Consumer Ally Tips

Whole Foods Market is recalling 61 bakery products and prepared foods sold under its store brand after its supplier, Rolf's Patisserie of Illinois, was linked to 100 cases of food poisoning, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

Rolf's Patisserie recalled all its desserts made after Nov. 1 after they were connected to four outbreaks of staphylococcus aureus food poisoning in two states. The desserts were sold online and through retailers, wholesalers and the bakery's catering service, including Whole Foods. The FDA is working with the Illinois Department of Public Health to get a distribution list.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control said staphylococcal food poisoning is caused by toxins in food produced by the bacterium. Consumers may start to feel sick from the toxins in as little as 30 minutes and usually throw up, feel nausea, have stomach cramps and diarrhea. Most people get better in one to three days.

The biggest consumer product recall of 2010, it turned out, should not have been a recall at all.

But a dozen recalls involved more than 1 million products apiece and left consumers scrambling to repair, replace or get rid of products found to pose safety hazards or have dangerous defects.

When McDonald's recalled 12 million Shrek glasses over concerns they had dangerous levels of cadmium, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission had yet to set official limits for what constituted dangerous. When they did a few months later, the result was the Shrek glasses would not have been recalled.

So, here are the 10 largest recalls of 2010 issued by the CPSC by the number of products recalled:

Officials are warning consumers about people calling for donations, pretending to be raising money for the Department of Child Services -- a department which does not exist.

Indiana Deputy Attorney General Abigail Kuzma says that government agencies or departments will never solicit charitable donations (they're funded directly by your tax dollars; they don't have to ask.)

The callers say that "someone" from the home committed to a donation a month ago and they are just calling to follow up. Apparently the Caller ID sometimes shows as "child services."

Dubious psychics are nothing new, but around the time the Psychic Friends Network went bankrupt, telephone-based psychics began peddling their services on the Web. And thanks to the rise of social media, disgruntled customers are finding it easier to complain about them and warn others.

Consumer Ally partner SiteJabber's mission is to help people avoid fraudulent websites and find ones they love. And its users aren't shy about saying just why they hate or love a particular site. So we asked our friends at Site Jabber to provide us with a list of the Top 5 Online Psychic Scams.

Here they are, including comments from readers, which we've reproduced without any editing:

Keeping track of the latest product and food recalls can be a challenge, so Consumer Ally has collected them in one place for you to check each week.

Here is this week's roundup of recalls:

If you're surfing the Web for a great deal on consumer electronics and come across an unbelievable deal, don't believe it -- especially if it's an overseas site that refuses to let you pay with a credit card.

Consumer Ally reader Ellis Koufodontis, a construction manager from Margate, Fla., learned that lesson the hard way, and is out more than $800 thanks to a shady Chinese site based in Beijing called Electalk.com.

Making cheap knockoffs isn't limited to designer fashion, as a New Jersey sweep of urban discount stores this month found. The sweep revealed that holiday lights, Christmas decorations and other electrical items had counterfeit Underwriters Laboratory labels on them.

The real labels, with their familiar "UL," are meant to assure consumers bought products that met certain standards. The phony labels mean those products may not be up to safety standards, according to the state's attorney general.

Ever been bilked by one of those Web sites offering to help you find 'free' government grants? The FTC said today it sued a "massive Internet enterprise" that raked in millions of dollars by using 51 phony companies to charge consumers as much as $60 a month plus a $130-a-year annual fee to track down those grants, which don't actually exist.

The operation called itself I Works, and used web sites that claimed free money was available from the government in the form of Small Business Administration loans to help pay personal bills, or sold other types of money-making schemes, using the words "risk-free" and "free."

I've taken dozens of As Seen on TV products for a spin this year. Some failed to impress, while others were surprisingly wow-worthy.

To be among the best, however, meant these As Seen on TV products had to meet some strict criteria:

1. Does the product do what it claims to do? Believe it or not, that's no easy feat.
2. Is it reasonably priced, even when accounting for shipping and handling, which can sometimes be shockingly high?
3. Does the product have legs? Did I keep loving it even after using it for awhile?

Here is my list of the best As Seen On TV products I tried out in 2010.

Drumroll please .....