The Cost Of A Life-Saving EpiPen Has Increased 400% Since 2007

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If you or someone in your family has severe allergies, the EpiPen is a familiar and essential product. Yet if you have good health insurance, what you may not know is that the cost of the pens has increased significantly since pharmaceutical giant Mylan acquired the drug in 2007.

Different sources list different prices, but the cash price for an EpiPen has increased somewhere between 400% and 600% in the last decade since Mylan acquired the product. A pack of two pens can cost hundreds of dollars at retail.

According to reporting in Bloomberg BusinessWeek from last year (warning: auto-play video at that link), Merck got rid of the EpiPen, which wasn’t a big money-maker at the time, by selling it to Mylan. The auto-injector pen contains about a $1 dose of the drug epinepherine, yet somehow costs 400% more on the wholesale market, and the cost to insurance companies and patients forced to pay retail has probably increased even more.

While the EpiPen is a 25-year-old device, there is no direct generic equivalent. One important money-making strategy for Mylan has been to hand out free pens to familiarize people with the product. The company has marketed the pens heavily, and has been working to make sure that the pens end up purchased in bulk for schools and in other public places for allergic emergencies…just like the automated defibrillators that are now easy to find. Mylan has even worked with the same consultants as defibrillator-maker Medtronic.

Well, okay, but what can patients actually do about those high prices? For lower-income patients whose insurance doesn’t cover the devices, there’s a patient assistance program, and the company also offers coupons that bring the co-pay down if your insurance does cover the device.

You can also opt out of using Mylan’s product altogether. Dosing your own epinepherine in a syringe isn’t recommended, but there’s another auto-injector on the market that costs less than an EpiPen. Since it isn’t a generic, you can’t just receive one at the pharmacy when your doctor has prescribed EpiPens.

When our colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports checked prices for the device, they found that the Adrenaclick cost less than half as much as the EpiPen. Another alternative product, Auvi-Q, costs about the same as the EpiPen but actually gives you audio instructions for how to use it.

Check with your insurance company, but all of these products should be covered: it’s just that the ubiquity of the EpiPen makes it the first product that doctors and patients both think of. It’s the Kleenex or Band-Aid of lifesaving injector devices.

What’s important is to make sure that everyone knows how to use the alternative device, if your doctor agrees that one of : the allergic person and other household members should know how to administer the drug.

For children, make sure that parents and other caregivers, as well as staff and nurses at the school know that the device is an Adrenaclick and not the more familiar brand.

Though that may not help much either: one parent who spoke to MarketWatch said that her high-deductible health plan means that a two-pack of EpiPens costs $500 with a discount coupon from Mylan, while a two-pack of the Adrenaclick cost $400.

Mylan’s EpiPen price increases are Valeant-like in size, Shkreli-like in approach [MarketWatch]
Can You Get a Cheaper EpiPen? [Consumer Reports]
How Marketing Turned the EpiPen Into a Billion-Dollar Business [BusinessWeek]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Comcast Now Says It Will Offer Next-Gen Broadband In Chicago At Lower Price; You Just Have To Ask

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Earlier this week, Comcast announced that it was launching its higher-speed next-generation broadband service in Chicago, but the only price it would confirm was double the lowest rate charged by Comcast in the other markets where it had already offered this service. However, Comcast has now confirmed to Consumerist that folks in Chicagoland will indeed be able to get the lower rate — if they know how to ask for it.

The next-gen service uses the DOCSIS 3.1 standard, which allows cable companies to deliver data at speeds equal to (and faster) than most fiberoptic services but over existing cable lines. That means it costs significantly less for Comcast to roll out the new higher-speed option.

In the two markets where it’s already begun offering DOCSIS 3.1, Comcast has offered two pricing options: $140/month for customers who don’t want a contract (meaning they can cancel service whenever they want), or $70/month for people willing to agree to a 3-year contract.

However, when Comcast announced its expansion of the service to Chicago, it only mentioned the no-contract $140 price. Additionally, when we asked the cable company about the lack of a $70 option, Comcast would only say that it was a new product and it was testing different prices for different markets.

This led us, and others, to speculate that Comcast was following the AT&T GigaPower model of only offering lower-price options for high-speed service in markets where it faced competition from the relatively affordable Google Fiber. Comcast has to compete with Google in parts of Atlanta and Nashville, but Chicago is currently only on Fiber’s “maybe” list for the future.

Then today, we spoke to one of the oracles residing at 1701 JFK Blvd. who declared that Comcasters in Chicago will be able to get the $70/month rate. And just like in Atlanta and Nashville, that price is contingent on agreeing to a 3-year contract.

The catch: That rate won’t, at least initially, be listed on the Comcast website. Once your neighborhood gets upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1 (while it doesn’t require an entirely new network, it’s not as simple as flipping a switch), you’d have to call Comcast to inquire about the $70/month rate.

On the upside: This high-speed service won’t — at least for now — be capped in Chicago, meaning users will be able to download 4K video, full video games, and stream live feeds to multiple devices simultaneously without having to worry (again, for now) about hitting some monthly data limit.

Those who upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 will also need a new modem, as the current generation of modems are 3.0 and will not be able to handle the gigabit speeds that the new standard delivers.

It looks like manufacturers are not yet selling these modems directly to consumers yet, but retail availability of 3.1 modems should happen in the coming year. Until they are available — and until Comcast has verified a modem works on its system — customers would have to lease the hardware through Comcast.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Theater Producer Accused Of Scamming Investors Out Of $165K For Fake Broadway Play

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It sounds like something out of a Broadway musical: a producer approaches investors, hyping a fantastic, inspirational show about a famous opera singer, starring a famous actress. Only this was real life, with a real person accused of scamming seven people out of $165,000.

Prosecutors in New York indicted a theater producer who allegedly orchestrated a scheme revolving around a new Broadway play he was producing, The KB Project, which would be based on the life of singer Kathleen Battle, reports NBC 4. Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o would star in the play, he claimed, and he had reserved the Booth Theatre on Broadway for the production. Representatives for all those parties say the man never approached them, and there were no deals in place.

Not only that, but in January 2015, according to court documents, the producer claimed to have a deal with Netflix to run the play on its platform, and allegedly used that as leverage to convince investors to give him more money in a second round of funding. Two of the victims invested additional money, prosecutors said.

The cracks started to show in the fall of 2015 when several investors asked where their money was. The producer sent them all checks — which bounced due to insufficient funds, prosecutors said, and the suspect ceased all communications.

Those ill-gotten gains allegedly went towards things like $129,000 worth of stocks and stock option contracts; close to $23,000 in personal credit card payments; $18,000 in rent for the producer’s apartment; and around $10,000 on food, alcohol, and entertainment purchases.

He pleaded not guilty to criminal possession of stolen property, grand larceny, and scheme to defraud, all felonies, on Friday.

Theater Producer Makes Up Fake Play Starring Lupita Nyong’o to Bilk Investors Out of $165,000, Indictment Alleges [NBC-4]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Burger King Customer Card’s Declined After Cashier Tried To Charge $12,300 For Meal

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It’s always a nerve-wracking moment when your payment card is declined — you know the feeling: your pulse races as images of negative account balances dance in front of your eyes. But one Burger King customer in the United Kingdom had to suffer through that feeling not because she couldn’t afford to pay for her meal, but because the cashier tried to overcharge her… by more than $12,000.

The woman was with her son and daughter at London’s Luton Airport this week, and had ordered a Whopper Steakhouse burger, regular fries, regular soda, and two portions of chili bites, reports The Sun, for a total of £9.47 ($12.38 U.S. for those Americans playing at home) for the meal.

But when she gave the cashier her card, she was told it was declined, forcing her to scrounge up some cash from her two adult children. She didn’t realize what had happened until she got home and took a look at the scrunched up receipt from the first attempted transaction — and saw that the cashier had attempted to charge her £9,471.96 ($12,384.40).

“I went ice cold,” she said, and called her bank. She was told the charge had immediately been declined because it was abnormally large.

“But it rings alarm bells – if it was, say, £74, it would’ve gone through,” she says, adding that she’s learned to check the bill when she pays regardless, and to use the chip-and-pin system to verify the amount she’s being charged.

DON’T KEEP THE CHANGE Mum charged £9,000 for a meal with her kids at Burger King in Luton Airport [The Sun]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Broncos And Mile High Stadium Take Back Naming Rights From Sports Authority

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While pocket knives and parkas flew off the shelves at Sports Authority’s going out of business sales, and foosball table, desk chairs, and iMacs flew out of its former headquarters building through Craigslist ads, one of the bankrupt company’s assets didn’t sell: the naming contract for the field where the Denver Broncos play, which the chain had bought in 2011. It’s now official: the team and the stadium district have agreed to terms and effectively bought back the rights from the defunct retailer.

Potential sponsors may have stayed away because of questions over whether the team, the stadium district, and the NFL would have accepted the auction winner as the legitimate owner of the naming rights.

Instead of Sports Authority paying any portion of its two missed payments, the agreement is that the company’s estate will pay the Broncos $50,000, the Broncos in turn will make the next payment of $3,601,890 on behalf of Sports Authority.

This also settles a dispute between the team itself and the retailer over sponsorship of the team and its games, not just of the stadium: Sports Authority had a separate agreement to put coupons on game tickets, and advertisements in the stadium and even the team’s website. The team argued that Sports Authority should keep paying, since the ads got its name out there during the liquidation sale.

The bankruptcy court judge approved this plan yesterday [PDF], and now the Broncos and their stadium can go out and seek a new sponsor. For now, the Sports Authority name remains on the stadium and in news reports about the team.

ORDER AUTHORIZING THE DEBTORS TO ASSUME AND ASSIGN STADIUM NAMING RIGHTS CONTRACT TO THE DENVER BRONCOS PURSUANT TO SECTION 365 OF THE BANKRUPTCY CODE [PDF]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Have You Been Paying Attention? Take The Consumerist Quiz To Find Out

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This summer and its Olympic games might feel like they will never end, but this week certainly will. That can mean only one thing… Actually, it means an awful lot more than one thing, but there’s just one item that we currently care about: Testing your memory to see how well you’ve been paying attention.

After a few weeks of decent-ish scores on the Consumerist Quiz (patent not pending), last week saw a huge course correction with the median score dipping down to 58%. Maybe it’s the heat; maybe you were hungover from rooting for the Malaysian mixed doubles badminton team. We don’t know, and frankly it’s none of our business.

What is our business is asking you questions, so let’s do it to it:

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Foot Locker CEO Claims Malls Are “Far From Dead”

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Maybe it’s just because Foot Locker had sales growth to report because people are snapping up higher priced- basketball and running shoes, but the company’s CEO seems to be in a very positive mood about the state of malls in the U.S., which is surprising at a time when other mall-based retailers are struggling.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Foot Locker had higher average selling prices in the last quarter, bolstered by the popularity of Under Armour Inc.’s Stephen Curry sneaker and Nike Inc.’s latest Kevin Durant signature shoe, the KD9. Not necessarily because people want to exercise in the shoes, but because they’re fashionable, Foot Locker says.

“The facts are that most of the basketball shoes that we sell never see a basketball court. Most of the running shoes that we sell never see the roads or the trail or the track,” CEO Dick Johnson said on a conference call. “They just look really good, and they’re part of the sneaker culture that we really support.”

Traffic to the company’s almost 1,000 U.S. stores was also higher in the last quarter, again, despite an overall downward trend seen at department stores and other mall chains: sales in the second quarter were up 4.7% at existing Foot Locker stores, higher than the 3.9% expected by analysts.

“The malls are far from dead, regardless of what’s going on with the anchors,” Johnson said, adding that the company’s customers still like going to malls just to hang out with their friends.

But while men’s apparel sold pretty well, the company says its women’s apparel business was “challenged” last quarter. The company is trying to offer more of a variety of women’s clothing, chasing the same “athleisure” wear trend that other retailers like Victoria’s Secret are focusing on as well. You know, the look that says, “I could be ready to go to yoga class, or maybe I’m just heading to Whole Foods for a few things and want people to think I went to yoga class.”

Foot Locker CEO: ‘Malls Are Far From Dead’ [Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

If You Bought Egyptian Cotton Sheets From Target, You Might Be Getting A Refund

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Target is breaking up with one of the world’s biggest textile manufacturers, claiming that the company was sending it sheets labeled as “Egyptian cotton” that were actually made with cotton of the non-Egyptian sort. That means refunds for customers who bought the bedding in question.

Target says it learned last month that 750,000 sheets and pillowcases supplied by Welspun India were labeled as Egyptian cotton, but were made from some other type, and pulled the items from its stores, Bloomberg was the first to report. Egyptian cotton has extra-long fibers that are associated with high quality products, which means some shoppers are willing to pay a premium for those items.

Starting today, Target has started notifying customers that they’ll get a refund on certain products under the Fieldcrest label that sold for as much as $75. The withdrawal only includes two lines of Egyptian cotton bedding, and not all Egyptian cotton sheets sold by Target are affected.

“One of Target’s vendors, Welspun Global Brands (Welspun), was one of the producers of Egyptian Cotton 500-thread count sheets under the Fieldcrest label for Target,” Molly Snyder, a company spokeswoman told Consumerist. “After an extensive investigation, we recently confirmed that Welspun substituted another type of non-Egyptian cotton when producing these sheets between August 2014 and July 2016. Neither Target nor Fieldcrest had any knowledge of this substitution. These sheets were produced by a number of vendors and only one of those vendors was substituting product.”

The company notes that this is “not an issue of safety and there is no risk in continuing to use this product.” Anyone who purchased the products from Target during that timeframe can submit a web form to request a full refund in the form of a gift card.

Target used to be Welspun’s second-biggest customer (Bed Bath & Beyond is its first-biggest), but those days are no more: the retailer says it will phase out all of its products from Welspun, though that process will take some time.

“We have informed Welspun that, due to this conduct, we are in the process of terminating our relationship with them,” Snyder said, calling it a violation of the company’s code of conduct as well as its standards of vendor engagement. “We value the trust that our guests place in us. The Target team will continue to work closely with all vendors to help ensure that the products we offer to our guests meet or exceed their expectations.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Pandora May Go To Battle With Apple Music, Spotify With $10/Month Subscription Option

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Right now, most Pandora users are listening to music for free and turning the volume down during ads, with a handful of people paying for an ad-free version of the same service. Now comes a report that Pandora is looking to offer new options that would put the company in more direct competition with Apple, Google, Amazon, and Spotify.

Unlike the subscription services offered by those companies — where paying users get access to large libraries of music to listen to at will — Pandora has continued to provide a “radio” service, where it allows users to pick an artist or genre and then predicts what other songs you might like based on that preference.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Pandora could soon — possibly as early as next month — begin offering a new premium option that would give users more control over the music they hear.

The Journal’s sources say that the plan is to offer a $10/month subscription that is effectively identical to Apple Music, Google Play, or Spotify: Unlimited on-demand access to a library of millions of songs so long as you maintain your subscription. Amazon also bundles a similar Prime Music service into its Amazon Prime package.

Pandora’s biggest roadblock to the subscription concept, notes the report, is getting record companies to sign on. Under its current radio business model, Pandora doesn’t need record companies’ permission to play most music. As long as Pandora follows the rules — things like limiting the number of times a certain song, artist, or album can be played within a given time limit — it doesn’t have to negotiate individual licensing or royalty deals.

What complicates these negotiations, according to the Journal, is the fact that in addition to offering the new premium service, Pandora wants to expand its popular free tier internationally. Instead of the free-for-all Pandora has enjoyed thus far, some record companies want to limit which songs are played on this free tier.

It’s worth noting that Apple killed off its long-running iTunes Radio service in early 2016 as it put all of its eggs into the Apple Music subscription basket.

Pandora can’t just do that, as it has some 80 million users on that free tier. The ad revenue from those users brought in nearly half a billion dollars in the first six months of 2016 alone, around five times the revenue earned from subscribers who pay for the ad-free Pandora radio service.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

SEC Fines California Health Insurer $340,000 For Breaking Whistleblower Protection Laws

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When a business is doing something shady and illegal, often the best-placed people to know about it are the employees who are supposed to carry it out. That’s why there are laws in place to protect whistle-blowers who report their employers to the appropriate authorities… and breaking those laws can sometimes land a company in as much trouble as doing the thing an employee would report them for to begin with.

That’s what just happened at California-based Health Net Inc., according to the LA Times.

Health Net wasn’t taking retaliatory action against employees after the metaphorical whistles were blown, which is illegal but very common. Instead, they were kinda sorta pre-emptively coercing employees not to blow the whistle in the first place.

How?

Health Net employees signed agreements that tied any severance payments to agreements not to seek whistle-blower rewards, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that’s a no-no.

An employee getting a severance agreement from Health Net specifically signed documents requiring that they waive any right to bring a lawsuit against the company as well as to receive any finds from “any proceeding brought based on any communication by employee to any federal, state or local government agency or department.”

“They were basically saying to employees that they couldn’t tell anyone about what the company was doing wrong if they wanted their severance,” a lawyer specializing in whistle-blower cases told the LA Times. “They were trying to muffle employees’ ability to report problems in the workplace.”

The SEC’s rewards incentives to whistle-blowers can be pretty big: the Dodd-Frank act authorizes the SEC to pay up to 30% of the money collected if fraud or securities violations are found. And that’s valuable for a couple of reasons: one, because money incentivizes people to do things the otherwise might not. And two: because whistle-blowers in some major industries can find themselves frozen out of future work in that industry, and nobody’s going to tattle if it means they won’t be able to make their rent or keep their family fed.

According to the LA Times, the SEC has paid out more than $85 million to 32 whistle-blowers since the program began five years ago.

“Financial incentives in the form of whistle-blower awards, as Congress recognized, are integral to promoting whistle-blowing to the commission,” Antonia Chion of the SEC’s Enforcement Division said in a statement. “Health Net used its severance agreements with departing employees to strip away those financial incentives, directly targeting the commission’s whistle-blower program.”

Health Net did not respond to the LA Times’ request for comment. The SEC said that the company consented to the cease-and-desist order without either admitting or denying their findings.

Whistle-blowing: Insurer gets smacked for bullying employees [Los Angeles Times]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Target Shoppers Aren’t ‘Cautious,’ They’re Shopping At Walmart

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This week, both Target and Walmart released their quarterly financial results. Based on the results and executives’ comments on those reults, it’s almost like they’re from two different quarters or years entirely, or at least not from two discount stores that are generally close competitors. Maybe it’s not that shoppers are clutching their wallets or spending on home renovations instead of everyday home goods, a Target speculated. Maybe Target’s shoppers are just heading to Walmart more often.

The keen business minds over at Bloomberg noticed this trend and compared the stores’ narratives and performance. While Target’s stores are generally full of more affluent shoppers, the chains are still similar enough that it makes sense to compare them.

When sharing its results, Target CEO Brian Cornell blamed lower sales on consumers in general being “cautious” and spending their money on home renovations and things that are definitely not groceries at Target. Walmart’s growth in sales and total transactions shows that consumers are doing just fine––or perhaps they’re seeking cheaper prices and a wider variety of groceries at the strip mall across the street rather than going to Target.

Walmart also notes that low gas prices are helping, since it leaves more money in shoppers’ wallets. (The company does sell some gasoline at its Sam’s Club warehouse stores, but discounted gas for members is more of an inducement to shop at the store and not something that the chain is looking to make money from.)

Walmart doesn’t just have 100% more monkeys rampaging in its parking lots. In the company’s quarterly earnings call, executives shared that sales are up, customer satisfaction scores are up, and shoppers are shopping.

“The latest retail sales data show that consumers are somewhat cautious at the turn to the second half of the year, but they are not pulling back sharply,” an economist at Bloomberg Intelligence observed.

Maybe the leaders of both companies are right: for American consumer as a whole, being “somewhat cautious” means shopping at Walmart instead of Target, rather than cutting back on their spending entirely?

Wal-Mart Outlook Rebuts Target’s View of Jittery U.S. Shopper [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

New Cluster Of Zika Cases Linked To Local Mosquitos Reported In Miami Beach

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The tally of Zika cases linked to bites from local mosquitoes down in Florida has just grown, after health officials said they’ve identified new cases in Miami Beach.

The first mosquito-borne cases in Florida were all reported in one certain neighborhood in downtown Miami. Now, with this new cluster of cases that were most likely transmitted by local mosquitoes in Miami Beach, federal and state officials may advise pregnant women to avoid traveling to the city, and possibly expanding that warning to all of Miami-Dade County, The New York Times reports.

If that happens, it could be a sign that the potential threat posed by local mosquitoes has reached new heights. A broad travel advisory to avoid that entire area instead of just one zone could threaten tourism and cause pregnant women who live in the area to be more concerned.

The Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales confirmed that two Zika cases have been linked to Miami Beach, one in a tourist who visited the area two weeks ago, and another involving a local resident who works on the island. Gov. Rick Scott is scheduled to hold a news conference today to discuss the recent developments.

Elsewhere in the state, officials are putting plans for genetically-modified mosquitoes on hold: federal regulators had approved a plan to unleash the insects in the Florida Keys on a trial basis, NPR notes, but the locals opposed it. The local mosquito control board hasn’t approved the plan yet, and instead put the idea on the November ballot as a nonbonding referendum.

The genetically modified male mosquitoes are intended to mate with wild females of the Aedes aegypti variety, which is the kind that is likely to transmit the virus. Their offspring die before reaching adulthood, thus, removing their potential to carry Zika.

Miami Beach Zika Cases May Prompt Call to Avoid City [The New York Times]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

FCC’s Robocall Strike Force Kicks Into Action Today

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Last month, after FCC Chair Tom Wheeler called on the telecom industry to finally do something about the nuisance of pre-recorded, auto-dialed robocalls, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson agreed to head up a joint private-public Robocall Strike Force tasked with actually doing something about these calls. Today, this elite squad of telephonic titans is meeting for the first time.

The Strike Force has been given a deadline of 60 days (Oct. 19) to lay down a clearer path toward a world with fewer automated calls that aren’t just obnoxious, but are often illegal.

“Americans are fed up,” began Wheeler. “Robocalls are a scourge. It’s the number one complaint that we hear from consumers on a daily basis,” with more than 200,000 gripes being filed with the FCC each year — and that’s just from the very small number of people who take the time to file a complaint.

“Americans have a right to be fed up,” continued the Chair. “It’s an invasion of privacy, rife with fraud and identity theft… The bad guys are beating the good guys with technology.”

While phone companies could undoubtedly do more to block robocalls or give their customers more tools for eliminating these calls, Wheeler is quick to point out that this is a “community problem” affecting the entire telecom and broadband industries.

Online phone services don’t just allow for robocall scammers to blast out a seemingly endless barrage of prerecorded calls, they allow the scammers to cheaply place these calls from foreign countries.

These robocallers, explained Wheeler, rely on the fact that existing phone networks “aren’t ready to deal with them… The profit motive has driven bad guys to a level of technological innovation that exploits consumers by exploiting networks and equipment.”

This is why the Strike Force, which will meet at least twice a week for the next two months, includes representatives from phone service and broadband providers (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon), manufacturers (Apple, Nokia, Samsung), and network bandwidth providers like Level 3 Communications.

“This has to be multi-carrier, cross-carrier, and a community solution,” urged Wheeler.

Stephenson, whose record on robocalls is far from perfect, concurred.

“This gonna require more than individual company initiatives,” acknowledged the CEO. “And it’s going to have to go beyond one-off blocking applications to address this issue.”

He admitted that the industry has thus far taken a “piecemeal” approach to robocalls and “we’ve have very limited success.”

Part of the problem, cautioned Stephenson, is that while everyone hates robocalls, not all of them are against the law.

“We have calls that are perfectly legal that are not wanted, like telemarketers and public opinion surveys,” he explained before jumping to the other end of the spectrum where you have “millions of calls that are patently illegal, and they’re violating the Do Not Call registry, or worse they’re trying to steal identities or money… shutting down the bad guys is a very important step.”

#SquadGoals

By the end of the 60 days, the Strike Force should have achieved a number of goals, including some sort of solution on call-authentication standards for VoIP (cable) phone calls, meaning the carrier will have a reasonable degree of certainty that it knows where the call is coming from and going to.

The Strike Force must also discuss solutions for expediting the deployment of third-party call filters that can be used either by consumers or by the phone companies. “Let’s give folks the opportunity to get creative” about blocking robocalls, said Wheeler.

The FCC also expects the Strike Force to develop cross-carrier solutions, like a “Do No Originate” list that would identify likely sources of repeat robocalls and block those calls before they ever get to the customer.

Finally, the Strike Force needs to tell the FCC what the Commission needs to do to help industry achieve these goals.

What Wheeler doesn’t want is for the industry to be paralyzed by the possibility that it won’t reach a perfect solution right away.

“The nature of software is start and continually improve,” he explained. “Let’s not sit around and wait for the ultimate solution. Let’s start solving the issues immediately, and let’s improve it tomorrow, and make it even better the day after tomorrow.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Judge Rejects $100 Million Settlement Proposal In Uber Drivers Class Action

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The man who ended up as the named plaintiff in a lawsuit of Uber drivers in Califoria and Massachusetts is dissatisfied with the proposed settlement of $100 million to be shared among all class members, and it turns out that the judge in the case doesn’t approve of that offer, either. The judge in the case agrees with him, it turns out, and both sides have been sent back to negotiate a new settlement.

This case is about Uber itself and its relationship with drivers, but it’s also about the idea of the on-demand economy and the idea of an entire workforce that accepts its assignments from an app.

While Uber has made some changes to its app and its back-end, the core issues behind the lawsuit will not be solved before the company simply replaces all of its drivers with autonomous cars.

The first problem, according to the judge, is that the offer low-balls what the class would be owed if the court accepts the premise of the lawsuit. If drivers were considered employees, and if passengers were encouraged to tip them, the court calculated that they would be due $852 million in expenses, overtime wages, benefits, and of course tips.

However, there’s an incentive for the drivers and their attorneys to settle this case as soon as possible: drivers agreed to waive their right to sue the company when signing up, but the judge in the class action ruled that drivers who signed up after the mandatory arbitration clause became a thing should have the right to sue over being misclassified as independent contractors. Uber has appealed the ruling, and the appeal is still pending.

U.S. Judge Rejects Uber’s Proposed $100 Million Settlement With Drivers [Wall Street Journal]
Uber’s $100 Million Driver Pay Settlement Rejected by Judge [Bloomberg] (Warning: auto-play video)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Gap Can’t Seem To Stop Being Normal, And That’s Its Big Problem

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A few years ago, Gap realized that telling its customers to “Dress Normal” wasn’t such a great idea: customers were turned off, and sales plummeted. That air of normalcy is still plaguing the company.

Basics are all well and good, but things have changed from the time when Gap’s business was booming in the mid-2000s — wearing a “uniform” that’s easily recognized as a clothing brand just isn’t cool anymore, Bloomberg reports, and it shows in their sales: comparative store sales fell 3% at the company’s namesake brand last quarter, Gap reported this week, and it’s worse at Banana Republic, where sales sunk 9%.

“They were the cheap, cool option,” Bridget Weishaar, an analyst at Morningstar, told Bloomberg of Gap’s heyday at the turn of the century. “They’ve just been displaced.”

As a result, the company is planning to close dozens more of its 3,700 stores, and Chief Executive Officer Art Peck says he’s “unsatisfied” with the slow recovery.

Some analysts think Gap’s various businesses — including Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta, and Intermix brands — have just gotten too big for their britches.

Simeon Siegel, an analyst at Nomura Securities, wrote in a note to clients with that concern, Bloomberg notes, saying he thinks Gap is “simply too large in the new normal where physical distribution has become a liability and uniformity is no longer ‘cool.’”

Gap Faces a World That Doesn’t Want to Be Normal Anymore [Bloomberg]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

TCP Disconnects “Smart” Lightbulb Servers, Leaves Buyers In The Dark

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This is, unfortunately, becoming one of the most predictable stories of the early 21st century. It goes something like this: new tech product comes on the market. Consumers, finding product solves their problem, eagerly buy. Then the company that made the product turns off the server that made the thing “smart,” and suddenly early adopters are up a creek with no recourse.

This time around, the story is about lightbulbs.

Earlier this month, Consumerist reader Michelle spotted a great deal on some Connected by TCP smart lightbulbs she’d been eyeing for her home. Before buying, she checked to see if they’d be compatible with her Amazon Echo or Wink app, and it’s good that she checked first. As it turns out, those bulbs are no longer compatible with any device, app, or hub, because TCP pulled the plug on their server as of June 1.

The outcry, all things considered, was pretty small. There are angry and upset reviews on listings where the product is sold (like Amazon and Home Depot), but nothing like the furor that results when some other products lose their support. That, in and of itself, is probably a good indicator of why TCP went and killed off their server: the product may not have been popular enough to justify the cost.

The bulbs still work as actual lightbulbs, if you want to use your lamp’s on-off switch the old-fashioned way, and you can control them while inside the house on your home WiFi network. But any remote functionality — a big part of the steep price tag that makes TCP bulbs more expensive than a plain old LED bulb — is long gone.

The fact that the bulbs are still on store shelves, with packaging promising features that no longer exist, is irksome. But it’s also not an uncommon tale in these early years of the Internet of Things. Businesses try, and then discontinue, new products all the time.

The difference is, if the company that makes your sofa goes out of business, you can still sit on your butt and watch TV. Even if the company that makes your car goes out of business, your local mechanic can still keep it running safely for many years after the fact. But when an internet-connected device loses its internet connection, well, there goes everything that made it what it was.

In coming years, consumers — especially early adopters — are going to end up spending a lot of money on things that end up being expensive paperweights, in the end. When every device uses some kind of proprietary call to some kind of proprietary server, the end of a cloud connection is going to mean the end of function.

So is there hope for consumers who don’t want to feel swindled every time they upgrade?

The path to solutions, it seems, will be twofold: it’ll take work from both the tech development end and also from the consumer protection end to make any changes.

On the one side, the FTC is trying hard to get businesses in the IoT space to behave themselves and watch out for their customers’ interests, even though there’s not exactly any rule on the books right now that pertains to maintaining servers. “Consumers generally expect that the things they buy will work and keep working,” the FTC wrote in July, “and that includes any technical or other support necessary for essential functioning.”

On the other side, some folks in the tech space are arguing that absent an open, consistent standard, basically all cloud-based “smart” devices are doomed. The solution? Make them in such a way that they can be made to keep working if your server, for whatever reason, goes away.

These kinds of changes will be a long time coming, of course, and they’re too late to help anyone who dropped cash on a Connected by TCP bulb. But maybe the tech consumers of the next decade will be in better luck.

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Cuba Gives Final Approval For First Commercial Flights From Florida

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If you’ve had your bags packed and been ready to go to Cuba, there’s good news: the island nation’s government has have given the final go-ahead for commercial flights taking off from Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

JetBlue and American Airlines are now cleared to start commercial service to several airports on the island, reports the Miami Herald. It’s good timing, too, since JetBlue has a flight scheduled to Santa Clara from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood-International Airport on Aug. 31, nabbing the first regularly scheduled commercial flight to Cuba in more than 50 years.

American is next up, with its first flight from Miami International Airport to Cuba starting on Sept. 7. Eventually, JetBlue is hoping to add service to Holguín and Camagüey in November, again, after it receives approval for those airports. American has received approval to land and take off from all five Cuban airports already, and will offer 56 weekly flights to Cuba total.

Thus far the Department of Transportation has only given preliminary approval to American, JetBlue, and the other airlines that applied to fly 20 daily routes to Havana. That approval is expected to land later this year, while Cuba’s will have to sign off on those flights as well.

Cuba approves first commercial flights from Miami and Fort Lauderdale [Miami Herald]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

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Here are nine 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

Eddie Bauer Removed Malware From Payment Systems In All Of Its Stores

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In today’s spin of the Wheel of Cybercrime, the affected business is…Eddie Bauer, a clothing and housewares retailer with more than 350 stores across the country. The company confirmed today that its point of sale systems were infected with malware, which has now been removed, and customers’ payment card information may have been compromised.

Regular readers know the drill: if you’ve used your credit or debit card at Eddie Bauer stores in the United States or Canada between January 2, 2016 and July 17, 2016, check your statements carefully for purchases that you didn’t make. The malware affected only the point-of-sale systems (what we called “cash registers” in the olden days) in retail stores, and not purchases from the website.

Eddie Bauer has offered free identity theft protection to affected customers for the next 12 months, which is nice, but won’t do you much good if someone is simply out charging purchases on a clone of your card.

The company is also notifying card networks, banks, and affected customers. Not all payment cards that were used were necessarily compromised, but industry sources told Krebs on Security that fraudulent purchases were showing up on customer cards that had been used as far back as January of this year.

In the press release, Eddie Bauer noted that this was “a sophisticated attack directed at multiple restaurants, hotels, and retailers, including Eddie Bauer,” but didn’t specify which other businesses were affected by the same attack.

Malware Infected All Eddie Bauer Stores in U.S., Canada [Krebs on Security]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

10 Things We Learned About Walmart’s Relationships With Local Police

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Walmart just shared its quarterly results with investors and with the world, and its sales and profits are up. Great news! Only a lot of the chain’s profits have come because of aggressive cost-cutting, and its cutbacks in security have meant increases in petty and violent crimes that can be a burden on local law enforcement.

Bloomberg Businessweek took a national look at Walcrime this week, and here’s some of what we learned. Be sure to check out the whole story, too.

1. In Tulsa, OK, police officer Darrell Ross is called Officer Walmart, because that’s his job: he’s stationed at Walmart, and meets with shoplifters and other criminals. There’s also an off-duty officer working for Walmart directly.
2. The Tulsa police have sometimes needed to send a van to Walmart to bring in everyone who was arrested that day.
3. Tulsa’s numbers are even worse than the stats from Florida that the Tampa Bay Times compiled earlier this year: the city has four Walmarts that called police a total of 2,000 times, and four Targets that called police 300 times.
4. That can be an unfair comparison, though: Target does not allow people to park overnight in its lots, and its store are generally smaller and in wealthier areas than their competing Walmarts.
5. “When I walk into Target I see uniformed security or someone walking around up front, a Florida police chief told Businessweek. “You see no one at Walmart. It just seems like an easy target.” Pun probably not intended.
6. Walmart has made cutting back on crime in its stores a priority in the last year, because shootouts and meth labs are bad for business. It’s succeeding, including a program to reform shoplifters instead of calling in the police.
7. The roots of Walmart’s crime problem are in cost-cutting, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has shopped there in the last decade and a half or so. Cutbacks at the turn of the century meant that Walmart stores are now getting by with fewer employees, and the simple change of getting rid of greeters increased shoplifting.
8. Walmart’s board mostly doesn’t come from the retail business, and may not understand the importance of paying for security so customers will feel safe and spend more time shopping.
9. When a fight in his local Walmart was recorded on YouTube and went viral, that was the last in a string of incidents that led a mayor in Indiana to crack down on Walmart, making media appearances to call the company out and eventually having the store declared a public nuisance. That meant possible fines of $2,500 for every call to the police. The store realized it would be cheaper to hire off-duty officers to work security, and did.

Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy [Bloomberg Businessweek]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Student Loan Borrowers Face Needless Hurdles When Trying To Reduce Payments

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It’s a fact of life: if you take out thousands of dollars in federal student loans to attend college, you have to pay them back. While the government offers borrowers some relief through free income-based relief, a new report shows that getting that assistance is often a test of patience for consumers, with servicers providing incorrect information or creating difficult hurdles. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report [PDF] Thursday highlighting complaints from student loan borrowers when it comes to trying to take advantage of income-driven repayment plans with their federal student loans.

The most frequent complaints from borrowers involved prolonged processing delays and servicers who mistakenly rejected applications for the plans. These problems often result in increased interest charges and lost eligibility for certain federal benefits and protections.

“Student loan servicers continue to fall short when it comes to helping borrowers address $1.3 trillion in student debt,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. “It’s time servicers focus more effectively on processing applications for income-driven repayment plans properly.”

Starting in 2009, the federal government created a program that allows borrowers of federal student loans the right to set their payments based on their income and family size.

The plans were created as a way to provide relief to borrowers who face financial hardships or earn low wages.

In addition, the federal government forgives the remaining balance on loans after the borrowers have made timely payments for 25 years, or in some cases 20 or even just 10 years.

According to the report released Thursday, five million student borrowers were enrolled in the income-driven repayment plan as of the first quarter of 2016.

Still, the report suggests that millions of students are likely missing out on their chance to participate in these plans because of missteps by servicers that collect payments and provide information to consumers.

Between Oct. 1, 2015 and May 31, 2016, the CFPB received 2,400 federal student loan servicing complaints related to access to the income-driven plan.

Among the issues that consumers report facing:

• Application abyss: Generally, the income-driven repayment application process should take no more than two weeks, according to the CFPB.

However, borrowers reported that their applications are unanswered for weeks or months at a time, leaving them to linger in an application abyss.

The delays can cause borrowers to lose out on protections that can lower their monthly payment, save them money on interest charges, and start them on the path to loan forgiveness.

• Repayment rejection: Some borrowers tell the CFPB that they were rejected for the plan because of issues with their servicers, such as lost or incomplete paperwork.

Other borrowers report being rejected simply for checking the wrong box, without being given the opportunity to submit a corrected form.

These errors discourage borrowers from restarting the application process, and some borrowers may choose to walk away from their loan, instead of remaining on the road to repayment, the CFPB says.

• Recertification replay: Because borrowers enrolled in the income-based repayment plan must reapply each year more issues can arise during this process.

For example, borrowers say that while they may not have had problems enrolling previously, when they go to rectify, their applications are delayed or wrongfully rejected.

• Costs of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan: On average, the report found that processing delays cost borrowers more than $2 per day, which can add up to thousands of dollars during the life of a loan.

In an attempt to prevent such issues in the future, the CFPB today released a “Fit It Form” that servicers can use to help borrowers understand whether their income-driven repayment application has been approved, denied, or needs to be corrected.

When a borrower needs to make a correction or provide more information, servicers can use the Fix It Form to help consumers understand how to “fix it” and stay on track.

While the form is a step in assisting borrowers in finding relief, consumer advocates say the slew of complaints aren’t surprising.

“We have said time and again that the lack of industry wide standards for education loan servicers results in unfair treatment of borrowers in frequent cases,” Suzanne Martindale, staff attorney with our colleagues at Consumers Union, tells Consumerist. “Furthermore, it can undercut the repayment benefits that federal borrowers should have by law.”

Still, Martindale urged the CFPB to continue highlighting these problems while working with stakeholders and consumers to create comprehensive rules.

“Based on this research, we believe that CFPB is best positioned to set ground rules for all servicers of education loans, whether federal or private,” she said. “We encourage the CFPB explore regulations in this area, to better ensure fair and consistent treatment of all student loan borrowers.”

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Justice Department To Phase Out Use Of Private Prisons

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Around 15% of the nearly 200,000 inmates in federal custody are housed in privately operated prisons that have come under fire for allegations of poor treatment of prisoners and less stringent security measures — all at a yearly price tag to taxpayers of $639 million. Today, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced plans to phase out the Justice Department’s use of private facilities over the coming years.

In a memo [PDF] sent today to the Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Yates recounts how federal prison populations grew by almost 800% between 1980 and 2013, and how a decade ago the DOJ turned to private prison operators to house a portion of these prisoners.

“Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities,” writes Yates, pointing to a recent report from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General. “They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and… they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.”

The Inspector General’s report looked at data from 14 contract prisons and found that contract prisons had more incidents of lockdowns, discipline, contraband, assaults (on prisoners and staff), and grievances per capita than the Bureau institutions. According to this data, prisoners at contract prisons were eight times more likely to be found with contraband cellphones.

Since 2013, the federal prison population has declined from a high of 220,000 inmates to the current level of around 195,000.

“This decline in the prison population means that we can better allocate our resources to ensure that inmates are in the safest facilities and receiving the best rehabilitative services,” explains Yates in a statement, “services that increase their chances of becoming contributing members of their communities when they return from prison.”

The timeline on the phase-out is a bit vague, as it involves the DOJ not re-upping its contracts with private prison providers as they come up. Yates says the department has already allowed one contract to lapse, which will put around 1,200 prisoners back into prisons operated by the government. And today, Yates says the DOJ has amended a separate contract to reduce the number of prisoners in on private facility from 10,800 to a maximum of 3,600.

While no specific end date was given for the phase-out, Yates’ memo says the goal is to cut the number of prisoners in private facilities by more than half by May 2017.

The Bureau of Prisons accounts for a full quarter of the DOJ’s annual budget, according to Yates.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

The Mail Carrier Hall Of Shame Inducts A New Member Accused Of Interfering With Mail

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Are we shocked to hear that a Florida mail carrier was accused of unloading hundreds of pieces of mail into a pizzeria’s trash bin? Not so much, because we’ve seen this happen enough to induct this latest suspect into the Mail Carrier Hall Of Shame, which is a thing we just made up.

In this most recent incident, a pizzeria’s security camera caught the woman on tape, driving up in a U.S. Postal Service truck and dumping what looked like mail in the restaurant’s trash bin, WINK-News reports. It turned out to be mail, as suspected, including 400 business flyers, bills, checks, personal letters and more. The USPS recovered the items, and they’ll be delivered to their intended recipients. The Post Office Inspector General’s office will now investigate.

She joins her fellow mail carriers in infamy, as chronicled below:

December 2015: Authorities said a Queens mailman dumped more than 1,000 pieces of mail in the trash because he was “overwhelmed” by his heavy holiday mail load.

July 2015: A Philadelphia postal worker was accused of delivering 22,000 pieces of mail straight to his garage.

July 2015: A New York City mailman was accused of stealing more than $1 million in tax refunds in a scheme spanning years.

June 2015: Three Manhattan postal workers were in hot water after being accused of stealing from the “Operation Santa” program like a bunch of Grinches.

December 2014: USPS worker was accused of swiping as many as 2,000 pieces of mail she was supposed to deliver, out of sheer boredom in Detroit.

December 2014: Eight postal workers were accused of stealing packages filled with marijuana in Long Island.

June 2014: A 20-year veteran of the postal system was accused of stealing 20,000 pieces of mail, collecting credit cards, and stacks of DVDs.

April 2014: A mailman in western Kentucky was sentenced to six months in prison for failing to deliver 44,900 pieces of mail, because he wanted to speed up his route.

August 2012: A mail carrier in suburban Chicago pled guilty to pilfering $275,000 in donations that were heading to a charity on his route, after being charged for stealing more than 29,400 pieces of mail in the effort.

May 2012: A 15-year-veteran of the USPS was accused of stealing prescription painkillers mailed to war vets in her area, and then selling those drugs to others on her route.

October 2011: Authorities said a Missouri mail carrier stole 120 Netflix DVDs, which would be a feat now considering the decline in the DVD business. He was also accused of swiping gift cards and other mail that never reached their destination.

January 2006: Colorado police charged two postal workers for plucking Netflix DVDs from the mail, for a total of around 503 discs.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Hey, Sprint Has Some New Unlimited Plans, Too

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This morning, we shared the news that T-Mobile USA was doing away with the entire concept of mobile plans, and instead putting all postpaid users on plans with unlimited voice, messaging, and data. Competing small carrier and erstwhile merger partner Sprint doesn’t want to be left out, and announced its own unlimited plan today.

For a household of four people, the pricing is almost identical to T-Mobile’s new unlimited offering: at $60 for the first person, $40 for the second, and $30 each for the third and fourth, the total bill is $160 or $40 per user. Sprint is pushing the deal as “two lines for $100,” apparently targeting couples rather than families and framilies.

Prepaid brand Boost Mobile also now has an unlimited offering, called Unlimited Unhook’d, because “Unlimit’d Unhook’d” would be just weird. Both brands have “optimized” data for the most bandwidth-intensive things that customers do with their phones: streaming videos, streaming music, and gaming.

A Boost plan that may work for people who spend a lot of time near WiFi or who simply don’t use a lot of data will be available for $30 per month, with one gigabyte of data and unlimited everything else.

Sprint agrees with T-Mobile that customers don’t really want high definition video on their phones. “In fact, most individuals we showed could not see any difference between optimized and premium-resolution streaming videos when viewing on mobile phone screens,” CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statment that was part of the new plan announcement.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Online Lender Claiming Tribal Affiliation Must Refund, Cancel $11.6M In Payday Loans

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For years, online lenders have claimed affiliations with tribal groups in order to skirt state laws related to short-term, high-interest loans. Today, the state of Minnesota came to a settlement over a years-long, so-called “rent-a-tribe” loan scheme with CashCall, ordering the lender to pay $11.6 million in relief to borrowers. 

The settlement, announced Thursday by state Attorney General Lori Swanson, covers loans involving more than 6,000 Minnesota borrowers.

According to the complaint [PDF] — first filed in 2013 — California-based CashCall Inc. and its subsidiaries allegedly engaged in an “elaborate ruse” to deceive borrowers and regulators about its use of high-interest online loans.

“The company engaged in an elaborate scheme to collect payments far higher than allowed by state law,” Swanson said in a statement. “The company must cancel all outstanding loans, pay money back to consumers, and undo any adverse reporting to the credit bureaus.”

CashCall fraudulently claimed that the loans it provided were subject to tribal sovereign immunity because they were made by a South Dakota company called Western Sky Financial Inc., authorities claimed.

However, the state argued that tribal sovereign immunity doesn’t protect an individual member, including those that are assigned loans from a lender that claims immunity, such as CashCall and its subsidiaries.

The suit claims that after Western Sky supposedly originated the loans, it immediately assigned them to CashCall or similar companies, which then collected all payments on the loans and charge interest.

The resulting loans, ranging from $850 to $10,000, charged annual percentage rates of up to 342%, according to the lawsuit.

Under Minnesota law, a licensed lender making a similar loan could only charge an APR of about 22%

CashCall argued it shouldn’t abide by that rule, as it had immunity based on Western Sky — creating a “rent-to-tribe” arrangement.

As part of the settlement, CashCall will provide $4.5 million in restitution to consumers and cancel $5.2 million in outstanding loan balances.

Additionally, it must notify third parties that bought outstanding loan balances totaling more than $1.9 million that the debts should be forgiven.

This isn’t the first time Western Sky Financial has been involved in settlements or lawsuits with state regulators.

Last March, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office reached a deal to refund $270,000 to residents and requires the company to stop doing business in the state.

In August 2013, Western Sky Financial announced it would discontinue offering loans after facing lawsuits from around the country over three-digit interest rates for its loans. The company had perviously claimed they were not bound by state law because of their tribal affiliation.

[via Minneapolis Star Tribune]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Can Maker Of Web-Snooping Software Be Held Liable For Jealous Husband’s Wiretapping?

JCPenney CEO: Macy’s & Sears Closures Are Pretty Great For Us

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It’s kind of a no-brainer: when one company loses, its rivals stand to gain. And so it is for JCPenney, amid the turndown in traditional retail sales that’s causing Macy’s and Sears to close stores around the country.

JCPenney CEO Marvin Ellison talked to CNBC about how the issues plaguing the company’s competitors is good news for JCP. Responding to a question from CNBC’s reporter about what happens to JCPenney’s traffic when a Macy’s or a Sears in that same mall closes, Ellison said it’s a win.

“Our historical trends tell us that it is a net positive to JCPenney,” he said. “When we share a mall with Sears and they close, we gain market share. So it’s a net positive for sales growth. When Macy’s closes in a mall, historically, it’s been a net positive,” he said.

What’s more, these store closures are “well telegraphed,” meaning JCPenney knows when and where to swoop in and try to lure customers who used to shop at the closed stores.

“We know exactly when it’s going to happen, so we can take specific steps to get the traffic to flow our way,” Ellison explained. Even if mall operators don’t replace a closed store — which is typically one that’s been underperforming, which means there’s not really any traffic to steal — with a JCPenney location, he adds that “net positive, we think that it’s going to benefit us and allow us to take market share” regardless.

JC Penney CEO Marvin Ellison Sits Down with CNBC’s Courtney Reagan on “Power Lunch” Today [CNBC]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Gawker.com Shutting Down After Bankruptcy Sale To Univision

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Gawker Media declared bankruptcy in June after losing a major lawsuit. The company went up on the auction block this week and Univision bought it up. And while the company likely has plans in mind for at least some of what it paid for, the flagship site isn’t going with: Gawker.com is shutting down.

Gawker — until 2008, the parent company of Consumerist, and the former employer of two current Consumerist staffers — had its assets acquired by Univision for $135 million in a bankruptcy auction this week.

According to Gawker, the purchase included subsidiary sites Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, and Lifehacker but left the fate of Gawker itself unclear.

Today, that fate became clear. The one-time internet media stalwart announced it would be ending operations next week, roughly 14 years after its founding. “The near-term plans for Gawker.com’s coverage, as well as the site’s archives, have not yet been finalized,” site staff wrote.

Employees of other Gawker Media sites tell Consumerist that no official word about their properties has yet come from Univision one way or the other. Univision’s Isaac Lee — the chief news, entertainment, and digital officer for Univision Communications — is expected to speak with Gawker Media staff in their New York office tomorrow.

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Harley-Davidson To Pay $15M To Resolve Creation Of “Super Tuners” That Violate Emission Standards

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Turns out that the use of so-called “defeat devices” to cheat federal emissions standards isn’t just relegated to four-wheeled vehicles made by Volkswagen. Harley-Davidson today agreed to settle charges it violated the Clean Air Act by paying $15 million, as well as buying back and destroying nearly 340,000 “super tuners” that emit higher amounts of certain air pollutants than what the company certified to EPA. 

The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice announced the settlement [PDF] on Thursday, resolving a complaint accusing Harley-Davidson, Inc. of manufacturing and selling approximately 339,392 motorcycle tuners.

According to the complaint [PDF], since at least 2008, Harley-Davidson has manufactured and sold two types of aftermarket defeat devices, known as “super tuners,” that alter the emissions controls of some cycles.

Such devices are prohibited under the Clean Air Act for use on vehicles that have been certified to meet EPA emissions standards.

The tuners were made to allow owners to change how the motorcycle’s engine functions. By modifying the settings, tuners increase power and performance, but also increase the motorcycles’ emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.

The 339,392 tuners were shipped and sold at Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country.

Additionally, the EPA and DOJ say Harley-Davidson made and sold more than 12,682 motorcycles from 2006 to 2008 that were not covered by an EPA certification that ensures a vehicle meets federal clean air standards.

Under the Clean Air Act, motor vehicle manufacturers are required to certify that their vehicles will meet applicable federal emissions standards to control air pollution, and every motor vehicle sold in the U.S. must be covered by an EPA-issued certificate of conformity.

The Act also prohibits the making and sale of devices — such as super tuners or defeat devices — that bypass, defeat, or render inoperative a motor vehicle’s EPA-certified emissions control system.

To resolve the complaint, Harley-Davidson must stop selling the defeat devices in the United States by Aug. 23. The motorcycle maker will buy back all tuners in stock at dealerships across the country and destroy them.

Additionally, the company must obtain a certification from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for any tuners it sells in the United States in the future. This certification will show that the tuners used in Harley-Davidson motorcycles do not exceed the EPA-certified emissions limits.

Harley-Davidson will also conduct tests on motorcycles that have been tuned with the CARB-certified tuners and provide the results to EPA to ensure that its motorcycles remain in compliance with EPA emissions requirements.

As part of the settlement, the company will pay a $12 million civil penalty and spend $3 million to mitigate air pollution through a project to replace conventional woodstoves with cleaner-burning stoves in local communities.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

If You’re In The Market For A WWII-Era Tank, This French Museum Has The Auction For You

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After failing to attract enough visitors to keep it afloat, the Normandy Tank Museum has decided to sell of its entire collection of tanks, military vehicles, trucks, aircraft, and motorcycles in an auction next month.

There will be more than 40 tanks for sale, some of which have been restored to working order, and some that were used on D-Day during World War II, Bloomberg reports.

The auction on Sept. 18 will be run by a Paris-based luxury auction house, only a few miles from the beach where Allied forces landed on D-Day, before going on to liberate northwestern Europe from the Germans. Also for sale will be other vehicles, as well as dozens of mannequins decked out in battle dress.

The museum opened in 2013, supplied largely by the private collection of the founder’s father, who started collecting WWII armored vehicles in the 1980s.

“We thought the museum would attract more people,” the museum’s co-founder Stephane Nerrant told Bloomberg. “The terrorist attacks had a considerable impact on visitor attendance,” he said, without providing specific numbers.

So how much will a wartime tank set you back? The estimated price for a 1944 M4 Sherman tank — the most produced American tank during WWII — is about €250,000 to €400,000, or around $280,000 to $450,000.

This French Museum Can Sell You a Genuine D-Day Tank [Bloomberg]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Petsmart Opens New Spa-Themed Prototype Store

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If you were to ask my dog what she wants out of her experience at the groomer, “no bath” and “no haircut” would probably be at the top of her list. She would be less interested in a more spa-like entrance with a concierge desk and free coffee beverages for humans. In a prototype store on New York’s Long Island, the big-box pet store is experimenting with a new store that focuses on pet services in a more fancy manner.

What customers will see when they walk in will be a concierge-style counter with bakery-style trays of fresh dog treats. The new store will be less than half the size of a normal Petsmart, and feature a small retail area with the more upscale, “natural” pet foods that the chain sells.

The store has self-serve dog wash stations, a useful feature close to the beach on Long Island, where the store is located. It also has a grooming salon and a Banfield animal hospital, common features for standard Petsmart stores.

“Like any spa, our Pet Spa store is intended to provide the amenities and comforts to enhance one’s lifestyle, but this time with your pet,” the company’s chief experience officer said in a statement.

The spa-like experience will probably be more relaxing for owners than for pets, but they are the ones holding the wallets. Petsmart’s plan is to offer an “enhanced pet lifestyle customer experience” and bring ideas that work well at this store to the rest of the chain.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Netflix Is Coming To More Hotels Near You

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Who wouldn’t want to catch up on a few episodes of House of Cards or Stranger Things while biding time in your hotel room waiting out your latest business trip? A new partnership between Netflix and in-room entertainment platform Enseo means chances are better that you’ll be able to do just that.

Netflix and Enseo announced an agreement on Wednesday that expands the platform’s rights to distribute the streaming application to hundreds of more hotels around the world.

While the two companies have worked together in the past, the expanded agreement allows Enseo to offer Netflix to any hotel under a contract in any country worldwide where Netflix is available.

This means that Enseo, which already offers the app in over 300 hotels in the U.S., can provide Netflix access to hotels that are beyond those listed on its pre-approved list of brands.

Through the Enseo system, hotel guests can to log in to their Netflix accounts directly from their room TVs. Watching TV shows or movies through the service in-room does not incur any internet charges and guests’ login information is deleted upon checkout.

“Our partnership with Enseo brings Netflix members a high quality viewing experience on their hotel room TV,” Paul Perryman, Director Business Development at Netflix, said in a statement. “Through our expanded agreement, now more hotels in more countries will be able to provide guests access to their favorite Netflix TV shows and movies on the in-room television, making their hotel room feel more like home.”

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Of Course People In Wisconsin Are Getting Wedding Cakes Made Entirely Out Of Cheese

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Usually, the topic of wedding trends makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a wire hanger dipped in hot tar, but when you introduce cheese into the picture, well, that’s another matter entirely.

The wise folks in my home state of Wisconsin have changed up the old wedding routine by requesting cakes made entirely of cheese, instead of your usual sponge cake, frosting, and fondant creations, reports WKOW in Madison.

“A lot of people are kind of taken back at first, like, ‘Is that made out of cheese?'” the owner of Fromagination, Ken Monteleone, told the news station.

The cheese wheels are decorated to look just like wedding or other cakes you might buy to celebrate something, and they’re becoming pretty popular.

“People come in wanting cheese for their special occasion, weddings,” says Monteleone. “So the more we started thinking about it, we said why not do something that creates a memorable moment for that special day.”

The only down side, he says, is that while there’s room for creativity, some kinds of cheese don’t work as well as others. And if you get a soft cheese in there, it could get messy if it’s served outside on a hot day.

Apparently the idea can be traced back to England, but it’s unsurprising that its found a new home in Wisconsin, land of the cheeseheads, and home of the world’s best cheese.

More couples chose to say ‘cheese’ for their weddings cakes [WKOW]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Report: There Are 1.2M Fewer Retail Workers Than There Would Be Without The Internet

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What would the retail landscape look like if we didn’t have the Internet and online shopping? No one can say, for sure (unless you know someone who can travel to parallel universes*), but one analyst says there’d be about 1.2 million more people with jobs in retail.

J.P. Morgan analyst Michael Feroli says online sellers like Amazon, eBay, and Newegg are so good at selling and shipping stuff that they don’t need as many human workers, reports MarketWatch. Online workers also bring in a lot more cash: each online worker generates a whopping $1,267,000 in sales revenue sales, compared to $279,000 for traditional workers.

Feroli cautions that this doesn’t mean online shopping has stolen jobs from people, simply that the shift toward e-commerce has boosted productivity so much that companies can get by with fewer workers.

It’s not just the online arena that has changed, jobs wise: similar shifts have happened over the years in areas of the economy like farming and manufacturing, MarketWatch notes, and yet the U.S. is producing more food and manufactured goods than ever.

*Please introduce me to your friend, I have questions.

There are 1.2 million missing retail workers because Amazon’s so good [MarketWatch]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

American Apparel May Move Manufacturing Out Of California

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Part of American Apparel’s identity is tied to the company’s Los Angeles manufacturing facility, but executives for the recently bankrupt clothing company recently floated the idea of outsourcing trickier items to third parties. Now comes news that AA has its eyes on keeping its manufacturing in the states, but in areas where labor costs are lower.

The Los Angeles Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reports that American Apparel could move some processes to states such as Tennessee, North Carolina, or South Carolina, where the minimum wage is lower than L.A.

Starting in 2020, the minimum wage in L.A. is expected to reach $15/hour, while the hourly pay in the three other states is currently $7.25.

American Apparel declined to address the possible move, noting it does “not comment on rumors or speculation.”

Still, sources say the retailer is in the process of shedding some L.A. facilities, setting the stage for a move by next year or 2018.

The L.A. Times reports that the company’s downtown lease doesn’t end until 2019, but sources say the company could retain that building for designers.

Speculation that the retailer would move some of its manufacturing outside of L.A. began this spring, when Chief Executive Paula Schneider sent a letter to employees about layoffs and a “redesign of our production process” that will also include making fewer garments in a year so the company can cut down on inventory that eventually has to be discounted anyway.

She also floated the idea that manufacturing some trickier pieces like jeans and other denim clothing might be outsourced to a third-party company, although those items “will still be American-made.”

The company says only a fraction of garments would be outsourced, the ones that are more complicated and take more labor, but aren’t the big moneymakers. For example, 80% of the garments made by American Apparel in 2015 were things like T-shirts, while 20% were complicated items like denim.

American Apparel is said to be considering moving manufacturing out of California [Los Angeles]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

T-Mobile Getting Rid Of Mobile Plans, Now Only Offers Unlimited Everything

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T-Mobile has spent the years since its failed acquisition by AT&T building its LTE network and launching new phases of its “UnCarrier” initiative. Today, the provider that started the industry trend away from contracts and handset subsidies is also getting rid of mobile data plans. From here out, it will offer one postpaid option: unlimited voice, data, and text..

The change grew out of the Binge On zero-rating service that the company started last year, after seeing how much streaming video and music that customers were happy to gobble up when it didn’t count against their data allotment.

Under the new plans, the compression that comes with Binge On will be the default, and customers can pay an additional $25 per month if they want high-definition video streaming.

99% of customers that request Binge On have kept the service, since most people find that they don’t need high-definition video on a tiny smartphone screen.

Other upcharges will include 5 GB of mobile hotspot data for users who tether their phones for $15 per line per month, and unlimited calling to 30 countries for $15 per line per month. Roaming to countries that aren’t Andorra is already included.

The pricing for the plans is one line for $70 per month, two lines for a total of $120 per month, and additional lines for $20 each up through a total of 8 lines.

“Our postpaid business is family plans,” Legere noted, asserting that the real price per line is $40 per month, not $70, since that’s how most customers will sign up for these plans.

The company knows that most of its customers are on family plans, and the price point that you’ll likely hear advertised will be $40 per line, since that will be the price for a family with four smartphones.

That is different from “Dumb, Dumber, and Yellow,” as the leather jacket-clad CEO calls his competitors, which have been backing away from unlimited plans, charging customers extra or requiring them to sign up for satellite TV service if they want unlimited data.

“I can tell you what Sprint’s working on now,” Legere said in response to a reporter’s question that was not actually about Sprint. during this morning’s conference call. It’s whatever we’re working on now, just add six months. It’s called copy-paste.”

If you don’t like the compression of content that came with the Binge On zero-rating service, there’s a $25 charge that you can pay and get high-definition streaming.

“

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

McDonald’s Removes Fitness Trackers From Happy Meals Over Skin Irritation Concerns

Uber Launching Self-Driving Ride-Share Vehicles In Pittsburgh This Month

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The ride-sharing experience of the future is coming to Pittsburgh this month, when Uber will launch a fleet of autonomous cars — custom Volvo XC90s — that come with a human being to supervise in the driver’s seat.

While many experts would say truly self-driving cars are years from hitting the road, Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick sees it differently.

“We are going commercial,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek. “This can’t just be about science.”

Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, leapfrogging over companies like Google and Tesla, who have also been working on autonomous vehicles. Once they’ve requested a car, they’ll be paired with a driverless vehicle at random, though the test cars will for now come with safety drivers.

They’re trained engineers who sit with their hands on the wheel, prepared to take over if something unexpected happens. A copilot will assist from the passenger seat, taking notes, and everything is recorded by cameras inside and outside the vehicle. There’s also a tablet in the backseat telling passengers what’s going on, and urging them to pretend the other humans aren’t there.

“The goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don’t want the public talking to our safety drivers,” Raffi Krikorian, the company’s engineering director, told Bloomberg.

Trips will be totally free at first, instead of $1.30 per mile, the local rate for Uber in Pittsburgh. Eventually, prices will fall so much that the cost of a driverless ride will be a lot cheaper than one in a private car, Kalanick says. As for why the company picked Pittsburgh — it’s where Uber has been working with robotics experts at Carnegie Mellon University.

Volvo will be providing about 100 cars for the fleet by the end of the year, though Uber will also be working with other carmakers as well.

Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month [Bloomberg Businessweek]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Sprint Owner Softbank Still Dreams Of Buying T-Mobile

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It doesn’t matter that T-Mobile CEO John Legere said two years ago that he’s heard enough merger talk: the CEO of Softbank, the Japanese company that owns 80% of competitor Sprint, is still interested in buying the carrier. He’s happy to wait until the time is right.

The right time means waiting for a few things to happen. First, Bloomberg speculates, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is waiting for the next U.S. president take office, then name his or her choice for chair of the Federal Communications Commision.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler notably said that the U.S. needs four carriers for things to stay competitive, and it’s hard to imagine what the state of the mobile phone market would be if not for T-Mobile’s influential moves like getting rid of phone subsidies and giving away pizza. Well, maybe not the pizza.

The FCC has the power to send a proposed merger to an administrative hearing, which could drag on for so long that it might be better to simply not bother in the first place if regulators seem unfriendly to a merger.

Experts note that Sprint would need to be in worse shape financially for a merger to go through easily. Otherwise, an FCC friendly to the idea might consider blessing the merger if it would mean a third large carrier that serves as a viable competitor to the two largest mobile carriers in the U.S., AT&T and Verizon.

The most likely merger partner for T-Mobile may not be another mobile phone company, anyway. AT&T acquired DirecTV, and Comcast was one rumored suitor for T-Mobile.

Sprint Owner Is Said to Still Hold Out Hope for a T-Mobile Deal [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Comcast Bringing Next-Gen Internet Service To Chicago, But At Double The Monthly Cost Of Other Cities

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Back in February, Comcast announced that it was going to launch its next-generation in a handful of cities. Customers in the first two markets — Atlanta and Nashville — were able to get this high-speed option for a reasonable $70/month, but it looks like Chicago residents will have to pay twice that amount.

For those not familiar with DOCSIS 3.1, it’s a new standard for delivering data over coaxial cable lines that allows companies to send data at speeds faster than most current fiberoptic connections but without having to build an entirely new network.

For the cable company, that means it doesn’t have to spend a fortune or time on replacing cable lines or running new fiber lines next to the old lines to service two different types of subscriber. For the end-user, it simply requires a new modem to receive the higher-speed connection.

Which makes sense that when Comcast announced rollouts of DOCSIS 3.1 in Atlanta and Nashville, it offered new customers a rate of $70/month if they agreed to a 3-year contract. There was also a no-contract option for $140.

However, today’s announcement about Chicago only mentions the $139/month rate. It is still a no-contract rate, but there is no discount for those willing to agree to a three-year deal.

Comcast says it will “test promotional pricing,” but gives no indication of what that will be. Additionally, the Atlanta and Nashville $70/month rate was not described as promotional, but as the given rate for people who signed the 36-month contract.

We’ve asked Comcast to explain why it is charging double to Chicagoans but have yet to hear a response. However, we have a pretty good idea why the Windy City is getting a cruddy deal from Kabletown.

See, Atlanta and Nashville are cities where Comcast must compete with high-speed, affordable services from both Google Fiber and AT&T’s GigaPower. It’s not a coincidence that the going rate for these competing broadband providers in Atlanta and Nashville is also $70/month.

Meanwhile, Google Fiber only lists Chicago as a “potential” Fiber city (and the company seems to be having second thoughts about providing landline-based broadband in general), so that’s one competitor gone.

AT&T’s GigaPower is being rolled out in Chicago, but as the company has done in other markets where it lacks competition, AT&T does not offer a lower rate.

That means that the only high-speed competition that Comcast faces in Chicago is from AT&T, at $110, not that is far below the rate Comcast is offering.

What About Philly?

I ask this not just because I live in Philadelphia and can see the Eye of Sauron Comcast HQ tower from my roof, but because the company made a huge deal about doing its first proof-of-concept demo for DOCSIS 3.1 in Philadelphia.

When Comcast first announced that Atlanta and Nashville would be the first two markets for the next-gen service — followed by Chicago, Detroit, and Miami — we asked the company why Philly had been left off that list, when it’s a city in dire need of affordable high-speed connections. We were only told that announcements on additional markets would be forthcoming. Today, Comcast repeated the exact same line — more than six months later.

Hannah Jane Sassaman, Policy Director for the Media Mobilizing Project, a Philadelphia organization that has repeatedly called on Comcast to do better by the residents of its home market, says she’s disappointed that the company has yet to say when it will bring DOCSIS 3.1 here.

“Comcast’s hometown is a city where thousands of families struggle to afford fast, reliable Internet, and where entrepreneurs in Center City and neighborhoods across Philadelphia can’t find or afford connectivity to grow their businesses,” Sassaman tells Consumerist. “Many of the cities with this Comcast gigabit offering have high-speed competitors in Google Fiber or AT&T. Comcast should invest in gigabit internet here at home in Philadelphia, which needs more high-speed choices, especially as Comcast committed to expand new initiatives of this sort in Philly as a part of their new 15-year franchise deal with the city.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist