Comcast And Charter Consider Buying Time Warner Cable. No, Really

(kenfagerdotcom)

There are many changes that could improve cable television and broadband internet service in the United States, but “more mergers” certainly isn’t one of them. That’s why we started screaming hysterically in the Consumerist offices today when we learned that Charter and Comcast are both weighing their options and thinking about acquiring Time Warner Cable.

Charter is further along in its preparations, talking to banks about financing for the deal. Sources say that TWC has made it known it would prefer to get hitched to Comcast. Experts agree that Kabletown would be the better match, for reasons that include the word “synergies” and give us hives.

If Charter acquired Time Warner, that would create the country’s second-largest cable company.

Comcast seeks advice on possible Time Warner Cable bid: Sources [CNBC] (Warning: auto-play video)

Charter nears funding for Time Warner Cable bid: WSJ [Reuters]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

You’ve Got A 1-In-10 Chance Of Receiving A Mangled Package This Holiday Season

(StarsApart)

In the next few weeks, a lot of us will be ordering items online — whether for ourselves or for others — and having them shipped somewhere, hoping beyond hope that these parcels don’t get lost, stolen, drop-kicked, or run through a Blendtec just to see what happens. A recent study of packages received from e-commerce sites finds that you shouldn’t be terribly shocked if the box shows up looking worse for wear.

Between January and September of this year, the folks at StellaService ordered a total of 3,234 total packages from 121 different retailers. Nearly 10% (313) of those packages arrived with some sort of damage.

Which isn’t terribly surprising, given the insights of some of those who have worked in the shipping business at this time of year.

UPS had the highest rate of damaged packages at 11%, followed closely by the US Postal Service, with 10%. FedEx had the lowest rate (7%).

The not-as-bad news is that only 16 (5%) of the damaged packages contained products that were also damaged. So that’s about .5% of all the products ordered during those nine months. This is not to say that any damaged packages or products are acceptable — much like it’s not acceptable that .5% of Comcast’s customer service calls go badly — but it does mean that the sight of a beat-up box is not necessarily reason to assume your order is ruined too.

Also worth noting, there were 19 different sellers that didn’t have any damaged packages or products in the StellaService survey, among those were CB2.com,

Dell.com, Grainger.com, Rakuten.com, Shop.lululemon.com, Target.com, and Walmart.com.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Robbing A Bank Is Much Trickier If You Show Up After Business Hours Are Over

(Bill Binns)

Dark ski mask? Check. Empty bags decorated with dollar signs Check. Willingness to commit a crime for your own selfish purposes? Check. Any would-be bank robber probably knows the basics of trying to perform such a dastardly deed, but there’s another item that should be taken care of before attempting a bank robbery: Make sure the place is actually open when you’re planning to pull it off.

Not that we at all condone bank robbing whatsoever, but one would think there are only so many ways to mess up an attempted crime.

And yet, police in Maine say a 31-year-old man is now in custody after he allegedly tried to rob a bank but showed up after it had closed, reports the Bangor Daily News.

At around 3 p.m. (was it a Saturday or is this bank a very early closer?) police were called to a local bank to attend to a suspicious man who’d shown up at the door wearing a ski mask, and tried to open the locked doors.

When that failed, witnesses said he turned around (probably while muttering, “Aww man, I’m never gone live this one done with the bank robbers’ posse!”) went back to his car and drove off.

Cops tracked his vehicle down within minutes of someone calling in the odd activity and found the man with the ski mask that he was believed to have been wearing. He spoke with police, who came away from the conversation saying the guy had been planning on robbing the bank, but was stymied by the locked doors.

He’s been charged with attempted robbery and will also have to sit in the corner at the next Bank Robbers’ Posse of America meeting. You don’t even want to know how many times he’ll have to write “Make sure the bank is open” on the chalkboard.

Police say would-be robber failed when he arrived at bank too late [Bangor Daily News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

What Is It About Elmo That Makes Him The Reigning King Of Holiday Toys?

(MNicoleM)

Whether you want to hug him or not or buy him for any of the children in your life, Elmo has been the reigning king of holiday toys for nigh on 20 years. But what is it about the fuzzy red Sesame Street monster that keeps him so popular? And why does he like being tickled so much?

The answer to at least the former question might just be a bit of self-fulfilling popularity: Since the Tickle Me Elmo slammed into our collective consciousness back in 1996, stores keep stocking each year’s new iteration based off Elmo’s popularity the previous year. And when the stores are scrambling to sell him, the public scrambles to buy him, explains Quartz.

Basically, he’s a sure thing, whether he’s Big Hugs Elmo (this year’s offering) Rock ‘n Roll Elmo, Hokey Pokey Elmo or the most popular of all time, Tickle Me Elmo.

“Retailers only buy things that have proven to sell,” one senior analyst tells Quartz. “And Elmo sells.”

Tickle Me Elmo was the first Elmo doll to really make it big, despite the fact that there were previous Elmo dolls. The difference in 1996 with Tyco’s doll is that he made noise when you squeezed him. Kids love it when you can make a toy emit sounds, it seems.

But the stores weren’t ready for the onslaught of parents, who were in turn spurred on by demanding children. Retailers didn’t stock enough of the dolls, made by Tyco right before they sold to Mattel, making Elmo scarce. Cue mass hysteria.

“The first year caught everyone by surprise,” the analyst noted. “No one wanted to be caught by surprise after that.”

In 1997, Mattel sold seven times as many Tickle Me Elmos as the year before, and a dynasty was born.

Since then, Mattel has kept up the game with new and different Elmos to entice discerning children every year and cause that panicky feeling to erupt in the hearts of parents and relatives everywhere. There was even a Tickle Me Elmo redux with TMX Elmo in 2006, who didn’t just laugh when you tickled him but responded in a different way every time.

“We said that TMX Elmo would likely be the strongest thing since [Tickle Me Elmo] and it was,” Mattel CEO Robert Eckert said at the time.

(Although we had a different view, as did Consumer Reports definitely didn’t like him so much, noting back then: “The youngest children’s reactions ranged from disinterest to fear.” )

Elmo now belongs to Hasbro, after Sesame Workshop shifted its license from Mattel in 2009, and his reign is still strong. There was a slight downward tick in LOL Elmo sales in 2012 in the midst of a sex scandal surrounding the former voice of Elmo on Sesame Street, but it’s safe to say he’ll probably sell well this year.

Maybe it’s his red furriness, or that inimitable laugh, but really, no one knows why the kids love Elmo so much.

“If anybody says they know why, they’re probably making it up,” declared Quartz’s analyst source.

It’s his eyes. I could stare into their clear depths, unimpeded by rational thought, forever. Yeah, making that up. I’m terrified any doll comes to life when I’m sleeping, so count me out.

Why Elmo has topped Christmas shopping lists in the US since 1996 [Quartz]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

What To Do If You’re Stuck On A Layover At 20 Busy Airports

(Kevin Dean)

Hey, you: You are not allowed to say “I’m bored.” Not even when you’re stuck for four hours at an airport waiting for your next flight. Because we live in a time where there are infinite ways to distract ourselves and there is always something to keep you from the brink of boredom. Find out what those somethings are at 20 of the busiest airports and please, stop saying you’re bored. [via Airfare Watchdog]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

What Happens If You Eat Nothing But Pumpkin Spice Items For A Whole Week?

(pjseeger)

Earlier this week, I idly wondered whether it would be possible to put together a whole day’s diet out of only pumpkin spice foods. turns out that J. Bryan Lowder over at Slate was way ahead of me…and extended the concept by six days. Why? Well, his editors told him to.

During the fall, pumpkin spice is everywhere. It’s in our candy, in our coffee, in our breakfast pastries, in our oatmeal, and coats any and every edible item that you can think of. That doesn’t make it right, and doesn’t even mean that all of these food items contain even a molecule of real pumpkin.

Why? “We’re clearly fascinated by the stuff, by the feeling that pumpkin spice represents,” Lowder notes. We might like the sweetness and spiciness of pumpkin-flavored items, but maybe more because they represent the mild weather and cider mill visits of fall, and not necessarily on their own merits.

However, he made a surprising discovery: in adding pumpkin pie spice to as many non-pumpkin foods as possible, he found that the blend improved most of them. There was, for example, pumpkin pie spice-rubbed pork loin. The real problem isn’t pumpkin spice overload: it’s that commercial pumpkin spice overload has burnt Americans out on the concept, and we’re more likely to reject concepts like the pork loin or even adding pumpkin pie spices to sandwiches and salad dressing.

In other words, skip the pumpkin spice M&Ms, Pringles, and booze. Spend your fall sprinkling different foods with the same spice blend and see where it gets you.

The Pumpkin Spice Diet [Slate]

Have We Reached Peak Pumpkin Spice? [Modern Farmer]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Comcast CEO Blames Bad Customer Service Reputation On Sheer Volume Of Calls

(knight725)

Comcast is the largest cable and Internet provider in the country and one of the biggest content providers with the acquisition of NBC. It’s also one of the most-hated companies in the country, a former Worst Company In America champ (and perennial quarterfinalist) with a reputation for horrendous customer service, inept tech support and bungled billing practices. But Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says it’s all just a matter of his company being so darn huge.

In an interview with Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal (audio is below), explains why Comcast is always at or near the bottom of most customer service and satisfaction surveys.

In fact, if you sort all of the companies ranked by the American Customer Satisfaction Index in 2013, Comcast is represented twice in the bottom 10; once for its Internet service (the lowest rank of all companies in that sector) and then again for its subscription TV service (the second-worst in that group of companies).

“That’s a very fair criticism that we’re working really hard to fix,” Roberts tells Marketplace, before getting into the numbers game:

“What unfortunately happens is we have about… 350 million interactions with consumers a year, between phone calls and truck calls. It may be over 400 million, and that doesn’t count any online interactions which are over, I think, a billion. You get one-tenth of one-percent bad experience, that’s a lot of people — unacceptable. We have to be the best service provider or in the end, this company won’t be what I want it to be.”

While we agree with him that this is completely unacceptable, we think Roberts doesn’t realize just how many bad experiences “one-tenth of one percent” of a billion interactions would be. That’s still 1 million times in a year when people are having bad Comcast customer service experiences!

What he’s also not mentioning is how many of those 1 billion interactions are times when the customer may have received decent customer service, but had to contact Comcast because their service was out or their bill was wrong. We’d love to see a truly transparent auditing of the actual reasons for customers contacting the company.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Goodness Gracious — Please Tell Us The FCC Isn’t Going To Allow Cellphone Calls On Planes

Imagine all these people talking on phones. (frankieleon)

It hasn’t even been a month since the Federal Aviation Administration said it would finally let airline passengers use devices like tablets and phones from gate to gate, but now another federal agency is considering letting loose the hounds of Hades: The Federal Communications Commission is considering allowing travelers to make phone calls in midair.

Yes, that means the lady with the piercing voice in row 17 could be yakking it up for all to hear while the man with the very distinct baritone might be grumbling throughout the flight and your ears will be assaulted at potentially any time. Assaulted, I say!

Moving on, the FCC says it’s time to get hip with the times, and “to review our outdated and restrictive rules,” reports the Associated Press’ travel guru Scott Mayerowitz.

I’m not alone in my grumbling, especially since it’s unclear if there could be some kind of “quiet section” of the plane where passengers wouldn’t be allowed to yap for hours on end.

“The only way I’d be in favor of this is if the FCC mandated that all those who want to use their cellphones must sit next to families with screaming children,” one frequent flier tells the AP. I like that idea.

Those who’ve ever had the bad luck to sit near Mr. or Ms. I’m The Center Of The Universe So You All Have To Hear My Conversation are also worried.

“There are simply far too many people who consider themselves too important to stop talking as a courtesy to other passengers, especially when, given airplane background noise, they’ll probably have to talk louder than usual,” said another passenger, who flies nearly 200,000 miles a year.

And another traveler had a concern we wouldn’t have thought of on our won — are bathrooms going to become a refuge for those seeking privacy?

“Are they going to become the telephone booths for those who want to talk on the phone in private?” he said.

Of course, yes, it’d be nice to be able to check in with your family or work or whatever — but if you can use email during the flight, why not just do that? It’s so much quieter.

There’s hope though for us seeking quietude: Thus far, both American and United Airlines said they’ll see what the FCC ultimately decides before they weigh in on either side, while Delta Air Lines has said passenger feedback for years has shown “overwhelming” support for a ban. JetBlue also seems to side on with silence, as does Southwest Airlines… for now.

“If everyone starts doing it and it becomes culturally acceptable, we’d have to consider it,” said a Southwest spokesman. “But no one thinks it’s a good idea.”

You know how I feel. But how about you?

Loud cellphone talkers next bane of air travelers? [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

McDonald’s Figures Out Best Way To Keep Away Pesky Teens: Blast Opera At Them

The image of loitering teens in the parking lot annoying customers has been around for quite some time, probably starting with the greaser tough-guys of the ’50s cat-calling at poodle-skirted girls and dumping milkshakes on awkward George McFly types. And one thing we all know that if there is one thing that teenage toughs will run screaming to avoid, it’s opera. Or at least that’s how one McDonald’s claims to have rid itself of those pesky kids.

A McDonald’s in Australia had apparently been having some trouble with young whippersnappers lingering for too long in the parking lot, but recently started playing a “range of classical and opera music” in an attempt to harsh these youngsters’ collective mellow.

“We’ve noticed a reduction in the number of young people hanging around,” a rep for the company tells the Macarthur Chronicle, “but we’ll have to reassess it properly in a couple of weeks.”

The paper asked for feedback on Facebook from residents about the musical attempt to drive away teens and a number of people are happy about it.

“Great idea and it is working!” writes one reader. “I work nights nearby and it has made a massive difference already to the lingering and loitering in the car park.”

Others in the area complain about it being a bit too loud.

“They turn it up really loud when youth are hanging around the car park,” explains a resident. “It woke me up at 1 a.m. Tuesday night and it’s only going to get worse as Xmas approaches.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

Here are nine of the best photos that readers added to The Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

(#1 – Freaktography)

(#2 – gothamiste)

(#3 – Jason Cook)

(#4 – m01229)

(#5 – Ben Roffelsen)

(#6 – Jason Cook)

(#7 – Neff Conner)

(#8 – Torrit)

(#9 – RiddimRyder)

Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Want to see your pictures on our site? 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