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Woman’s Burger King Salad Comes With Lettuce, Chicken, Cranberries…. And A Razor Blade

One might choose to order a salad from a fast food restaurant in the hopes of enjoying a slightly healthier meal (though they’d probably be mistaken). But even if you select a salad that has fewer calories than a Whopper, you don’t want to bite into sharp metal objects.

3TV reports that a woman in Flagstaff, AZ, says her Burger King Chicken Apple Cranberry salad contained the chicken, apples, cranberries — and a free razor blade.

“It was actually in my salad,” she tells 3TV. “There was a razor blade in there that I could have potentially put in my mouth and cut my mouth with.”

After the woman showed the restaurant’s manager, employees searched all of the eatery’s salads to make sure they were safe for consumption.

Officials with Burger King say an employee admitted to leaving the blade on a shelf where it accidentally fell into the tub of lettuce. That employee has reportedly been fired.

The woman received a refund on her meal and a voucher for a free salad. She tells 3TV that she has no plans to sue the restaurant, but hopes a similar issue doesn’t happen to any other customers.

“I just want people to be aware that accidents happen and it could happen to anybody anywhere, and just be careful of what you eat,” she says. “Don’t just assume that because it’s coming from a restaurant that it’s safe.”

Flagstaff woman finds razor blade in Burger King salad [3TV]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

It Took 8 Years For IKEA To Get Around To Being A-Holes To IKEAhackers

One of the things that makes IKEA furniture appealing to people is that, with a bit of ingenuity and some tools, the not-terribly-expensive furnishing can be “hacked” into something different and cool. And since 2006, IKEAhackers.net has been a repository for a number of these DIY tricks. After nearly a decade of existing without hassle from the plywood-loving Swedes, the site now has to get rid of all its advertising or give up the IKEAhackers URL.

On Saturday, IKEAhackers’ operator Jules Yap posted that she recently received a cease-and-desist from the IKEA lawyers, who claimed that the site was infringing on the retailer’s intellectual property. She says IKEA told her to turn over her URL to the company or face legal action.

“Long story short, after much negotiation between their agent and my lawyer, I am allowed to keep the domain name IKEAhackers.net only on the condition that it is non-commercial, meaning no advertising whatsoever,” she writes, citing both a desire to maintain the community she’s spent eight years fostering and the lack of cash needed to go to battle with the world’s largest home furnishings retailer.

“I don’t have an issue with them protecting their trademark but I think they could have handled it better,” writes Jules. “I am a person, not a corporation. A blogger who obviously is on their side. Could they not have talked to me like normal people do without issuing a C&D?”

So starting June 23, Jules will continue to operate the site but can’t make any money from it. Effectively, she will be giving IKEA oodles of free advertising and marketing without receiving anything in return.

IKEA has missed a huge opportunity to admit that sites like IKEAhackers only help its brand by showing consumers that just because they buy the same flippin’ Hemnes bed that everyone else in the world has doesn’t mean it has to look like everyone else’s Hemnes bed. Instead, IKEA’s lawyers have made a move that will only reflect poorly on the retailer.

Jules says she eventually hopes to move the site to a new URL but has not decided what it will be. Presumably, it will not include the word “IKEA.”

[via BoingBoing]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

PayPal Discontinues Mobile Check Capture As Of, Um, Yesterday

(Jeremy Gillick)

Justin uses Paypal’s mobile check deposit feature, because that’s a service that his credit union doesn’t offer. He wasn’t happy when he received an e-mail from the company yesterday saying that they would be discontinuing the service. Then he saw the end date: Sunday. They were yanking the service with no warning.

Here’s the e-mail that he received:

updated_our_services_paypal

We’ve updated our services.

On June 15, 2014, the PayPal Mobile Check Capture service will no longer be available. But don’t worry, you’ll still have access to your transaction history of the checks you had captured through PayPal and can go back to review them at any time. We’re sorry if this is an inconvenience.

If you have any questions, feel free to visit our Help Center. We’re always here to help.

“Thanks PayPal for the advance notice,” Justin wrote to Consumerist. “And the inconvenience — my credit union doesn’t offer this…”

We can’t find any other mentions of this change online: if you’re a user of PayPal’s mobile app and received this notice too, let us know! We also contacted PayPal for a statement and will update this post as soon as we hear something back.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Hillshire Officially Ditches Pinnacle Foods Merger For “Superior” Tyson Deal

(Tyrone Mitchell)

In a move weeks in the making, Hillshire Brands officially left Pinnacle Foods at the altar for Tyson Foods.

Hillshire’s board of directors on Monday withdrew its recommendation to purchase Pinnacle Foods, maker of Duncan Hines, Vlasic pickles and Wish Bone dressing, for $4.2 billion, Forbes reports.

The company’s board, along with financial and legal advisors, determined that Tyson’s $8.5 billion bid for the company constituted a “superior deal” and would result in a more favorable outcome in a financial point of view, officials with Hillshire say in a news release.

Sure, Pinnacle may need a few tissues to dry up the tears shed after being ditched by Hillshire, but the company likely won’t be leaving empty-handed. As part of the proposed merger between the two companies, Pinnacle is entitled to a $163 million termination fee if the company dissolves the agreement before Hillshire’s board makes a final vote.

While the offer from Tyson Foods likely catapulted Hillshire’s board into reversing its decision to back the purchase of Pinnacle, officials say there are “no assurances that any transaction will result from the Tyson Foods offer.”

What once looked to be a simple merger turned into a sordid love affair of sorts Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride began competing for Hillshire’s attention; all the while Pinnacle stood on the sidelines waiting for its fate to be unveiled.

In mid-May, Hillshire announced plans to purchase Pinnacle Foods for $4.2 billion. The deal would have given Hillshire its largest share of grocery store shelves.

But just a week later, Pilgrim’s Pride, the second-largest chicken producer in the U.S., offered an unprompted bid of $6.4 billion for Hillshire. The proposal stipulated that to move forward, Hillshire would have to back out of its deal with Pinnacle.

Two days later, Tyson Foods crashed the party and upped the ante with a bid of $6.8 billion for Hillshire. That proposal also came with the caveat that Hillshire drop Pinnacle.

In early June, Pilgrim’s Pride countered with a bid of $6.7 billion. But that wasn’t enough to trump Tyson’s next offer of $8.5 billion. Soon after Pilgrim’s Pride withdrew their bid.

Citing Superior Tyson Offer, Hillshire Steps Away From Pinnacle Foods [Forbes]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

KFC Apologizes For Workers Who Said Scarred Girl Was Scaring Customers

(Ken Fager)

Wow, this weekend was full of big companies apologizing to traumatized girls. First came the JetBlue incident with the youngster barred from using the bathroom, now comes a “Sorry about that” from KFC, which is having to do damage control after the family of a little girl in Mississippi claimed they were told to leave the restaurant because their daughter’s facial scars were scaring other customers.

The story was initially posted last Thursday on a Facebook page set up by the family to track their daughter’s recovery from a vicious dog attack earlier this spring.

“Last week at KFC in Jackson MS this precious face was asked to leave because her face scared the other diners,” wrote the family. “I personally will never step foot in another KFC again and will be personally writing the CEO.”

The next morning, KFC’s social media team was issuing an apology and asking the family to send in more information about the incident.

Over the weekend, the family provided more detail to local media.

“They just told us… ‘We have to ask you to leave because her face is disrupting our customers,’” the girl’s grandmother told WAPT-TV, adding that her granddaughter “won’t even look in the mirror anymore.”

On Sunday, the fast food chain told the AP that it was investigating what had happened and that it would donate $30,000 toward the girl’s medical bills.

A KFC rep called the alleged behavior “hurtful and disrespectful” and said that the company would not tolerate it.

“Regardless of the outcome of our investigation, we have apologized… and are committed to assisting them,” said the rep.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Starbucks Announces College Plan For Workers Who Want To Earn A Bachelor’s Degree Online

(sunilgang)

Starbucks announced a new education program for its workers this morning, under which any of its benefit’s eligible workers — from plant workers to baristas — can get either full tuition reimbursement or partial scholarships to complete a bachelor’s degree online through Arizona State University.

In a post this morning on the company site, Starbucks announced that “partners” (its word for employees) who don’t yet have a bachelor’s degree will have 40 undergraduate programs to choose from in the program, and won’t have any obligation to stay at Starbucks after they graduate, if they don’t want to.

Students starting out as freshmen and sophomores in Starbucks’ program will get a partial scholarship and need-based financial aid, while juniors and seniors will receive full tuition reimbursement for any out-of-pocket tuition costs.

That money will automatically show up on their paychecks after they complete all required credits for the semester, and Starbucks “encourages” its workers to apply those funds toward the next semester’s tuition.

Workers will first have to apply and be accepted to the school under ASU’s admission requirements.

“We’re proud to help thousands of our partners build a bright future—whether they aspire to build a career at Starbucks, or beyond,” Starbucks writes in the post.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

FCC Chair Tom Wheeler Says He Is Not A Dingo

A couple weeks back, HBO’s John Oliver questioned whether it was wise to fill the FCC Chairman vacancy with former cable/wireless lobbyist Tom Wheeler, likening the decision to a parent hiring a dingo as a babysitter. Wheeler takes issue with the comparison and is now publicly denying that he is a child-devouring canine.

In the original 13-minute segment from Last Week Tonight, Oliver referred to Wheeler’s previous jobs as president of wireless lobbying group CTIA and of the National Cable and Telecom Association.

“The guy who used to run the cable industry’s lobbying arm is now running the agency tasked with regulating it,” quipped Oliver at the time. “That is the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.”

At last week’s open meeting of the full commission, Brendan Sasso of the National Journal asked Wheeler if he’d seen the Last Week Tonight piece on net neutrality.

“I think that it represents the… um… high level of interest [makes bizarre snuffle-laugh-chuckle] that exists in the topic in the country,” replied a very slow-speaking Chairman, “And that’s good.”

Then comes an amazing few seconds during which Wheeler stands silently, the only sound coming from his fingers tapping on the podium, before he deadpans, “Uhhhhmmm… You know, I would like to state for the record that I’m not a dingo… I had to go look it up; it’s a feral, wild animal in Australia.

In response, Oliver points out that he never actually called Wheeler a dingo; he made a dingo-related analogy. But now the host wonders if the Chairman doth protest too much.

“You’re denying it so strenuously, I’m honestly starting to wonder whether you are actually a dingo after all,” said Oliver, who then challenged Wheeler to answer questions like, “Have you, at any time, ever consumed a swamp wallaby for its nutrients?”

Finally, he demanded undeniable proof of the Chairman’s lack of dingo-ness.

“Unless you can produce an official document verified by a licensed zoologist, certifying that you are not a 100% talking dingo, I don’t think you can complain if Americans refuse to leave you alone in rooms with their babies.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

JetBlue Tells Little Girl She Can’t Use Toilet, Almost Throws Her Off Plane After She Wets Herself

(Adam Fagen)

It’s one thing if a passenger is denied access to a plane’s bathroom because the jet is taking off or landing, but JetBlue is having to do the “So Sorry” dance after cabin crew refused to let a little girl use the bathroom while the plane was just sitting on the tarmac — and then tried to kick her and her family off the plane when she urinated in her seat.

The 3-year-old’s mom tells CBS Boston that she and her two daughters were on a JetBlue plane traveling from NYC to Boston last week. After sitting on the tarmac for about half an hour, one daughter needed to use the toilet, so mom asked a flight attendant for permission.

“She snapped at me, ‘No sit down,’” the mom recalls.

Unable to hold it in, the youngster had an accident in her plane seat. That’s where things go from bad to weird.

Mom says she tried to clean up after her daughter, but this just led to a scolding from the flight attendant.

“And I said, ‘please give me a break. My daughter had an accident because you wouldn’t let me take her to the bathroom. After I clean it up I will sit down,’” she tells CBS. “She turned around and reported it to the pilot.”

As anyone who reads Consumerist knows, a complaint from a flight attendant is all it takes for a pilot to decide that a passenger needs to be removed. And shortly after the mom’s confrontation with the attendant, the pilot announced that the plane would be heading back to the gate, telling everyone on board there was a noncompliant passenger who needed to be handed over to airport security.

Jennifer Devereaux says she had a nightmarish experience earlier this week while traveling with her two daughters on board JetBlue flight 518 from New York to Boston.

In a rare instance of good luck, an off-duty pilot seated near the mom was able to intervene on her behalf and convince the crew to let the family remain on board

“I am so thankful for him and other passengers sticking up for my family’s defense,” says the mom, who sent off a complaint to JetBlue in the hopes of getting an apology.

“It wasn’t about bad customer service,” she said, “it was about bad human decency. My daughter was sitting in a pool of urine and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

After the story aired on TV, JetBlue finally got around to apologizing to the mom, providing her a $50 voucher on future travel and offering to donate $5,000 to a charity of her choosing.

“She said ‘I am a mom too. I understand what you’re going through and I am so sorry this happened to you,’” the mom says of her talk with a JetBlue rep.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist