Blog dedicado a la formación en todos sus ámbitos: presencial, online, a distancia
According to the Assurance of Discontinuance document [PDF] filed in the matter the office of AG Eric T. Schneiderman began investigating this franchisee back in October, issuing subpoenas to see if the company had been in violation of state and federal labor laws.
Some employees who work for this franchisee claim they are being paid like they were tipped employees (i.e., that they would be deriving a majority of their income from tips) when in fact they were spending much of their time doing work for which they would not receive tips, like working in the kitchen.
As we’ve explained before, employers are allowed to pay tipped workers below minimum wage, so long as the employees receive enough tips to make up the difference. In New York, the minimum wage for a tipped delivery driver is $5.65/hour, and there are statutory limits put on the number of hours a tipped employee can do work for which he or she will not receive a tip.
New York law prohibits employers from firing workers who make good-faith complaints — whether it’s to the employer or to a government agency — that they may be receiving wages that violate state and federal labor laws.
The Schneiderman’s office is still investigating whether the Domino’s franchisee is underpaying his drivers or forcing them to do too much untipped work, but both the franchisee has entered into the above-linked Assurance agreement that will get the dismissed employees back to work by Sunday, Dec. 15 at the latest, and protect them against any retaliation.
“Because of this agreement, 25 workers will be back to work in time for the holidays,” said Schneiderman in a statement. “New York’s labor laws exist to ensure the protection and fair treatment of employees in the workplace. My office will take swift action where there is any indication that an employer may have retaliated against workers for complaining about illegal labor conditions.”
One of the reinstated employees says he and his fellow drivers are “excited to be able to return to work at a legal wage. This was never just about us alone — it was about the 84% of NYC fast-food workers who, like us, are victims of wage theft in our city.”
Yes, the very ones that sold the contaminated yogurts in the first place. Reader David reports that he hasn’t been able to redeem his coupons, since retailers are often suspicious of “free product” coupons. We definitely understand that.
“We were one of many families who bought the recalled product,” writes David. “Replacement coupons were sent. Stores would not accept them. A second batch was mailed. Same result/problem.”
Two batches of coupons? Oh, dear. We contacted Chobani for some advice, and their recommendation was…to contact Chobani for some more coupons. “We understand it can be a frustrating situation, and promise to do whatever it takes to ensure our consumers are fully satisfied,” a company spokesperson told Consumerist. If you can’t find a retailer that will exchange your coupon for yogurts, call them at (877) 847-6181 send an e-mail via www.chobani.com/care for replacement coupons or a refund.
One more step up on the ladder to becoming more like its parent company Facebook, Instagram announced a new feature today that could change how you share your life by allowing you to choose who you’re sharing certain photos with.
Perhaps your friends make fun of you for taking selfies late at night with dramatic lighting when you’ve been thinking seriously about the meaning of life. But there’s a burning desire inside you to share that photo with someone, anyone who could possibly appreciate it. And it just so happen your mother just loves any photo you’re in, especially when you wear you hair away from your face the way she likes.
Or maybe all the rest of your friends get a good chuckle from the seven cat photos you’ve posted in a row, but you don’t want that new guy/gal you’re into to know how much time you spend capturing Brixton MacFuzzypaw’s good side.
With Instagram Direct, which rolled out today, users can choose to send photos directly to whichever friends they follow. Any photos shared with you, as well as those you send to pals, will show up in a new inbox in the upper righthand corner of the home screen.
It works just like regular Instagram: After you’ve taken a photo and put whichever old-timey or sepia or whatever filter on it, you can select DIRECT on the “Share To” page where you choose whether it’s going on Facebook, Twitter or wherever else. That way you can select users (who you must be following) and send it off just to them without it appearing on your public feed.
If you receive photos from someone you don’t follow, it’ll end up in your “Requests” area where you can decide whether or not you want to accept the photo. We’re going to guess that no, That One Floppy Haired Guy In The Most Popular Boy Band Right Now isn’t going to accept your photos but at least you can try.
(Consumerist)
As we mentioned in November, a big sticking point between the FCC and CTIA – The Wireless Association was the insistence by the FCC of a standard that would require carriers to proactively provide notice to consumers when their phones would become eligible for unlocking. The wireless industry understandably balked at that idea, given that it would be like reminding customers, “Hey, your contract is up. Why don’t you take your new phone over to our competitor?”
But looking at the six standards below, it appears as if CTIA ultimately relented, out of fear that the FCC would use its authority to require it anyway.
Here are the six additions that AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint have agreed to and which will be added to the CTIA Consumer Code. Today’s agreement gives the carriers three months to implement at least three of the six standards, and a year to implement all six:
1. Disclosure: Carrier will post “clear, concise and readily accessible” policies on postpaid and prepaid mobile wireless device unlocking on their websites.
2. Postpaid Unlocking Policy: Carriers, upon request, will unlock wireless devices or provide the necessary information to unlock devices for their customers and former customers in good standing and owners of eligible devices after the fulfillment of their service contract, device finance planning or payment of ETF.
3. Prepaid Unlocking: Carriers, upon request, will unlock prepaid devices no later than one year after initial activation, consistent with reasonable time, payment or usage requirements.
4. Notice: Carriers will clearly notify customers with locked devices when those devices are eligible for unlocking. The carrier also has the option of automatically unlocking devices remotely when they become eligible. This is all to be done without an additional fee.
However, carriers “reserve the right to charge non-customers’/non-former-customers a reasonable fee for unlocking requests.”
5. Response Time: Carriers are given two business days after receiving a request to unlock the device or initiate a request to the manufacturer to unlock the device, or provide an explanation why the device does not qualify or why the carrier needs more time to process the request.
6. Deployed Personnel Unlocking: Carriers will unlock mobile wireless devices for deployed military personnel who are customers in good standing upon provision of deployment papers.
Carriers can deny any unlocking request if they have “reasonable basis to believe the request is fraudulent or the device is stolen.”
This may be the end of the year-long unlocking saga, which began when the Librarian of Congress listened to wireless industry lobbyists and made a change to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that made it illegal for a consumer to unlock a new wireless device — even if he owns the device outright — without the permission of his current wireless carrier.
Since then, everyone from regular folks to advocacy groups to lawmakers and the White House has called for the Librarian to rethink his industry-biased decision, or for the FCC to take action that would allow consumers to unlock their devices without fear of violating the law.
“This is a welcomed move that should give consumers more flexibility and choice in the wireless market. This agreement extends unlocking abilities to both pre and post-paid customers and also to devices gifted or purchased from outside the carrier,” said George Slover, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union. “The ability to unlock your phone is only effective if consumers are aware they can unlock, which is why we are encouraged that this announcement places an emphasis on notifying customers of their eligibility. Consumers Union is committed to monitoring the agreement to ensure that it works for consumers and urges all carriers to adopt these new policies.”
Slover did have some concerns about the fees wireless companies will allow themselves to charge to non-customers.
“We will be keeping an eye on these fees to ensure consumers are not priced out of unlocking their phones,” he explains.
The bad news, of course, is that Coby Electronics is no longer around to handle the recall. Eight retailers that carried the item have stepped up and will give customers some kind of refund or gift card for the TVs.
How can you identify a recalled TV? The sets are black flat panels with a 32″ screen. The model number is TFTV3229, and serial numbers of recalled sets begin with LG and have M07 or M10 in the 9th, 10th and 11th position of the serial number.
The affected TVs were sold between August 2011 and November 2013. Here’s where you can contact the retailers to get more information about the recall if you do own an affected television.
ABC Warehouse: (855) 510-0070
Best Buy: (800) 566-7498 or and click on Product Recalls at the bottom of the page for more information.
Fry’s Electronics: at (877) 688-7678
h.h. gregg: (888) 723-7385
Nebraska Furniture Mart: (800) 359-1200
P.C. Richard & Son: (866) 312-4493
Sears/Kmart: (888) 852-3571
Toys R Us: (800) 869-7787
The problem with this recall? These eight retailers aren’t the only ones that sold the TV. Others carried it as well. That’s an issue because consumers have been instructed to go back to the retailer where they bought their TV for a possible refund. Are refunds available from those other retailers? Customers will have to find out the hard way.
“We have decided to not oppose the broadcasters’ petition for certiorari before the United States Supreme Court,” said Aereo Founder and CEO Chet Kanojia in a statement. “While the law is clear and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and two different federal courts have ruled in favor of Aereo, broadcasters appear determined to keep litigating the same issues against Aereo in every jurisdiction that we enter. We want this resolved on the merits rather than through a wasteful war of attrition.”
As we mentioned earlier today, broadcasters alleged that Aereo — which captures freely available over-the-air network signals via arrays of tiny antennae each dedicated to a single online end-user — violates their copyright by failing to get permission or pay retransmission fees. In each region where Aereo has been deployed, the networks have filed federal lawsuits and requests for injunctions to stop the company from offering service. So far, the networks have not been successful.
Earlier this year, Aereo scored a major win with the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with Aereo’s contention that its service is no different than when someone places a dedicated TV antenna on his roof.
Realizing that it was going to eventually end up before the Supreme Court anyway, the networks recently appealed to the court, asking it to hear the case as soon as possible, without going through the various layers of the legal system that would normally be required.
In their appeal, the broadcasters attack the cloud-based DVR service offered by Aereo makes it different than your standard antenna. In 2006, broadcasters sued Cablevision over its cloud-based DVR service. The Second Circuit ruled in 2008 that the DVR did not violate the broadcasters’ copyright, and the Supreme Court subsequently refused to hear an appeal of the case.
Earlier today, Cablevision warned that the broadcasters’ appeal in the Aereo case could undermine that ruling and be a huge problem for all cloud-based technology.
“The long-standing landmark Second Circuit decision in Cablevision has served as a crucial underpinning to the cloud computing and cloud storage industry,” says Kanojia. “The broadcasters’ filing makes clear that they are using Aereo as a proxy to attack Cablevision itself.”
Executives at both CBS and FOX have said they will take their networks off the airwaves and go cable-only if Aereo wins in court. At the same time, companies like DirecTV and Time Warner Cable have been developing their own Aereo-like technology in the hopes of getting around the huge retransmission fees they have to pay to broadcast networks.
For better or worse, Anissa Chan and other Gmail users will never have to click “Display Images Below” again.
PROS
• These images are currently hosted by third-party servers, and when you choose to load the images it can give e-mail marketers all sorts of information about you. Ars Technica’s Ron Amadeo explains:
Marketers get a rough idea of your location via your IP address. They can see the HTTP referrer, meaning the URL of the page that requested the image. With the referral data, marketers can see not only what client you are using (desktop app, Web, mobile, etc.) but also what folder you were viewing the e-mail in… It’s even possible to uniquely identify each e-mail, so marketers can tell which e-mail address requested the images—they know that you’ve read the e-mail. And if it was spam, this will often earn you more spam since the spammers can tell you’ve read their last e-mail.
Instead, Google will cache all of these e-mail images on its own servers, meaning that the e-mail reader’s info is not transmitted back to the e-mail marketer just for loading images in an e-mail.
• Because Google is caching these images, the e-mails should load faster than when they had to pull from slower, third-party servers.
• It also takes away the hassle of having to click “Display images.”
CONS
• While you may not be providing as much data to e-mail marketers, you are making Google, the web’s largest online ad operator, even more of an active presence in your inbox. Granted, Google’s quiet scanning of your e-mails is something that longtime Gmail users are probably used to seeing in the form of contextual ads based on the content of their e-mails, or package tracking modules that not only know you’ve got an e-mail about an en route UPS package, but also know the tracking number. Gmail is not where you want to be if you want true privacy.
• Google is also getting rid of the “Display images” step for mobile users. For many people, this isn’t a huge deal as such images rarely eat up too much data. But for people with small data caps, or who are roaming internationally, every kilobyte counts.
• How to put this politely… There are some e-mails that may contain images that one might not want to load automatically, lest some passerby sees a screen full of naked flesh. It’s usually easy enough to avoid opening these in public situations (we’ve heard), but surely someone will unwittingly open a Spam porn message on their office computer or while using their phone on the train. Until now, those images would remain hidden thanks to the “Display images” default, but now…
Finally, and this is neither a pro nor con for consumers, but we expect to see a legal challenge from e-mail marketers whose products will suddenly be devalued thanks to the lack of data they will be able to mine from their messages. While Google is talking up this change as a pro-consumer move, marketers may charge that the company is overstepping its bounds and caching these images to unfairly harm competitors.
For example, tell us a story about a time when either information you gleaned from reading Consumerist helped you solve a problem or got you out of a tight spot.
Or if we were able to assist you in a particularly gnarly customer service situation, perhaps by getting involved with a company or business on your behalf, let us hear those stories as well.
It’s not just about us patting our own backs — that’s so unsatisfying, by the way — but it helps us, too. Not only will this exercise help mark the aforementioned upcoming event, it also gets us thinking up new ways we can help you, our readers. Because you’re the reason we’re here, and there’s no other way we’d rather celebrate than by continuing to get things done for you.
Send your stories to the tip line: tips@consumerist.com with the subject line CELEBRATE, and thank you in advance!
Pwnapanda posted the photograph on Reddit, where it set off a lively debate. No, not about exactly why Kmart is so terrible, though there was a discussion about that too. The important question was this: what color was this GBA originally?
Maybe it was white or clear, but its current condition makes that too horrible to contemplate. Commenters’ best guess was that it started out as the translucent orange color called “Spice.”
The real mystery is why this was still mounted to the display, since the Game Boy Advance was officially discontinued back in 2009. That doesn’t rule out a few still sitting on the shelves at Kmart at close to full price, but seeing what could be a decade-old game on the shelf and no one cares at all is so, so sad.
The important question: does the demo unit still work? Not really. “Got 30 seconds into ‘Mario vs Donkey Kong’ and then it died,” reports our intprepid retail archaeologist.
*(And yes, we’re aware that this is a Kmart, not a Walmart. In case you’re new here, Raiders of the Lost Walmart are on the lookout anywhere where there are impossibly old things inexplicable for sale.)
Decided to venture into the local Kmart. Wasn’t expecting to step back in time. [Reddit]
See, PepsiCo doesn’t just make Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Through Frito-Lay, the company also owns a large number of popular snack brands like Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos, Sun Chips, Lay’s, Funyuns, and Tostitos. And it’s the thought of being able to offer those products in conjunction with the wings and beverages that has BWW happy to say adios to Coke.
But it’s not just about having some Cheetos in a bowl on the table. No, there’s some crazy food science in the works here.
BWW CEO Sally Smith tells the AP that the recently visited the PepsiCo food innovation lab — which we imagine is like an Oompa-Loompa-less Wonka chocolate factory — where Pepsi showed off some possible treats that BWW could make with PepsiCo products, like Doritos as a crunchy topping for wings or chicken tenders, or salad dressing that uses Mountain Dew.
“I don’t think it will be in the next 12 months, but we’ll possibly start testing after a year or 18 months,” said Smith.
PepsiCo still has a huge partnership going with the Dorito-shell tacos going over at Taco Bell. Perhaps the way forward for the company is to just seek out more deals like that the BWW one.
Maybe it can reach out to Pepperidge Farm and create Cheeto-flavored Milano cookies? Or maybe the people at Mondavi might be interested in a Diet Mountain Dew zinfandel? The world could be PepsiCo’s orange-powder-coated oyster!
When TWC soon-to-be CEO Rob Marcus says “We are listening,” does he mean that the company is snooping on customers or is he using the majestic plural to refer to himself?
Earlier this week, Time Warner Cable’s incoming CEO Rob Marcus said that a top priority of his will be “Putting the customer at the center of everything we do” and that “the best customer service is when the customers don’t need to contact us at all for service.”
While we agree with Marcus’s statement, we don’t hold out much hope. After all, he’s been with the company since 2005 and has been its President and Chief Operating Officer for three years and was the Chief Financial Officer before that.
Unless outgoing CEO Glenn Britt was holding him back all this time from making sweeping systemic changes that would improve customer service, we’re just expecting more of the same under the direction of Marcus.
Time Warner Cable has a long way to go before anyone starts praising its customer service. The easiest way to anger a crowd of New Yorkers isn’t to walk around Times Square with a Celtics jersey, Red Sox cap while shouting about how great Tom Brady is. No, all you have to do is say the phrase, “So I called Time Warner Cable last night…” and you will immediately be drowning in a sea of commiseration.
And the stats back this sentiment up, with TWC being at or near the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index results for its cable TV service, its Internet service, and home phone service.
Of course, Marcus may now feel free to change the customer service model because he probably won’t be CEO for long, what with his company the subject of numerous takeover rumors.
“I want to make absolutely clear, our management team is completely focused on running Time Warner Cable for the long haul,” Marcus said, though we wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t do too much redecorating of the CEO’s office when he takes over next month.
Reader Daniel sent us what looked like a straightforward case of fuzzy math. At his local Target, a half-dozen eggs cost 99¢, while a dozen of the same exact eggs cost $2.09. Or do they?
“They are the same product, just different quantities,” Daniel wrote. “What’s even more amusing is the half dozen containers are just the dozen ones cut in half.” Well, that doesn’t make very much sense, unless Target is charging customers extra for the privilege of not having to pick up two separate half-dozens.
Except…wait a minute. The shelf tag for the eggs on the left says something about brown eggs. Maybe Target is really charging twelve cents extra for the privilege of having brown eggs. (Why do brown eggs always seem better, anyway? I’d pay an extra twelve cents for brown eggs any day, and I can’t articulate why.)
We wrote back to Daniel about this, and he said…well, actually, those eggs in the white boxes on the left are conventionally raised eggs with white shells, so even if it isn’t the same container, they’re the same darn eggs.
Maybe it’s time to revive our “Target is Crazy” series.
Hey, you. Yeah, you. C’mere.
Here at Consumerist we are nothing if not helpful when it comes to To Do lists. It’s so annoying to have that tickly feeling in the back of your brain like you had something you definitely, totally wanted to do, but just can’t remember it. We’ve got the answer: Signing up for our newsletter.
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Seattle police have recovered a “substantial” amount of the 200 cases of wine stolen on Thanksgiving Day from a wine storage business, reports the Seattle Times. The details of the operation bring to mind any classic movie heist:
The two men are accused of disabling motion detectors, spray-painting over surveillance cameras, sawing through plasterboard to access vintages in private storage lockers, charges say. They are also accused of tampering with gas lines that could have caused a big explosion had the gas reached an open flame, charging papers say.
Turns out one of the cameras wasn’t painted over completely, allowing employees to identify one suspect who had used his own name and address on forms to rent a wine-storage unit.
The cache of booze was discovered in a building less than a mile away from the scene of the crime, and cops say it seems the thieves had some care for their precious loot: It appears the wine had been kept in a “temperature controlled environment.”
That’s a good way to protect your ill-gotten investment from getting damaged, especially as weather in Seattle has been subfreezing lately.
The tough part now will be figuring out which customers of the wine storage business had bottles stolen in order to return their property, say cops.
“Detectives need to photograph and document each bottle, enter it into evidence, and then we need to find the owner of each bottle,” an investigator said.
Police recover wine from Thanksgiving Day heist [Seattle Times]
A diagram of how Aereo works. Cablevision argues that broadcasters’ appeal to the Supreme Court could undermine all cloud-based technology.
In the Cablevision white paper, the company agrees with the broadcasters’ basic stance that Aereo violates the networks’ copyright by retransmitting the feeds without approval or paying retransmission fees. However, Cablevision takes issue with the way in which the broadcasters are making their case.
In shooting down the broadcasters’ request for an injunction against Aereo, the Second Circuit held that because Aereo’s system uses arrays of small antennae, with each antenna dedicated to a single subscriber, the company was not “publicly performing” the streamed shows, i.e., that it was doing nothing more than providing the same service that a dedicated rooftop antenna does.
Cablevision does not agree with the court’s finding, but says the broadcasters’ appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court “advance a radical new interpretation of the statute with far-reaching implications.”
From the white paper:
They claim that a public performance occurs whenever a service provider enables consumers to transmit the same prior performance of a work, such as the same prior broadcast of a television show or the same prior rendition of a musical work, even if each consumer is independently transmitting a separate performance from his own separately acquired recording available to him alone. That interpretation threatens cloud technologies. It lacks any grounding in the Copyright Act.
Cablevision gives the example of two consumers who each independently purchase the same recording from Amazon’s MP3 Store and then upload the song to his/her own personal storage space on Amazon’s Cloud Player, from which they can stream the files back to themselves at will. Under the broadcasters’ argument, Amazon would be engaging in a public performance each and every time a cloud-stored song is streamed.
“That interpretation threatens a whole host of innovative cloud-based services offered by companies such as Google, Amazon, and Apple,” writes Cablevision, whose own cloud-based DVR system would be imperiled.
The company accuses the broadcasters of throwing the baby out with the bath water by making such an overreaching argument. Cablevision maintains that the broadcasters need not possibly undermine all cloud-based technology just to make its case against Aereo.
“Aereo’s system performs the same basic function as a cable system: It captures over-the-air broadcast content and offers to retransmit that content to anyone
willing to pay,” writes the company. “Thousands of mini-antennas and hard-drive copies do not change the essential nature of the service Aereo is offering.”
Cablevision also questions the legality of Aereo’s DVR technology.
“Subscribers have no fair use right to make copies merely so they can receive programming over an unlicensed television delivery service,” contends the paper. “A court should hold Aereo’s system unlawful on that basis without even reaching the public performance issue.”
Whether or not the Supremes listen to the Aereo case in the next session or not, the matter does seem destined to be ruled on by the highest court in the land at some point.
Meanwhile, various cable companies are prepping their own Aereo-like services in the hopes that the broadcasters’ legal attempts fall short, as such technology could be a way to get around paying billions in retransmission fees to networks.
Problem is, those networks each belong to much larger entertainment companies that provide cable channels and on-demand shows and movies to the cable and satellite operators. If the over-the-air retransmission fees vanish, these mega-companies will no doubt just negotiate higher prices for the rest of their content to make up for it.
RetailMeNot’s worker spree.
When I was but a wee consumer gleaning knowledge from the glowing screen before me, I was pretty sure my future needed to include only one thing to attain lifelong happiness: I needed to run through the aisles of a toy store for in a timed race and grab every single thing I could. And now some employers are rewarding their workers with just that kind of spree.
One 27-year-old who works for RetailMeNotInc. wasn’t even a member of Costco when he found himself with 120 seconds to run wherever his legs could take him through the store, grabbing things like a plasma television, a video game console and almost anything else as a reward for his work as a software developer, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Basically, he’s living my dream, but with grownup stuff instead of Polly Pocket, a new pair of rollerblades and a mini car.
Instead of the old-fashioned holiday bonus checks or gift cards, there are companies out there who feel a good way to show employees they’re appreciated (and to inspire loyalty) is free shopping, à la Supermarket Sweep.
Another company that owns restaurants lets employees race through Winn-Dixie for two to four minutes to fill up their carts, while others give workers $300 and a trip to the shopping center after they’ve put in 20 years with the company.
A consumer psychologist tells the WSJ that when the boss is splashing out the cash, workers really feel cared for. It’s like a hug from Dad but made of money, causing them to see their employer as “magnanimous and parental, she says.
And even if you’re just watching, it’s fun as well, she explains. Heck, you’re probably thinking of when you’ll get to do the same thing.
“It’s a fantasy that everyone can participate in.”
Another RetailMeNot employee recently rang up almost $25,000 in stuff after a three-minute jaunt through Costco. Her husband helped her stack computers, cameras, bottles of Dom Pérignon Champagne and three Roomba robot vacuum cleaners onto a flatbed cart.
At the end, she was panting and tired.
“I wish I had physically trained. I wish I had gone jogging or something,” she says.
That is one kind of workout I would totally engage in, any time, any day. And yes, my 6-year-old self is very, very jealous.
Workers Win All-They-Can-Grab Shopping Sprees [Wall Street Journal]
The folks at STELLAservice have put together a huge list of ordering deadlines for 50 major online retailers. Some stores require a lot more time than others, with closing dates as early as this weekend, while some only need a few days to get you your purchases.
Below are the ones we felt would be of most interest to Consumerist readers.
Abercrombie.com: Dec. 19 at Noon ET
Amazon.com: Dec. 17 at Noon ET
BestBuy.com: Dec. 20 at 3 p.m. ET
Cabelas.com: Dec. 16 at Noon ET
Coach.com: Dec. 17 at Noon ET
Costco.com: Dec. 17 at Noon ET
Dell.com: Dec. 17 at 11 a.m. ET
DicksSportingGoods.com: Dec. 18 at Midnight ET
Gap.com: Dec. 19 at 11:59 p.m. ET
HomeDepot.com: Dec. 16 at Noon ET
JCrew.com: Dec. 21 at 11:59 p.m. ET
Kohls.com: Dec. 19 at Midnight ET
Lowes.com: Dec. 20 at Noon ET
Macys.com: Dec. 21 at Noon ET
Newegg.com: Dec. 16 at Noon ET
PotteryBarn.com: Dec. 20 at Noon ET
REI.com: Dec. 17 at Noon ET
Sears.com: Dec. 21 at 5 p.m. ET
Store.Apple.com: Dec. 18 at Midnight ET
Store.Sony.com: Dec. 17 at Noon ET
UrbanOutfitters.com: Dec. 18 at 10 a.m. ET
VictoriasSecret.com: Dec. 16 at 5 p.m. ET
Walmart.com: Dec. 19 at Noon ET
Williams-Sonoma.com: Dec. 20 at Noon ET
Zappos.com: Dec. 23 at 7 p.m. ET
Again, you can check out the full list of cutoff dates and times at the STELLAservice Happy Customer Blog.
Toasty.
You probably didn’t need more proof that you should stop using the charger that came with your Chromebook 11 from HP. First we heard reports from Consumerist’s own editorial offices, then Google itself told customers to quit using the charger. Now Consumer Reports happens to be testing Chromebooks, and measured the surface temperature of the charger: 140 degrees.
The good news, if there is any, is that the much-publicized charging flexibility of the Chromebook means that you probably already have a compatible charger somewhere around your house. That charger might be a little low-powered to run an entire computer, that’s all. “Low-power charger connected. Your Chromebook may not charge while it is turned on,” whined the Consumer Reports test computer when a lower-amperage charger was plugged in to it.
HP, Google, and even the Consumer Products Safety Commission don’t have much to say to the media regarding the charger issues. It’s an ongoing investigation, okay, but what should consumers do in the meantime? There are no answers or bushels of free, non-toasty replacement chargers forthcoming.
Overheating HP Chromebook 11 charger reaches 140° F during Consumer Reports testing [Consumer Reports]
So bright.
Crazy like a fox, perhaps, but Walmart is offering the 5c for a huge discount down from $99 on Friday only. You’ll have to also sign up for a two-year contract with a phone carrier but that’s still a pretty attractive price for a phone that was just released three months ago.
It could be that the 5c just isn’t selling that well — maybe Apple customers like it shinier metal sibling the 5s more, who knows. But Walmart has been hacking at the price of the phone since it started selling it and this would appear to be the lowest it can go. Or can it go even lower? Doing the price limbo could be fun.
Other Apple dingles and dangles will also be discounted, adds the L.A. Times: The also newish 5s will be priced at $127 with a two-year contract, a discount from its usual $199; the 16 GB iPad mini will still cost you $299 but will come with a $50 gift card and then there will be $30 Apple iTunes cards fro $25.
The sale starts at 8 a.m. local time and will involve products that aren’t Apple as well, with prices in effect through Dec. 24 or until anything sells out.
Wal-Mart to sell iPhone 5c for $27 with contract on Friday [L.A. Times]
