about.

“More people choosing to share the ride instead of traveling alone is not only good for our cities and the environment, it’s good for the pocketbook,” said an Uber spokeswoman. “By ensuring that riders can easily see how much they can save by carpooling, we’re aiming to put more butts into fewer seats.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

20,000 For-Profit College Students Ask Education Dept. To Cancel Their Student Loans

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As the fallout continues from the collapse of Corinthian Colleges Inc. — former operator of Everest University, WyoTech, and Heald College — the Department of Education is trying to sort through nearly 20,000 loan-forgiveness requests from former students who claim that CCI and other for-profit colleges misled them into taking out huge student loans.

Unlike many loans or lines of credit, federal student loans generally can’t be discharged through bankruptcy, so even if the borrower is unable to pay, they will continue to owe the debt.

However, there are some ways in which students who have been victimized by bad schools can seek to get out from under their loan debt. If a school closes and there are no other options available to the student, they can argue for a “closed school” claim. The government has already forgiven some $75 million in loans to 5,800 former CCI students who filed this type of claim.

The other way is the heretofore little-used “borrower’s defense” claim, which involves making allegations of deception on the part of the school. CCI and a number of other for-profit schools have been accused of misleading both investors and students with trumped-up post-graduation employment statistics. Some students also didn’t find out until too late that, in spite of having paid tuitions equivalent to selective private colleges, not all of their course credits will transfer to other schools.

Urged on by consumer advocates and lawmakers, the Obama administration decided in mid-2015 to begin reviewing borrower’s defense claims. By Jan. 2016, the Education Dept. had already received 7,500 of these applications, representing around $164 million in loans.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that this has ballooned to 19,657 borrower’s defense requests. Thus far, the government has canceled $27 million in debt for more than 3,400 borrowers; mostly former CCI students.

The review of the applications is ongoing, even though the Education Dept. has yet to receive guidelines from an advisory panel about how it should be applying the vague law that allows for borrower’s defense claims. The Journal reports that these guidelines are expected in the near future.

One big issue surrounding these claims involves how much evidence a student would need to provide to demonstrate the fraud. Should the government — as some have suggested — simply acknowledge that a school like CCI committed widespread deception in its marketing and advertising, and therefore accept applicants’ claims of deception as true? Or should the applicants need to provide some sort of evidence documenting the particular deception that resulted in them taking out student loans — and if so, how does one prove they were misled years after the fact?

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Court Says NYC’s Salt Warning Labels Can Go Into Effect As Planned

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Despite efforts from a restaurant trade group to stop New York City from requiring labels on foods high in sodium high-sodium food from going into effect, a state appeals court says the city can begin enforcement of the rule as planned starting June 6.

The decision was handed down by a panel of justices from the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Manhattan, and denied a request to delay the labels while a lawsuit filed by the National Restaurant Association against the city is pending appeal, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The trade group doesn’t want the city’s Board of Health to be able to enforce a 2015 rule requiring restaurant chains with at least 15 locations nationwide to add a warning label on any menu items that have more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium, or about a teaspoon’s worth.

After a state justice upheld the rule in February, saying it was an informational label that didn’t stop consumers from buying certain items, the trade group appealed.

A restaurant association spokeswoman says she hopes the health department will still delay enforcement on its own, telling the WSJ that the ruling “will force the men and women that own New York City’s restaurants to start complying with this unlawful and unprecedented sodium mandate before the court has the chance to rule on the merits of our appeal.”

City officials are pleased with the decision, say it’ll help people make better-informed decisions. Enforcement will go ahead as planned on June 6, the health department says.

“Restaurant chains throughout the city have already begun posting the warning labels on their menus and helping New Yorkers watch the salt,” said NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett in a statement [PDF]. “Diners are now empowered to make informed decisions to lower their sodium intake and reduce the risk of high blood pressure, stroke and other heart-related ailments.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Oversized Box From Sears Has Enough Room To Stash Preteen Daughter

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Amazon was once notorious for shipping items in comically oversized boxes, an e-commerce phenomenon that we blame on mysterious employees called the Stupid Shipping Gang. We don’t hear about over-packaging from Amazon that much anymore, perhaps because the Stupid Shipping Gang has all moved on to jobs packaging e-commerce orders at Sears.

At least, that’s how it looks based on reader Corey’s order of tools from Sears.

“The box was big enough that my daughter got in with them and they still had room for all the packing material,” Corey writes. His daughter is 12 years old, if you were wondering.

A former shipping manager contacted us a few years ago to explain how this happens.

“Having as few different sized boxes as possible is the name of the game,” the former gangster explained: using fewer box sizes means storing fewer box sizes and saving money by ordering larger quantities of the boxes you use most often.

Also, while it might seem counter-intuitive to regular people, in a commercial shipping operation, it might be cheaper to ship a larger box than a small one. How does that work?

“While you can fit more smaller boxes than larger boxes into a finite space,” our source explained, “sometimes a lot of those smaller boxes end up creating blank space through their odd dimensions, which makes it harder to fit in larger boxes.”

At least Corey has somewhere to stash his daughter, though.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Bill Requiring Security Backdoors On Phones & Other Devices Appears To Be DOA

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Last month, Senators Diane Feinstein of California and Richard Burr of North Carolina were set to bring forth legislation that would end the debate on whether companies like Apple should help law enforcement unlock users’ devices, by requiring them to do so. In spite of the bipartisan, high-level sponsorship and the spotlight of the disputes between Apple and the Justice Department, it looks like this controversial legislation may never even be formally introduced.

The Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 [PDF], which has been circulating around the Senate as a draft since mid-April, would require companies to provide, among other things, “appropriate technical assistance” to the government when presented with a warrant for data on a secured electronic device.

There has been a lot of debate about whether or not the All Writs Act — a law dating back to 1789 — gives the government the authority to compel tech companies to undermine encryption that doesn’t have built-in backdoor access for the manufacturer.

In the recent Apple cases, the company fought federal warrants trying to compel Apple’s help in unlocking iPhones that had belonged to criminals. Apple does not have a way to unlock a user’s device without their passcode (or their fingerprint, if they’ve chosen to use the device’s biometric lock), so it would have to figure out a way to break its own encryption.

This issue was never ultimately resolved, with the federal authorities finding their own ways around the encryption in both instances.

The Feinstein-Burr legislation would have made such debate pointless, as it would effectively mandate that companies never provide the maximum level of encryption, as doing so would risk violating the law.

The draft of the bill was met with a backlash from privacy advocates, electronics and software companies, and many in the public. One petition against the bill already has more than 70,000 signatures — not bad, considering the legislation hasn’t even been formally introduced.

Most importantly, even though the DOJ has been fighting Apple and other companies in court over encryption, the Feinstein-Burr bill failed to get any sort of backing from the White House.

Now, both Feinstein and Burr are telling Reuters that there is no rush to get this bill introduced. Feinstein says she is going to get feedback from additional tech stakeholders on the issue, while Burr merely said, “be patient.”

As Reuters notes, the bill may never be brought forth for serious consideration — at least not during the current administration. Aside from the fact that the present White House doesn’t seem interested in pushing this as a legislative issue, it’s probably not wise for the two senators — both from states with significant high-tech industries — to bite the hands that feed them during an election year.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

$25M Government Study Finds Cell Phone Radiation Causes Cancer In Rats

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A newly released study from the National Toxicology Program, a division of the National Institutes of Health, has found a link between the kind of radiation emitted by cell phones and cancer in rats.

This study has been a long time in the making, note our esteemed colleagues over at Consumer Reports — and it’s cost the government a pretty penny, at a cost of $25 million. It’s the most expensive ever undertaken by NTP, involving more than 2,500 rodents.

Those rats were exposed to the same kind of radiation cell phones emit for nine hours a day, every day, over a period of two years. Researchers found that male rodents experienced low incidences of two type of tumors: gliomas, in the brain, and schwannomas, in the heart. It’s unclear if female rats experienced the same issue or were part of the the study.

Consumer Reports notes that these results seem to support earlier findings from epidemiological studies, which found the same kinds of tumors in humans. That led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to classify radiation as a possible human carcinogen in 2011.

So what do these results mean? On the one side, there are industry leaders and others who say that evidence has shown cell phones don’t pose any risks to human health.

But then there are scientists and some health officials who argue that more research needs to be done but point to available evidence as enough to suggest that there’s a possible connection between cell phone use and brain cancer. That’s enough to justify taking precautions when you’re yapping away with your phone up to your ear, some say.

“This study in mice and rats is under review by additional experts,” a spokesman for the NIH said in a statement to Consumer Reports. “It is important to note that previous human, observational data collected in earlier, large-scale population-based studies have found limited evidence of an increased risk for developing cancer from cell phone use.”

For now, there will definitely be increased debate between the two sides on what exactly this study means for the average person, and whether or not something should be done as a result. The NTP’s site says the results could be used by the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission in determining the best way to protect consumers from the potential harms of radiation that comes from cell phones.

The cell phone industry is likely to push back, as wireless trade group CTIA has said in the past that cell phones are totally safe. It’s been on the front lines pushing back on laws in cities like Berkeley, CA and San Francisco that would require retailers to notify consumers about the potential risks of using cell phones.

Cell Phone Radiation Causes Cancer in Rats, Government Study Finds [Consumer Reports]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

5 Pro Tips For Making A Juicy, Delicious Burger This Memorial Day

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You can see it now, can’t you, in your mind’s eye? It’s juicy, it’s delicious, it’s cooked perfectly, and you made it: it’s your ideal Memorial Day burger. Let us help you get there with a few handy tips that will help your fantasy burger become a reality this holiday weekend.

At Consumerist HQ, we take burgers very seriously. So much so, that we wanted to share some tips we gathered from expert the Chef Howie Velie, Associate Dean of Specializations at the Culinary Institute of America. He teaches students how to cook for a living, so we figured he’d be a good person to ask.

Here are a few things we learned from Chef Velie that every home cook should keep in mind before picking up that spatula this weekend:

1. Use ground beef with an 80/20 lean-to-fat ratio

If you want something to be moist, like a burger, you have to maintain the moisture within the product. To do that, Chef Velie says, it’s important to use a ground beef with high fat content, because fat equals moisture.

He adds that whatever heat source you use, whether it be a grill or a pan on the stove, heat transfers very well through fat. That means the fattier the burger, the faster it will cook, Chef Velie explains.

2. Charcoal grills are great — but propane grills work too

Chef Velie says his personal preference is using lump charcoal in a charcoal grill, instead of briquets, but that, of course, is a matter of personal preference.

“I like cooking over a fire,” he tells Consumerist, likening it to methods of cooking that go back thousands of years.

Propane grills will also do the trick, he adds — “you’re getting plenty of good flavor from that,” Chef Velie says.

Don’t have an outdoor space or a grill at your disposal? Cooking a burger on the stove works, too, as we found out when we tested Chef Velie’s burger-making tips last year (among a few other methods you can check out).

“If you have a nice heavy iron, cast iron skillet or something like that, that’s gonna hold heat, you can get a really good char,” he notes.

3. Don’t press that patty!

You might’ve heard that moving a burger around on the grill is bad — that’s arguable, Velie says, but there is one thing you definitely shouldn’t do: smushing the burger with your spatula — even if makes your grill flare up in a cool way.

“A lot of people do that, and it’s kind of the most tragic thing you could do because you’re basically just pressing out all the flavor,” Chef Velie explains.

4. Salt & pepper are your friends

While you can add whatever seasonings you want to your burger patties, don’t shy away from good old salt and pepper.

“I think salt and pepper are tragically under utilized on burgers on grills,” Chef Velie says. “Salt and pepper are where you build flavor in everything. So you’re enhancing the meat flavor, you’re enhancing the char and smokiness of the grill by using salt.”

Beyond that, Chef Velie says he’s not a fan of mixing in or adding too many other things to burgers.

“If you’re gonna do that, make meatloaf and serve it with potatoes.”

5. Use a heat thermometer to make sure it’s done

When it comes to cooking raw meat, it’s important to get the temperature up to at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit for safety reasons. And you can’t just judge by color, as the USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service explains, oxidation from freezing and thawing can cause red meat to turn brownish without any cooking.

FSIS also notes that “some lean ground beef may remain pink at temperatures well above” 160° F.

Chef Velie agrees that a meat thermometer is the “guaranteed way” to make sure a burger is cooked thoroughly.

“Don’t guess. You can guess all day, but unless you’ve done it 10,000 times, you’re not gonna be good at it,” he advises, adding, “I know when it gets to 165 degrees it’s done, it’s gonna be juicy.”

Happy eating, everyone, from our stomachs to yours.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Microsoft Protects You From Yourself, Outright Bans Worst Passwords

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The point of a password is to keep your accounts secure. A bad password, though, doesn’t do that very well. And despite decades’ worth of repeated warnings not to use the same terrible passwords, millions of people still regularly do, even when a system tries to require better ones. So Microsoft, in the name of customer protection, has finally had enough and is just going to start banning the really crappy ones altogether.

Mashable noticed the change, which Microsoft posted on a tool-sharing blog for server managers.

Basically, Microsoft is putting a tool in place for anyone using its login systems that has a check against the worst passwords list and bans new entries from matching them.

In the blog post, a Microsoft expert explains that across all their properties (Outlook, Xbox Live, OneDrive, and so on) Microsoft sees hostile attempts made on 10 million accounts per day, so they have a lot of internal data to draw on about bad password habits.

The annual list is full of passwords you really shouldn’t be using anyway, with “123456” and “password” routinely taking the top two spots, and such scintillating entries as “qwerty,” “football,” and “12345678” also appearing in the top ten. Microsoft’s system is dynamic, but is still pulling from basically the same pool of bad ideas.

The post, targeted to developers, also explains that administrators using Azure AD — a cloud-based identity verification service from Microsoft — will be able to enable the dynamic banning on their own systems in the near future.

by Kate Cox 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

Pet Wellness Plans Aren’t Insurance: You Still Have To Pay After They Die

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It must feel awful to still be paying for your pet’s health plan after the pet has died. Yet there’s a difference between pet health insurance and the wellness plans that some vets market. While both are designed to help pet owners spread the cost of medical care throughout the year, wellness plans are for a fixed period of time, whether the pet is actually alive during that whole time or not.

A woman brought her complaint about still having to pay for a wellness plan after her 21-year-old cat died to the consumer team at CBS Sacramento. This is a common problem, and one that’s been around for a while: in fact, we wrote about the exact same problem eight years ago, also with a cat.

In this case, the plan was at a Banfield hospital, the chain of vet offices in Petsmart stores. Wellness plans include a set of services according to how much you want to pay per month and your pet’s age and health needs.

While a Banfield representative told CBS Sacramento that customers sign an agreement explaining these terms when they sign up for a year of the wellness plan, they still helped this customer, waiving the fees for the rest of the year. She said that she plans to get standard pet insurance for the new kitten she has adopted.

Call Kurtis: Why Am I Still Paying For My Dead Cat’s Wellness Plan? [CBS Sacramento]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

McDonald’s CEO To Shareholders: No Plans To Replace Employees With Robots Yet

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As governments and traditionally low-wage jobs raise their minimum wage or starting pay for employees, McDonald’s will be forced to pay higher wages to employees. That might cause the company to use more automation, perhaps replacing employees with robots, right? At today’s shareholders’ meeting, CEO Steve Easterbrook assured employees that robots will not be taking over. Probably.

McDonald’s, of course, runs on a franchise model, and doesn’t actually own or operate most of its restaurants. Yet some of the company’s innovations, like the Create Your Taste burger-ordering kiosk, would replace humans, but people would still cook the burgers and even bring diners their fancier food at their tables.

“Ultimately we’re in the service business,” Easterbrook said. “We will always have an important human element.” Easterbrook says that the company would prefer to shift humans to jobs in the dining room or interacting with customers.

Higher pay for fast-food workers was a major topic of discussion during the meeting because the nationwide Fight for $15 movement, backed by the Service Employees International Union, organized a massive protest outside of McDonald’s headquarters in the Chicago suburbs.

The group bussed in workers from across the country, and seeks a higher minimum wage, the right to unionize, and better working conditions for low-wage workers in a variety of service jobs. For the third year in a row, the company’s headquarters shut down during the day of the annual meeting due to the presence of protesters.

McDonald’s CEO says $15 hourly wage, robots won’t kill jobs [Reuters]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Michigan Cafe To Change Name After Caribou Coffee Wins Trademark Lawsuit

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Several years ago a small New Hampshire coffee roaster won a legal victory (twice) against coffee giant Starbucks over its name “Charbucks.” Things didn’t go so well for a Michigan cafe that must retire its name “Blue Caribou Cafe” after losing a trademark lawsuit filed by Caribou Coffee. 

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Caribou Coffee filed a trademark infringement against Blue Caribou Cafe last November after sending several letters asking the restaurant to change its name and received no response.

According to the lawsuit, the cafe’s name and logo misused trademarks that were “likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive,” and constitute unfair competition that can cause “irreparable harm.”

One of the owners of the cafe says the lawsuit was ridiculous, but that they couldn’t afford to fight the case in court.

“There is no way we could possibly come up with the money to fight back against this corporate giant, even though we have a chance at winning,” she wrote on a GoFundMe page started to raise funds for the cafe’s name and branding change.

Under the settlement, the restaurant has until early July to change its name and cease using the caribou symbol and designs. An outdoor sign for the cafe can continue to be used until September.

A spokesperson for Caribou tells the Star Tribune that the company “engaged in this litigation to protect our coffeehouse name and existing trademarks.”

“We recognize the burden this transition is having on the Blue Caribou Café, and given this unique situation, have contributed to their GoFundMe fundraising page to help with their rebranding efforts,” the company said without specifying how much the company had donated.

Caribou Coffee getting heat for trademark lawsuit against small Michigan cafe [Minneapolis Star Tribune]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Gawker Media Looking For A Buyer Amid Hulk Hogan Legal Battle

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Gawker Media — former parent company to Consumerist and former employer of two current staffers — is considering the option of selling itself off as it continues to fight an expensive legal battle against Hulk Hogan.

The New York Post first reported, then Gawker confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that the media company has hired an outside banker to review its options.

For those who have avoided coverage of the Gawker/Hogan lawsuit, the wrestler and reality TV star has sued the media company for violating his privacy in Oct. 2012 when Gawker’s namesake site posted a snippet of a 2006 sex video featuring Hogan and the then-wife of his friend Todd “Bubba the Love Sponge” Clem.

In March 2016, a Florida jury found in favor of Hogan and ultimately awarded him a total of $140 million in damages. Gawker has filed an appeal in the case.

Earlier this year, as the lawsuit gained momentum, Gawker’s founder Nick Denton brought in his first outside investor, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, which paid $100 million for a minority stake in the company. At the time, the business was valued at around $250 million, but following the outcome of the trial, where an $83 million figure was put on Gawker, that value has dropped.

According to the Post, there are already offers in the $50 million to $70 million range. It’s not clear if that price is for the entire company or for a significant ownership stake.

It was recently revealed that Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel is helping to fund Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. In 2007, the site wrote about Thiel’s sexuality, and some have classified his support of Hogan as an attempt at revenge, though Thiel says it’s more about “specific deterrence.”

In a statement to the Journal, Gawker says that it’s had bankers engaged “for quite some time given the need for contingency planning around Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s revenge campaign.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Police Paperwork Mistake Screws Over Victim Of Car Theft & Man Who Unwittingly Bought Stolen Vehicle

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Here’s a case where no one really wins. Not the woman whose truck was stolen and had to go out-of-pocket to replace it, and certainly not the guy who bought the truck but had to surrender it after learning it had been stolen five years earlier… and all because someone at the police department filled in the wrong box on some paperwork.

NBC Los Angeles has the bizarre saga of the Bakersfield-area woman, who reported her truck stolen back in 2011, when it was still relatively new.

Filing that police report should have prevented the vehicle from being resold, but whoever wrote up the paperwork put the truck’s title number in the field where they should have entered its VIN.

The mistake was identified by the state’s system and kicked back to the police department, but never fixed.

It was only because the original owner got curious, several years later, about whether or not her truck had ever turned up that the truth was eventually revealed.

She contacted the police department, only to learn about the paperwork mix-up.

“The words out of her mouth were just shocking,” she tells NBC. “The vehicle had never been reported stolen.”

If the paperwork had been filed correctly, this whole ordeal would never have happened. Days after the owner had tried to report the stolen truck, another woman — one with a history of car theft — was pulled over by police, but when they ran the VIN on the truck, it didn’t set off any alarm bells.

The stolen truck was eventually impounded and subsequently sold at an auto auction, and then again in 2013 to a man who paid $8,000 for it.

The owner, having learned of all this, followed the paper trail and looked up the address of the new owner. Plugging his info into Google Maps, she saw her truck right there in the Street View photo in front of his house.

Determined to get her car back, she headed over to this house with her old keys. Using her old keychain remote, she was still unable to unlock the truck. That’s when she notified authorities in that city that she’d be getting her stolen truck back.

Police gave the current owner the bad news and the rightful owner was able to get into her truck and drive off… in a vehicle that now has more than 100,000 miles on it.

The man who bought the vehicle in 2013 says he had absolutely no idea the truck had been stolen. He’s also out all the money he spent to pay for the truck.

“My insurance company denied me because they’re saying if it’s a legal seizure then I’m out,” he tells NBC. “This all boils down to a paperwork error and that seems that seems to me like a pretty big mistake.”

The truck’s owner, who hasn’t decided whether she’ll sue the police department, says she’s more upset with the cops than she is with the person who originally stole her truck.

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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

VA Declares Veterans Dead When They Aren’t

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When the U.S. Veterans Administration declares that someone is dead and stops their benefits, 99.83% of the time, that person really is dead. For the thousands of people that’s happened to in the last few years, though, it’s awfully inconvenient to have the sprawling bureaucracy that they depend on for income and medical care declare them dead.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a total of 4,201 veterans have been erroneously declared dead in the last five years. The agency cross-checks with the Social Security Administration, which maintains the Death Master File. The list is cross-checked with Social Security, but sometimes this causes even more problems instead of solving them.

For example, one 69-year-old veteran had his benefits end twice. The VA had him noted as dead, resurrected him, and then someone killed him again. He discovered that the problem was an error by the VA: his middle initial was noted as G instead of C on a document, and a man with the same name and middle initial G was the one who died.

He took the incident in stride, but pointed out that this could be devastating to people in a precarious financial position. “It could be one day you’ve got a house, and the next you don’t,” he observed.

In a statement to the WSJ, a VA spokesperson said:

“Although these types of cases represent a small number of beneficiaries in comparison to the millions of transactions completed each year in our administration of benefits, we sincerely regret the inconvenience caused by such errors and work to restore benefits as quickly as possible after any such error is brought to our attention.”

A safeguard that the VA has put in place since last year is a system that should be called “Not Quite Dead Yet Letters.” When someone has been reported dead, the agency sends a letter to verify. If they receive a response from the veteran, well, he or she isn’t dead.

Thousands of Living Vets Declared Dead and Lost Benefits in Past Five Years [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Altria Sues FDA To Keep “Black & Mild” Name

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Earlier this month, the Food & Drug Administration expanded its oversight of tobacco products, effectively banning the use of “mild” to describe cigars. That’s a problem for Altria Group, which makes the Black & Mild brand, and so the tobacco behemoth has sued the federal government to keep using the name.

Altria filed the civil lawsuit on Thursday, arguing that the FDA’s new rules violates the First Amendment that protects trademarks and brands, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Under the FDA’s expanded rules, companies can not sell modified-risk products — those marketed as “Light,” Low,” or “Mild” — without the agency’s authorization.

The company claims that the use of the word “mild” in the cigars’ name describes the “taste and body” of the product and doesn’t convey anything about health, risk, or safety.

Additionally, Altria claims, by banning the use of “mild” in its product, the FDA is violating the Fifth Amendment’s protection against the government’s taking of private property for public use without compensation.

The FDA declined to provide comment to the WSJ on the lawsuit, which seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.

Altria Sues U.S. to Keep ‘Black & Mild’ Cigar Name [The Wall Street Journal]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Doctors Find Superbug Resistant To All Antibiotics In Pennsylvania Woman

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Welcome to the post-antibiotic world. Doctors say that a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania was infected with a “truly pan-drug resistant bacteria,” in other words, a bacteria that will not respond to any known antibiotics.

Earlier this year, reports indicated that bacteria containing a gene (MCR-1) that makes them resistant to colistin — an antibiotic of last resort that had largely gone unused because of its potential for collateral damage to the patient — had spread to 19 countries on four different continents, but that it hadn’t been identified here in the U.S.

That was until, according to a report published today in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, on April 26 a woman who believed she had a urinary tract infection provided a urine sample at a Pennsylvania clinic.

It was subsequently passed on to researchers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which — in response to concern over MCR-1 — now looks at all E. coli samples that meet certain red-flag criteria for antibiotic resistance.

The E. coli cultured from this patient’s urine sample — genetically linked to a strain first found in the UK in 2008 — was found to be carrying the MCR-1 gene, plus an additional 14 different antibiotic resistance genes.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of mcr-1 in the USA,” reads the report, which notes that the patient had not done any traveling in the five months leading up to providing the sample.

The researchers at Walter Reed have now tested 21 E. coli samples. All the others have tested negative for MCR-1 and are sensitive to treatment with colistin. But as they note, this testing program has only been up and running at Walter Reed for three weeks, so “it remains unclear what the
true prevalence of mcr-1 is in the population… Continued surveillance to determine the true frequency for this gene in the USA is critical.”

In a statement to the Washington Post, CDC Director Tom Frieden says that the discovery of MCR-1 in a human patient “basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics — that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics.”

Frieden says this is already a problem for some strains of tuberculosis: “I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Taco Bell Will Give Away Free Tacos If Away Team Wins During NBA Finals

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If your team loses during the upcoming NBA championship finals it’s going to be painful, but if they lose to the visiting team, it might hurt less if you’re also a fan of free food: Taco Bell will be giving away Doritos Locos Tacos for its “Steal a Game, Steal a Taco” promotion — but only if the away team wins.

Here’s how it works (h/t Sports Illustrated): if the away team wins one of the first three games of the series, fan can go to Taco Bell from 2-6 PM (local time) on June 15 to get their free food.

If the away team wins in one of the final four games, the free tacos will be handed out on June 21.

So why did Taco Bell decide to hinge the promotion on the away team winning? As SI points out, out of the nine games played so far in the NBA Conference Finals, the home team has won eight. That just goes to show how great home court advantage can be — and could mean Taco Bell won’t be on the hook for a whole lot of free tacos.

This isn’t the first time the chain has thrust itself into the sports spotlight with such a promotion: during past World Series, Taco Bell offered a “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion that gave MLB fans free tacos whenever teams stole a base during certain games.

And in the 2015 World Series, Taco Bell tailored the deal to the breakfast crowd with its “Steal a Base, Steal a Breakfast” promo that rewarded fans with free A.M. Crunchwraps when players stole bases.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Some Postmates Users Cry Foul Over Inaccurate Price Estimates

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When you use a delivery service like Postmates to pick up your dinner or groceries, you should expect some difference between the estimated price and the one you ultimately pay, but some Postmates users say they are paying upwards of 35% more than the estimate.

For example BuzzFeed News points to several customers griping about huge discrepancies on their Postmates bills, including one customer who was given an estimate of $57.85 for a delivery, but saw that price jump to $77.90 ($95.17 after all the fees) when the delivery was made:

Alright @Postmates, what am I missing here? Estimated total – $57.85 Actual total – $77.90 (not including fees) http://pic.twitter.com/aCfuMLY1LZ

— Kathleen Warner (@kathleen_warner) May 22, 2016

Has anyone been given an estimate by @Postmates and then had the actual charge be $20 over what they quoted? I feel like I've been scammed.

— Christian Simamora (@csimamora) February 14, 2016

Like the other week when my Postmates order estimate was $108 and the actual bill was $160? Good times. https://t.co/mwk42xDEFg

— Matt Rosoff (@MattRosoff) May 24, 2016

Most of the customers’ issues occurred when viewing the estimated subtotal after placing restaurant orders through Postmates.

While in some cases, customers noticed the significant price jump included not only service and delivery fees, others found no evidence of where the additional costs were coming from.

@ceodonovan @Postmates yep they refunded it. they were unaware the restaurant was charging a postmates fee http://pic.twitter.com/1IXYrlbTDO

— Kathleen Warner (@kathleen_warner) May 25, 2016

Still, Postmates maintains that a majority of the pricing issues have been related to outdated menu prices.

“We show the price estimate, based on the menu that’s in our system,” Postmates spokesperson April Conyers tells BuzzFeed, “but there may be some discrepancy.”

Customers Say Postmates Has Been Underestimating Delivery Costs [BuzzFeed News]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Privacy Activists Set Up Giant Mobile Billboard Across From Netflix HQ To Protest VPN Blocking

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From a business standpoint, it makes sense for Netflix to block VPNs — virtual private networks — to cut down on users accessing its content in foreign countries. But privacy activists who just want to use VPNs to keep their internet connections, well, private, aren’t too pleased with Netflix’s recent blocking campaign.

In protest, digital rights group OpenMedia parked a truck with a giant billboard on it across from Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, CA (h/t TorrentFreak) reading: “We [Heart] Our Privacy” on a background of Netflixesque red and the URL for the unblocking campaign, DefendOurPrivacy.org.

We just put a mobile billboard outside @netflix HQ to stick up for our #privacy: https://t.co/ft0HkkEKoI http://pic.twitter.com/s8Dvxvx6HU

— OpenMedia (@OpenMediaOrg) May 26, 2016

OpenMedia sent an open letter a few weeks ago to Netflix, inviting CEO Reed Hastings to talk about alternatives to VPN blocking that might work for everyone. One idea — linking accounts to credit card number addresses to users’ content libraries.

The group put up the billboard in the absence of a reply from Netflix, TorrentFreak says, and hopes that it will send a clear message.

“Right now, Netflix customers are being forced to choose between watching their favorite shows and safeguarding their privacy,” OpenMedia’s digital rights specialist Laura Tribe said. “Our mobile billboard is one more way we’re working to encourage Netflix to rethink their approach. The company has much better options available to it, than undermining the privacy of over 80 million paying Netflix customers in the post-Snowden world.”

Hastings said last month during an investor call that the VPN blocking efforts haven’t hurt Netflix’s bottom line, saying the complaints came from a “small but vocal minority,” TorrentFreak notes.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

In Denial About America’s Opioid Painkiller Problem? This Map Might Change Your Mind

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If you think the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is being alarmist by urging primary care physicians to stop prescribing so many opioid painkillers, or that the fact that 10% of doctors are writing more than 50% of the prescriptions for opioids is not a concrete indicator of a problem, then perhaps this map of overdose deaths in the U.S. will help to drive the point home.

Or rather, it’s two maps, put together by The Guardian using CDC data on overdose death rates in 1999 and 2014.

The fact is that drug overdoses now outnumber car crashes in terms of fatalities in the U.S., with 80 people dying every day just from opioid overdose. Yet two decades ago, drug deaths weren’t even on the radar for most Americans.

As you can see from the 1999 map, overdose deaths were rare in much of the country, with the exception of some high mortality rates in parts of Appalachia, the Southwest, and Northern California. Though even then, you could see the potential for explosion in OD deaths in the Pacific Northwest, New England, Florida, Oklahoma, and the Midwest.

At the time, drugs like OxyContin were new to the market and promising long-acting relief for sufferers of chronic pain. That made the drug more attractive to people who injured themselves doing work that puts a high demand on one’s body — mining, farming, manufacturing.

As recent reports have shown, OxyContin did not always live up to its promise to provide 12-hour pain relief, meaning some patients had to take the drug more frequently than prescribed.

People also realized that they could get around the extended-release aspect of these drugs by simply pulverizing the pills and ingesting all the contents at once. This resulted in a better high from the drug, but also increased the risk of dependency and overdose.

Fast-forward to 2014, and the map looks significantly darker, as the problem areas from 1999 have only gotten worse and spilled out to cover larger regions, and it’s now more rare to have a low overdose death rate:

Florida, which had some low-level areas of overdose deaths in 1999, became known on a national level as a place where scoring pain pills was easier than it should be. Major drug store chains were caught turning a blind eye to fake or questionable prescriptions.

In 2013, Walgreens paid $80 million to settle an investigation into its practices in the state, which included actively encouraging pharmacies to sell more opioid painkillers, resulting in stores selling several times the national average of drugs like oxycodone.

CVS, which was later hit with a $22 million for similar violations in Florida, was also caught filling bogus prescriptions in Rhode Island, one of the areas hit particularly hard by the increase in overdose deaths in New England.

As the Guardian notes, this region of the country had largely been in line with the national increase in overdose deaths until recent years, when states like New Hampshire and Massachusetts saw spikes from fatalities related to the powerful painkiller fentanyl.

Speaking of fentanyl, that drug is one of the concerns about the current efforts to further restrict access to prescription painkillers.

Alexander Walley, a physician and director of addiction consultation services at Boston Medical Center, tells the Guardian that “what we’re seeing now is that even as you reduce access to prescription opioids, you’re seeing an explosion of heroin use and heroin overdoses – and then there’s also now this ultra-potent substance [fentanyl] sold as heroin.”

And it’s not just fenantyl-spiked heroin that’s a problem. Addicts who can’t get their hands on prescription drugs through pharmacies are turning to drug dealers, who sometimes sell knock-offs containing drugs even more dangerous than the sought-after painkillers.

Health officials in several California counties recently warned against counterfeit versions of the painkiller Norco that have been spiked with fentanyl, resulting in dozens of people turning up in the hospital after overdosing in just a few weeks.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

San Francisco Pot-Friendly Gym Will Let Members Get High While They Get Buff

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First it was juice bars, now this: a new pot-friendly gym in San Francisco will allow members to get high on the premises.

Starting this fall, a new gym called Power Plant Fitness will offer marijuana to workout fans. This won’t be a place to “get high and screw around,” however: cofounder of the gym and founder of the 420 Games — basically the stoner Olympics — Jim McAlpine wrote on the company’s site recently.

“We are focused on the athletic side, not the cannabis side,” he explains.

The gym wants to show that pot users aren’t all lazy stereotypes who sit around eating Cheetos half the day and wiping of Cheetos dust the rest of the day.

McAlpine tells Tech Insider that gym members will take a “cannabis performance assessment” with the staff to pinpoint the “most optimal ways to consume.”

Edibles and vaping will be allowed on-site to start, with plans for an outdoor smoking deck in the future.

“We will be helping our members figure out how is best for them to ingest their cannabis,” McAlpine tells Tech Insider.

However, if the gym wants to actually sell marijuana products on the premises, it’ll have to register as a dispensary lounge, under California law [PDF].

A gym where people can get high onsite is opening in San Francisco [Tech Insider]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

AT&T Working To Put DirecTV In Your Car

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Parents who count on TV shows, movies, and cartoon to keep the peace between their children in the backseat during road trips could soon be getting a helping hand from AT&T. With the company’s recent acquisition of DirecTV, it plans to include the television service to connected vehicles using its cellular network.

While there is no timeline for the integration of DirecTV with connected cars, The Washington Post reports that AT&T is certainly exploring its options with the newly acquired service.

“We think that DirecTV is a great entertainment asset in our portfolio, and we’re actively working with them to identify ways to bring DTV content into the car,” Chris Penrose, senior vice president of AT&T’s Internet of Things department, said in a statement.

The integration would help boost AT&T’s already robust connected-car service. The company says there are currently eight million cars on its network and more than half of all new connected cars get linked to its network.

“If you start turning the car into a WiFi hotspot and using Internet radio, doing real-time live traffic, and you start doing things with video capture or video consumption in the back seat of the vehicle, those become much-higher-bandwidth solutions that drive much higher [revenues],” said Penrose.

Still, some analysts tell the Post that Internet connectivity in cars is a low-margin business, with the average revenue per user in the single digits.

Putting DirecTV into vehicles is just AT&T’s latest attempt to showcase its new service. The company already allows users to add DirecTV on their smartphones and tablets, as well as tying the service to its unlimited data plans. Later this year, DirecTV will launch a separate online-only version of its pay-TV service to compete with Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue.

AT&T wants to pipe DirecTV straight into your car [The Washington Post]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist