5 Years After Deadly Walmart Black Friday Stampede, OSHA Reminds Stores To Keep Order

(Beth Rankin)

In the early morning hours of Nov. 28, 2008, a Walmart employee in Long Island was trampled to death by over-eager shoppers rushing to grab doorbuster deals. In the years since, many stores have taken measures to prevent this sort of tragedy from happening again, but it doesn’t hurt to remind retailers what can be done to minimize any mob mania.

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has sent letters to some of the nation’s largest retailers, along with retail associations and fire departments, to remind them that while the whole doorbuster, get-em-while-we-have-em sales mentality is fun and all, it should be done in a way that doesn’t put customers and employees in danger.

“The busy shopping season should not put retail workers at risk of being injured or killed,” said Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, which is urging retailers to take the time to adopt a proper crowd management plan that includes some of the safety guidelines provided in this OSHA fact sheet.

In addition to having trained security or police on site (and well in advance of the store’s opening), there are some guidelines that seem like common sense, but which a number of stores have ignored for years, like starting barricades and rope lines away from the store’s entrance. In the 2008 tragedy, customers were waiting up against the entrance of the Walmart and eventually just tore some of the doors from their hinges.

Having the line away from the immediate entrance makes it easier to follow two other important safety guidelines. First, it helps store employees regulate how many people are going into the store at any given time by making it more difficult for shoppers to sneak in or rush the entrance. Second, it keeps the entrance clear so that, in case of an emergency, those in the store can get out quickly.

Speaking of which, OSHA reminds retailers — but really shouldn’t have to — not to block or lock exit doors. It might seem tempting to minimize the number of exits to prevent shoplifters from sneaking out a side or back door, but if there’s a panic in the store, a locked door could be deadly.

Finally, the store should really go out of its way to make clear and explain the procedures for the evening. Yes, it might be annoying and repetitive to hear some employee explain the same instructions over and over, but I think most of us would rather be mildly irritated than having outright confusion when it comes time to shop.

This will be the first year that many major big box retailers are opening before midnight. Will 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. openings, which overlap many consumers’ Thanksgiving dinner plans, help alleviate some of the doorbuster madness? We’ll find out in a couple weeks.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Police: Parents Took Their 7 Kids Along For Toys ‘R’ Us Shoplifting Spree

(That Bee Girl)

It’s bad enough to go around taking things off store shelves and then not paying for them, but bringing along all seven of your children to help you shoplift is a whole new level of bad consumering. Yes, consumering.

Police in Tampa are looking for a family including seven children between the ages of 3 and 13 that were involved in the alleged shoplifting incident at the end of October, reports CBS Tampa.

Security cameras caught the family making their way to the store’s display of tablets, where police think two of the kids were instructed by their parents to disable the security devices on the tablets.

It appears the children’s alleged efforts were successful on two tablets, which is when police say the parents took the devices and walked out with the kids in tow.

All told about $300 worth of merchandise was lifted, but this heist isn’t about a store losing valuable merchandise so much as it’s about parents teaching their kids early on how to game the system. Spending quality time with your family is one thing, but if it’s spent boosting merchandise there’s no quality to that.

Police: Parents Go On Shoplifting Crime Spree With 7 Children [CBS Tampa]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Google Settles Multi-State Safari Ad-Tracking Complaint For $17 Million

(Matt Richardson)

Apple’s Safari browser has a default setting that blocks websites from setting third-party cookies that can be used to track users’ browsing behavior. But for about nine months in 2011-2012, Google’s DoubleClick ad serving service was able to get around that roadblock in order to provide user-specific ads to people with Apple computers and, more importantly, users of iPhones and iPads. Google has already been hit with a $22.5 million federal penalty, and today it has agreed to settle a multi-state claim for an additional $17 million.

The Attorneys General involved in the complaint allege that Google violated various state consumer protection laws when it failed to notify consumers that it had found a way to circumvent Safari’s default settings. The states also took issue with Google’s earlier public assurances that Safari did not, by default, allow third-party cookies.

In addition to the states that will divvy up the $17 million payout, Google has pinky-swore to the following:

1. It will not deploy the type of code used in this case to override a browser’s cookie blocking settings without the consumer’s consent unless it is necessary to do so in order to detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.

2. It will not misrepresent or omit material information to consumers about how they can use any particular Google product, service, or tool to directly manage how Google serves advertisements to their browsers.

3. It will improve the information it gives consumers regarding cookies, their purpose, and how the cookies are managed by consumers using Google’s products or services and tools.

The action was led by a 10-state executive committee with the Attorneys General offices of Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Vermont and Washington.

Also included in the agreement: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, District of Columbia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

“Consumers should be able to know whether there are other eyes surfing the web with them. By tracking millions of people without their knowledge, Google violated not only their privacy, but also their trust,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. “We must give consumers the reassurance that they can browse the Internet safely and securely.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Comcast Admits Its Pricing Is Confusing, Doesn’t Seem To Care

(Steve Garfield)

When Comcast launched its HBO-included discount package called Internet Plus last month, there was an awful lot of confusion about the price. Some media outlets reported it was $40/month, others said $50, still others said $70. The fact is, not even Comcast knows which one it’s supposed to charge you and it doesn’t seem to really care about its own ignorance.

Author and Forbes.com contributor Adam Tanner found this out for himself recently when Comcast called him to sell him on Internet Plus for $50/month, claiming it could add HBO and that handful of basic channels for the same price he was paying for Internet-only service. Problem is, Tanner is only paying Comcast $40.

He declined the offer, even after the Comcast sales rep tried to convince him that $40 and $50 were virtually the same price, but he decided to investigate the offer to see what it actually does cost.

The online chat sales rep he contacted quoted a price of $70/month, then after some checking lowered that to $60.

“Online offers and phone offers vary and it also varies per market,” wrote the chat rep. “I would advise that you call the Sales hotline.”

And so Tanner picked up the phone and called the number given by chat support. These people told him to call another number. He finally got through to someone who told him the price was $50/month.

But when you go online and look up prices for various markets, you can find the service for as low as $40/month. Of course, much like all of the prices listed above (aside from the $70/month number), these are introductory offers that will eventually increase in cost.

So why can’t anyone at Comcast just give you a straight answer regarding price?

“What you probably ran into was that the fact this is a new offer that we are putting through all of our channels and there is a certain element of training and roll out that you may have seen some inconsistency around,” a company rep tried to explain to Tanner.

I’m calling shenanigans on this right now. Yes, this product is new, but Comcast isn’t some fancy restaurant where the chef changes the menu at will. Nor was there an urgent need to get Internet Plus on the market. Comcast should have taken the time to train all of its employees — from chat to phone to cold-call sales — on the exact pricing of this plan before it launched.

But wait, there’s more.

“Sometimes there are differences in pricing because of the underlying programming associated with packages. So, for example, in the New York City area there is a lot more regional sports networks than there are, for example, in Boston or Atlanta, and the underlying cost of delivering the services are different,” added the rep.

That’s all well and good, but when I looked up the cost of Internet Plus for a home in Boston, I got $50/month on the Comcast website. When I looked up the same price for a home in the NYC area (which is not easy, given Comcast’s relatively small footprint in the city), I got… $50/month. So the Comcast rep is explaining away a price difference that doesn’t exist. Not a good sign.

Our favorite excuse is this one:

“I would say that there are a lot of competitors that we have in the market trying to benefit from obfuscating pricing, that a lot of times kind of offer things that have a lot of other things associated with them and from that perspective, you know, that’s part of what creates confusion… It is not always us, it is sometimes the people that are marketing against us.”

Yes, Comcast, all those customers of yours that write to us because they were quoted one price only to have another show up on their bills, or who can’t get straight answers when they try to get someone to tell them exactly what their bill will be each month, those people should be blaming the other cable companies, not Comcast!

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Princeton University Weighing Decision To Give Students Meningitis Vaccine Not Approved In U.S.

(RedandJonny)

Officials at Princeton University are facing a bit of a medical dilemma over whether or not students should get an emergency vaccine against meningitis after a recent spate of the possibly fatal disease has sickened seven students. So what’s the big deal, if it could help stop a further outbreak at the school? The vaccine isn’t exactly approved for use in the United States.

The school’s board of trustees are working with medical staff and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out how best to ward against the illness. The only vaccine that’s aimed at meningitis group B, which is the form that’s shown up at Princeton, is a product called Bexsero made by Novartis. It’s approved for use in Europe and Australia, but not here.

“We have filed an Investigational New Drug application for our MenB vaccine in the U.S., but have not yet come to an agreement on a pathway to licensure for this vaccine with regulatory authorities,” a Novartis spokeswoman told CNN.

The company is talking to Princeton, the CDC and the state Department of Public Health about getting around the usual obstacles to get the vaccine to students. The CDC says it’s considered “a safe vaccine.”

This outbreak is a bit puzzling to officials, as group B meningitis is a bacterial form of the disease that’s usually pretty rare here. Symptoms include stiff neck, headache, fever, vomiting, rashes, sensitivity to light and confusion. If you aren’t treated for it, complications can include brain damage, amputations and death.

“Usually, when you see this kind of meningitis on the campus, it’s meningitis C,” a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University told CNN. “This is very, very unusual.”

He adds that if he were at the table discussing the unapproved vaccine, he’d be “gently encouraging them to do this” as it would be justified in this case.

All of the students who contracted meningitis are now recovered except for the most recent case, a student who is still in the hospital after his Nov. 8 diagnosis.

Princeton weighing whether to offer meningitis vaccines [CNN]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

This 1995 Bradlee’s Black Friday Commercial Is Horrifyingly Prophetic

Back in 1995, the now-defunct discount chain Bradlees still existed. It was thriving, in fact. This 1995 commercial for the chain’s Black Friday sale, unearthed and shared through YouTube, shows that much more than hairstyles has changed in American commerce in the last 18 years.

Note that the mother in his ad is rushing her family through dinner, yanking food out of their hands, as if she needs to leave in order to storm the Best Buy gates at 6 P.M., or her local Simon mall or Macy’s at 8. That’s not it, though. She’s hurrying to get to the chain’s “After-Thanksgiving” sale, which didn’t start until the lazy mid-morning hour of 7 A.M. on Friday.

Maybe this is the kind of lazy retailing that put them out of business. Or maybe stores that aren’t essential used to actually open later on the country’s most important holidays!

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

McDonald’s Launches Spicy Pork McBites In China

(Beijinger

Do you enjoy popcorn chicken and shrimp, but wish that they were much porkier? You’re in luck! For about $1.50, you can pick up a container of about 18 popcorn-sized fried pork morsels, covered with crispy breading, salt, pepper, and MSG at McDonald’s. The bad news: you’ll have to travel to China to get them.

We learned about this new dish from The Beijinger, which taste-tested and photographed the morsels, and also provided their own translation of the name: “Piggy Balls.” We’ll stick with “Spicy Pork McBites.”

The most important question, though, is how do they taste? Some new menu items start at overseas McDonald’s outlets and eventually make their way here. In their review, Beijinger

Done in a Chicken McNuggets style, these porky spheres of goodness have a crispy coating like their poultry counterparts, but the added bonus of a delicious, mildly spicy bite to them courtesy of that wonderful salt-pepper-MSG combination known as 椒盐, technically salt and pepper but so much more.

Reporting from Shanghai, Quartz was less enthusiastic. “If you were drunk, and could stop yourself from thinking about how the pork product interior was actually made, they’d probably be awesome,” notes Heather Timmons. Oh, like that isn’t the case with every other product at McDonald’s as well.

Fast Food Watch: McDonald’s Debuts Pork McNuggets in China [The Beijinger]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

NFL, MLB Say They’ll Take Their Balls To Basic Cable If Aereo Wins In Court

(Stephan J. Cox)

CBS and FOX executives have already made the bold declaration that they will take their networks off the air and go cable-only if they are unsuccessful in their bid to crush streaming video service Aereo. Now two pro sports leagues have said they will leave the airwaves if Aereo can profit off of them without sharing.

Here’s the background for those late to the game: Aereo is a startup streaming service — currently only available in a handful of markets — that uses arrays of incredibly small antennae to capture networks’ over-the-air signals, sending them over the Internet to paying subscribers’ computers and wireless devices. Aereo claims that it does not need to pay retransmission fees to the networks because each individual antenna it uses is dedicated to a single subscriber. Thus, contends the company, it’s doing nothing more than providing subscribers’ with the equivalent of a rooftop antenna that picks up freely available network feeds.

The networks obviously disagree, calling it thievery and a violation of copyright. In each region Aereo has launched, it’s been sued in federal court, but so far the networks have been unable to convince any of the courts to issue a preliminary injunction stopping Aereo from offering service. The case seems destined to be heard by the Supreme Court.

Last week, Major League Baseball and the National Football League filed a brief with the Supremes to support the networks’ side of the case. The leagues claim that if Aereo wins in court, they will have to take their programming to basic cable.

“If copyright holders lose their exclusive retransmission licensing rights and the substantial benefits derived from those rights when they place programming on broadcast stations, those stations will become less attractive mediums for distributing copyrighted content,” reads the brief. “The option for copyright holders will be to move that content to paid cable networks (such as ESPN and TNT) where Aereo-like services cannot hijack and exploit their programming without authorization.”

The big risk, claim the leagues, is the precedent that an Aereo victory would send. As we recently wrote, several cable operators — DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Charter, among others — are currently developing their own Aereo-like technologies in the hopes of getting around the billions of dollars in retransmission fees paid to broadcasters each year. That would mean less money in the leagues’ coffers.

One specious argument made by the NFL states that Aereo or some similar service could create an NFL Sunday Ticket-like package simply by taking in all the various network feeds of live games and sending them on to subscribers without paying the league a dime. There’s a huge problem with that claim. Aereo’s success in the courtroom thus far has been tied to its one-antenna/one-subscriber setup, and the fact that this antenna is pulling in over-the-air feeds and providing them to a subscriber in the specific broadcast area they live in. Unless Aereo has developed a teeny antenna that can somehow gather every broadcast signal from Seattle to Miami, the described situation just isn’t going to happen.

We’ll have to wait and see if the NFL is trying to bluff about pulling its feeds from over-the-air broadcasts, as doing so could risk angering fans and significantly lowering its TV audience.

We don’t know why MLB is complaining so much about Aereo. In many markets, most MLB games are already on basic cable channels (often ones operated by huge broadcast and/or cable operators like Comcast and FOX), and even the majority of postseason baseball is now on TBS instead of the networks.

NFL, MLB To Supremes: If Aereo Wins, Broadcasters Lose [Multichannel.com via DSL Reports]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Walmart: 32 Factories In Bangladesh Failed Initial Safety Inspections, Most Fixed Problems

(Ron Dauhpin)

In the aftermath of the factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 and a fire in November killed 112 people, retailers pledged to ramp up safety efforts with any factories that produce clothing for stores here in the U.S. As part of that increased attention to keeping the workers who make your clothing safe while they try to earn a living, Walmart says it identified safety problems at 32 Bangladesh factories it does business with.

Walmart tested more than 200 factories, a company spokesman tells Reuters.

“Of these, 32 had failures in their initial inspections, but all but two have since addressed those issues,” he explained.

The full inspection reports of 75 factories are on Walmart’s site now, with the rest of the 200 reports posting as they are completed.

Two of those failed safety inspections because there was no way to fix what damage has already been done, added the spokesman, and a third won’t be making Walmart products in the future because it failed the first inspection. Instead, the owners are building a new factory.

A fourth factory shut down to some of the rioting in Bangladesh unrelated to the inspection.

Wal-Mart finds safety issues at Bangladesh factories [Reuters]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Clarifying The Clarification At The Gap

“Make up your mind, GAP!” wrote reader Synnerg when he submitted this photo using our Tipster App. Well, it’s not that they can’t make up their minds: they just keep adding clarifications and disclaimers to the existing sign.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist