Potty With iPad Stand Takes Home Worst Toy Of The Year Award

This is a thing that exists and people actually pay money for.

A few weeks back we told you about the contenders — from the Monopoly game that’s one huge ad to the virtual Play-Doh — for this year’s TOADY Award for the worst toy of 2013. The people have spoken, and the runaway winner is the iPotty, which sounds like a combination potty/iPad accessory because that’s exactly what it is.

Yes, the toy that teaches your kid not just how to use the toilet, but also to bring $600 electronic devices with him to the toilet… The iPotty ran off with a full 45% of the vote for the dubious honor given away every year by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood.

“Throughout history, kids have mastered toilet training without touch screens,” said CCFC’s Director, Dr. Susan Linn. “The iPotty is a perfect example of marketers trying to create a need where none exists. In fact, the last thing children need is a screen for every single occasion.”

Folks who voted for the iPotty to win this year’s award say the device only serves to pacify and placate children who are already overexposed to TV and the Internet.

“Toilet learning should be a time of positive interaction between child and caregiver,” explains one voter. “Also, children should be aware of the cues in their bodies as they learn. This toy takes this social/emotional focus out of the process and substitutes the hypnotism of a screen.”

Adds another, “It not only reinforces unhealthy overuse of digital media, it’s aimed at toddlers. We should NOT be giving them the message that you shouldn’t even take your eyes off a screen long enough to pee.”

With 30% of the vote, the runner-up for this year’s TOADY was the VIP Upgrade Membership by The Real Tooth Fairies, which charges users a ridiculous amount of money for an annual subscription to give their kids (we hope) access to a bunch of outfits of online fairies that reinforce harmful gender, body, economic, and cultural stereotypes.

“It’s a hijacking of one of children’s most magical tiny creatures,” complained one voter.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

While Retailers Fall All Over Themselves To Offer Price Matching, Customers Are Kind Of Like, “Eh”

(Spidra Webster)

We hear a lot of stories about the price-matching policies at various big box retailers like Target and Best Buy, which have evolved a lot since competition from online giants like Amazon have entered the arena. But while most stores now have some kind of price matching going on, does the average customer even really care to take advantage of it?

There’s a big push for price-matching especially during the holidays, when many retailers extend or loosen up their price-matching policies to try to ensure they snag your bucks while you’re shopping for presents, notes the Star Tribune.

It shows that retailers are on your side, they want your business and are willing to make sure you get the best price possible so you’ll give them your money. And despite pitfalls like policies that don’t allow customers to mix and match with other discounts and promotions, they’re pretty much a great way to seem competitive with other retailers.

But are we even using price-matching that often? Maybe not. After all, it does take some time to scout around at all the stores and see where the deal is best, then go back to the store if you already bought something and set the whole thing in motion.

Analysts say that only about 5% of consumers actually go out and do that, says the chief industry analyst at the NPD group. Why? Well, it could be seen as a waste of time to some people, unless they’re true blue bargain hunters who will not — nay! Cannot! — rest until they’ve got the rock bottom price.

“It’s not going to happen for me,” said one shopper who says she’s never asked for a price match. “It’s too much trouble.”

“The hassle of the parking lots and crowds isn’t worth it anymore,” said another who says he used to go after price matches when his kids were in diapers, but those days are long gone.

What about you?

Big-box retailers play match game with prices [Star Tribune]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Resumen visual de la IV Semana de las Redes Sociales #redessocialescyl

Hola: Una vídeo con un pequeño resumen visual de la IV Semana de las Redes Sociales. Un saludo



TICs y Formación http://ticsyformacion.com/2013/12/11/resumen-visual-de-la-iv-semana-de-las-redes-sociales-redessocialescyl/ Via Alfredo Vela y www.bscformacion.com

Some Yahoo Users Enter Day 2 Of E-Mail Outage

It used to be that being locked out of your e-mail for a day or two was no big hardship. Now our e-mail boxes are lifelines to finding and performing work, receiving financial documents and paying bills, and sometimes even staying in contact with people. Some Yahoo Mail users are not pleased that the sudden “scheduled maintenance” of Yahoo Mail has locked them out of their accounts since Sunday night.

Reader John is one affected user. “Yahoo said on their Facebook page that they expected the situation to be corrected by 1:30 PM Pacific time [yesterday],” he notes. That deadline passed without everyone magically regaining access. “Since then Yahoo has gone into silence — no messages, notices, or other communication regarding the outage.”

The last announcement from the company regarding the problems came in the form of this tweet, also posted to Facebook.

We know some of our users are unable to use Yahoo Mail. We're on it & trying to restore access in a few hours. Sorry for the inconvenience.—

YMail Team (@yahoomail) December 10, 2013

The Facebook version of the announcement has more than 1,700 angry comments posted as recently as a few minutes ago.

We contacted Yahoo about the outage, and will let you know what they have to say when they respond.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

GE’s CareCredit To Refund $34.1 Million To Misled Consumers

CareCredit is a medical financing service operated by the folks at GE Capital. For almost all of its 4 million customers, CareCredit is a deferred interest loan, meaning cardholders who don’t pay off their balances in full by the end of the initial promotional period are hit with all of the interest that had been accruing during those months. That would be fine (and is quite common in retail credit cards), if the company hadn’t misled consumers into thinking CareCredit was an entirely interest-free product.

Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered [PDF] GE Capital and CareCredit to refund up to $34.1 million to customers who were not given the full story about the cost of the program.

In thousands of medical and dental offices around the country, CareCredit advertised its “no interest if paid in full” plan, offering promotional 0% interest periods of anywhere from 6 to 24 months. But if the bill isn’t paid in full by the end of that period, the cardholder is slammed with an interest rate of around 26%, about twice what most people pay on regular credit cards.

The CFPB’s problem isn’t with the interest rate, but with how CareCredit marketed itself to consumers. The agency alleges that since 2009, the company has been providing consumers inadequate explanations of its credit terms, leading many CareCredit customers to become buried until mountains of unexpected interest charges, penalties, and fees.

NON-EXPERT ADVICE

Through its investigation into CareCredit, the CFPB found that some of the medical and dental service providers who pushed the program for GE were complicit in the deception by failing to provide adequate explanation of the terms of the deferred-interest loan. The agency says that CareCredit took a hands-off approach to enrollment process, leaving it up to the service providers who may have been ill-prepared to clarify the program.

“CareCredit’s limited involvement during the enrollment process and lack of oversight and monitoring allowed this deception to continue,” writes the CFPB. “Many staff members… who were responsible for explaining the CareCredit agreement to borrowers, had received little or no training by CareCredit, and relied only on pamphlets. In interviews with CFPB investigators, some providers admitted that they were themselves confused by the deferred-interest card.”

AN ORAL TRADITION

So first you have a situation where the people selling the product don’t necessarily know what it is they’re selling. Then you make it worse by failing to provide these customers with written copies of CareCredit agreement. Thus, these borrowers have only on the oral explanations from the person who was not trained to explain the product to begin with.

PAYING THE PENALTY

And so the CFPB has hit GE and CareCredit with an enforcement action that requires the companies to create a $34.1 million reimbursement fund, that will allow CareCredit customers to make claims that will then be reviewed independently.

The order also requires that CareCredit enhance its disclosures provided during the application process and on billing statements. These new and improved disclosures will include clearer descriptions of the deferred-interest loan. In addition to the explanation given at the point of signing the agreement, all borrowers will get a call from an actual CareCredit employee within 72 hours, and all loans of $1,000 or more will require the involvement of a CareCredit rep, rather than through the doctor or dentist’s office.

Furthermore, borrowers will subsequently receive a warning notification to alert them when the end of the promotional period approaches.

“Medical debt is already a big problem for many Americans. Poor credit card transparency should not be making the problem even worse,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Deferred-interest products can be risky for consumers in the best of circumstances, and today’s action ensures that CareCredit will no longer profit from consumer confusion. The Bureau will not tolerate financial companies that take advantage of patients and their loved ones.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Organic Milk Is Better For Humans Because Of Delicious Grass

(Muffet)

Cows’ stomachs are optimized to graze on grass. As ruminants, it’s just what they do, but modern milk production doesn’t give them opportunities to wander outside and eat grass. It turns out, though, that when cows get to eat grass, the milk they produce is better for humans.

How does that work? Cows that eat grass produce milk with more omega-3 fatty acids. Those are the fats found in foods like flaxseeds and fish that we keep hearing that we should eat more of. While the science isn’t settled regarding how well omega-3 fatty acids protect humans from cardiovascular problems or why, they do seem to be better for us.

The fats in milk come from what the animal eats, after all. The same effect on fat composition happens in milk from conventional agriculture where the cows eat grass, so the key is knowing where your milk comes from and what the animals eat.

Of course, this study just happens to have received most of its funding from Organic Valley, a large distributor of organic dairy products. Scientists who didn’t receive any money from the company told the New York Times that its science looks pretty solid.

More Helpful Fatty Acids Found in Organic Milk [New York Times]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Don’t Hold Your Breath Waiting For Verizon FiOS To Come To Your Town, Says CEO

(erocsid)

Back in 2012, Verizon Wireless announced a marketing deal with several of the country’s largest cable operators that would let these companies sell cable/Internet/wireless bundles. We warned at the time that this would give Verizon even more reason to halt expansion of its costly FiOS network, as the company stood to make more money from the wireless business than it would from the TV/Internet service. Now Verizon’s CEO has confirmed that the company has no plans to expand FiOS beyond the existing markets.

“[D]igging up yards and deploying fiber in a lot of new markets isn’t in the cards,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam declared during the UBS 41st Annual Global Media & Communications Conference on Monday, according to FierceTelecom. “More and more things are going mobile and I think there are more opportunities to partner out of market with companies that are there versus us going in and deploying FiOS.”

This is exactly what we and others had feared when Verizon entered into that marketing deal with the cable companies. When Verizon began deploying FiOS, it was hoped that the service would compete with the cable and Internet providers that in most areas operate with little or no competition. But in the wake of the housing market collapse, the company slowed its deployment of the network.

The marketing agreement, in which Verizon products and services are sold through Comcast and Time Warner Cable, takes away any incentive for Verizon to push FiOS into new markets where it would need to build new networks. Instead, it could leverage existing cable customers to build its already massive wireless subscriber base without having to run any new fiber lines or, as McAdam says, dig up anyone’s yard.

The CEO of Big V explained the difference between FiOS and AT&T’s U-Verse system, which uses much of the existing copper phone lines rather than having to lay new fiber.

“What [AT&T] has already got is copper to the home and he’s changing out the last mile,” McAdam said. “It’s a little bit of a different situation for us. We’d have to go in and get the local franchise agreements and that always gets complicated.”

So if you’re hoping for fiber service in your area and FiOS hasn’t gotten there yet, don’t expect to see the Verizon truck roll up your street anytime soon.

[via DSLreports]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Diner Takes Axe To McDonald’s Over Cold Fries

Sure, here in the states we’ve got people calling 9-1-1 over missing hash browns, and folks threatening to use a sword if they don’t get free tacos, but over in France, they’ve got an angry customer who used his axe on a McDonald’s all because he got cold fries at the drive-thru.

The incident occurred early Sunday morning in the suburbs of Paris, where a 26-year-old customer was unhappy with the restaurant’s response to his complaints about the frigid frites.

He reportedly got out of his van, brandishing an axe that he then used to shatter the drive-thru window.

Just to put a fine point on it, the customer then tossed his axe into the restaurant, which is not the proper way to escalate one’s complaint.

A McDonald’s employee was received some cuts to the face from the flying, shattered glass, but did not go to the hospital.

The customer attempted to flee, presumably without getting the hot fries he so wanted, but he was taken into custody by police. [via HuffPo]

Because we can’t read about french fries in France without thinking of Better Off Dead, we present this culinary clip:

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Diseño de actividades y tareas de aprendizaje con herramientas 2.0

via Educación tecnológica http://villaves56.blogspot.com/2013/12/diseno-de-actividades-y-tareas-de.html www.bscformacion.com

Tendencias en marketing en Redes Sociales 2014 #infografia #infographic #socialmedia

Hola: Una infografía con tendencias en marketing en Redes Sociales 2014. Vía Un saludo



TICs y Formación http://ticsyformacion.com/2013/12/11/tendencias-en-marketing-en-redes-sociales-2014-infografia/ Via Alfredo Vela y www.bscformacion.com