Equifax
"David" can't get Equifax to correct his credit report. Since 2006, he's been trying to get them to remove a misreported student loan, and they've repeatedly ignored him or said it's not their fault. Because of this, David's credit report says he owes a total of $56,910 in student loans, instead of the accurate $28,455.
So what exactly is the problem? After 12 online (and phone) disputes to Equifax and 14 calls (and faxes) to the Direct Loan Servicing Center, each party seems to blame the other.
More »
freecreditreport
We're warning you now, so that you won't bother to fall for the "you-gotta-see-this!" absurdity of an 85-year-old former talk show announcer and sweepstakes pitchman
reduced to self-mockery in order to make some money. We don't begrudge McMahon his career, but as you know we
deeply begrudge "free"creditreport.com for its misleading name, commercials, promises—well, pretty much everything.
More »
Verizon
Brielle is angry at Verizon for ruining her router. What's worse is that they won't do anything to fix the problem they created.
They acknowledge the router got an upgraded firmware image automatically (forget the fact I had explicitly disabled that feature for this very reason), but I'm shit out of luck. Even though the fact my formerly perfectly working 6100 is now bricked because of something Verizon did without my approval or knowledge, they will not provide me with a new one for free because the router is out of warranty.
More »
Tahoe Joes
Consumerist reader MunkyBoi had a terrible experience at Tahoe Joe's, where he and his fiancee held their wedding dinner. He tried to follow up with the manager of the restaurant, both to explain what went wrong and to commend the one waitress who saved the day, but the manager kept brushing him off. Finally he wrote a letter to corporate, and was surprised to receive a very personal response—along with a $250 gift certificate—a few days later. We'd love to know if that $250 came out of the manager's profits.
More »
Gwyneth Paltrow wants to help you live your life by offering you some sound advice. As that is not too far off from what we at Consumerist
try to do, we clicked over to "GOOP" (that's what she's calling the website) and were told to do the following: Treat ourselves to something (Hydrox cookies, check,); Go to a city we've never been to (Texarkana, here we come!); Learn something new (We've chosen modal logic and skeet shooting); Don't be lazy; and finally "Workout and stick with it."
Hmm. Maybe if we do that last one we'll be hot enough to offer bland, generic advice and get away with it.
[
GOOP]
Circuit City
Robert bought an extended warranty from Circuit City, but they won't honor it to repair his broken computer because they claim it has water damage. Robert writes, "As God is my witness, this computer has never seen water," and he sent us the photos Circuit City sent him.
More »
Riaa
The only jury verdict against a file-sharer has been thrown out by U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota, who declared a mistrial because he had committed "manifest error of the law" by instructing the jury that "that the recording industry did not have to prove anybody downloaded the songs from Thomas' open Kazaa share folder."
More »
bailout
CNN says that a deal has been reached — sort of. A bipartisan counterproposal to Bush's $700 billion bailout plan has been drafted. The plan calls for caps on executive pay, and provides oversight on the Treasury's actions.
More »
Career day
A travel reporter for the New York Times spent two days working as a flight attendant on American Airlines, flying between Dallas and New York City and shadowing the real flight attendants as they dealt with drunk passengers, supply shortages, and travelers who are already fed up and tense before they even board the plane.
“Who would have thought, after 30 years, that we’d be a flying 7-Eleven,” Becky Gilbert, a three-decade veteran of the industry told me during a break in our training session in Fort Worth.
More »
Annual credit report
You've probably seen those commercials featuring a friendly looking jackass and his factually inaccurate songs about what can happen to you if you don't check your credit report. It's true, checking your credit report is a good idea, but you can avoid subscription-hawking pay sites and, instead, go to AnnualCreditReport.com.
More »
Confessions
CNN has an interview with two former credit card bankers who are admitting that their job was to get consumers to max out their credit cards and take on as much debt as possible, regardless of the customer's ability to afford it. They both worked for MBNA at their "sprawling consumer call center in Belfast, Maine." The bankers say that they were told to aggressively push cash advances, and were trained to convince consumers that they needed the maximum amount of debt at the highest interest rate.
More »
Privacy
Confusion about what those color coded bracelets mean can cause deadly medical mistakes, but if the bracelets are standardized — is everyone going to know your business?
More »
Threaten to cancel
Yesterday we told you about a man who
saved $238.92 per year on his Comcast bill by threatening to cancel and getting a discount to keep him around. Numerous readers chimed in in the comments with their tales of victory using the same method, tales of failure, and a few company employees shared their insider perspective. Ive rounded up the comments and sorted them by the aforementioned categories so you may learn from their tips and tricks to save on your cable bill. Some of the same tactics can be applied to other services, like cellphone or credit cards, as well...
More »
Wamu
The
Wall Street Journal is reporting that WaMu is courting several private equity firms about a potential takeover after their debt was downgraded even further into junk status by Standard & Poor's. Once merely "junk," WaMu is apparently, "so junky we are not even kidding around about it anymore."
More »