Burger King Revives Yumbo Sandwich, Menu Item Discontinued In 1974

(Burger King)

The Yumbo, a hot ham and cheese sandwich, debuted on the Burger King Menu in 1969 and disappeared in 1974. That’s almost a decade before most of the company’s current leadership was born, but there are plenty of customers who do remember the sandwich fondly and will return for it. They probably won’t all freak out on Twitter like chicken fries fans did, though.

In their press release to promote the new sandwich, Burger King provides a quote from a franchisee about the sandwich that serves to do more than just show how much he loves ham and cheese. 2013 Franchisee of the Year Tom Walsh Jr. says of the Yumbo, “[it] was a favorite I remember having as a boy in my dad’s restaurants and I know our guests are going to love having it back and sharing it with their own kids. This is a great example of how we as franchisees are working closer with Burger King Corporation on menu and marketing initiatives.”

As Burger King sets an example that others in the fast food industry may follow by divesting itself of corporate-owned restaurants and depending heavily on franchisees, emphasizing their great relationship with the people who are bankrolling the expansion of their chain is a great idea, even if most diners probably don’t care.

We know that you’re reading this, Burger King: fry anything on the menu that you want, and mine your old menu items for “new” ideas all you like, but whatever you do, don’t revive the “French Fryin’ Legion” thing from 1974.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

California Mall Replaces Santa Accused Of Turning Away Autistic Girl Over Her Service Dog

Obviously not the Santa in question. (bnilsen)

Perhaps the only thing worse than being terrified by a mall Santa Claus is not getting to hang out with the guy when your heart is set on it. The family of a 7-year-old autistic girl in California says the youngster was “heartbroken” when she didn’t get to see Santa after a 30-minute wait, because he didn’t like the look of her service dog.

According to a family friend who spoke with the OC Register, the man was afraid of the five-year-old pit bull named Pup-Cake, and turned the girl away, she said.

“For an autistic child to wait in line for 30 minutes, that’s an accomplishment in itself,” the friend said of the girl’s experience.

She says that the family tried to explain that the pooch was a trained service dog, allowed by law to be at the mall. But then, “Santa suddenly became allergic,” claims the friend.

“This particular dog … she’s trained, not menacing, and she’s little,” she said.

The family contacted mall officials, who immediately responded and said that the Santa in question had been removed from his post.

“We do not condone the behavior displayed by Santa and have worked with our partners at Noerr, the company that hires our Santas, to replace this Santa with one that is more compassionate to our guests’ needs,” the mall said in a post on its Facebook page. “We look forward to welcoming back the… family and Pup-Cake for a special Santa experience.”

That’s good enough for the girl’s family, the friend says, and they hope others can learn from the incident.

“They want people to get educated not about autism or pit bulls, but about the disabilities act so that little girls [like her] won’t go and see Santa and end up crying.”

Santa at Mission Viejo mall rebuffs autistic girl over service dog [OC Register]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

How Many Fares Do I Need To Pick Up To Make A Living As An Uber Or Lyft Driver?

(courtesy NerdWallet)

I don’t have a car (and I don’t feel like getting arrested) but if I did, what would it take for me to earn enough money as a driver for Uber (or Lyft or Sidecar) to pay the bills? To earn $50,000 a year, I’d have to pick up anywhere from 12 to 17 fares a day, depending on which service I drive for, according to one new report.

The folks at NerdWallet took a look at the costs for auto insurance and fares on Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar in more than a dozen markets around the country. They then used ownership and maintenance costs for a typical sedan (a 2014 Toyota Camry) to figure out just what it take to recoup your expenses and make a living as a full-time driver.

According to the report, drivers for Uber have to pick up fewer fares than those of Lyft. And on average, Uber drivers looking to make $50,000 a year in pre-tax income had to make around 60 pickups each week, more than 20 fewer than the Lyft weekly average of 83.76.

This disparity is even more pronounced in some markets, like Salt Lake City, where a Lyft driver would need more than 96 fares in a week while an Uber driver could make the same money with around 64. And that’s not the hardest place for a Lyft driver; that would be Dallas, where NerdWallet says it would take nearly 99 fares in a week to earn $50,000. The Uber number for Dallas (76/week) is also high, but still more than 20/week fewer.

According to NerdWallet, Lyft drivers in Dallas earn the least of all the markets in the report, averaging $9.73 per trip.

The one market where Uber and Lyft drivers face the same steep number of fares to meet the $50K threshold is Charlotte. A Charlotte Uber driver would be looking at around 81 pickups/week, just slightly less than the 84/week needed for a Lyft driver to make the same amount of money.

The earning thresholds for Sidecar, which is not available in all the markets in the NerdWallet study, vary greatly depending on where the driver works. For example, while both Uber and Lyft drivers in Charlotte must pick up more than 80 fares/week to earn $50K, a Sidecar driver in the same city only needs to average around 49 fares/week. But it’s a different story altogether in San Francisco, where the weekly average needed for Uber drivers (49/week) is significantly lower than both Lyft (81/week) and Sidecar (76/week).

Check out the full report with the market-by-market comparisons at NerdWallet.com.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Target, Where Holiday Menu Specials Actually Cost You More Money

The jingle bells are jingling, the Santas are ho-hoing and it’s officially okay for everyone to be in the holiday spirit. But while it’s always nice of businesses to try to offer special deals for holiday shoppers, Target might need to rethink how it approaches the idea of a “deal.”

Usually, the kind of deal you want to promote on say, menu boards, are the good ones, where the customer is going to save money. But Consumerist reader Melissa spotted the above sign at her local Target in Tucson, which heralds a decidedly bad holiday deal that ends up costing $0.30 more than the non-holiday price.

“Buy a popcorn and soda for $1.99, or get the special holiday popcorn and soda combo for $2.29,” Melissa writes.

We’ll stick with the unspecial deal, thanks, Target.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Apple Patents System To Prevent Dropped iPhones From Landing Face-Down

Most of us have been there, watching in horror as a pricey smartphone falls toward the ground, doomed to be dented, cracked and damaged by the force of impact. A newly awarded Apple patent details how a small vibrating motor could possibly be used to minimize the damage when that device goes into freefall.

The patent, originally filed in 2011 by Apple, is for a “Protective mechanism for an electronic device.”

The mechanism would employ a sensor and processor to determine when a phone is falling. The mechanism would then “alters the center of mass of the electronic device by moving the mass in the protective mechanism in response to detecting the freefall of the electronic device.”

When a phone is determined to be in freefall, the sensor and processor would attempt to measure the time to impact and the device’s orientation. A motor could then be used to alter the phone’s rotation so that it is more likely to make impact with the ground on its side or back, reducing the odds of shattered screens or camera lenses.

[via Apple Insider]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Lia Sophia Shutting Down Jewelry Business After 28 Years Of Direct Sales

After 28 years of sending customers out into the field as direct sellers to peddle its shiny wares, jewelry business Lia Sophia has announced it’s shutting down by the end of the year, with all operations ceasing early in 2015.

Much like Avon or Tupperware, Lia Sophia worked on the basis of a network of sellers organized into zones, with independent sales reps working to move jewelry at a 30% commission rate, reports the Chicago Tribune.

The company’s creative director Elena Kiam announced the end of the Lia Sophia era in a blog post on liasophia.com, saying that “given the challenging business environment, we made the painful decision to wind down Lia Sophia in the United States and Canada by December 31, and cease operations by the end of February.”

Her husband Tory Kiam is the CEO, and together the couple took over the business from his father — Victor Kiam, who used to own the New England Patriots and president of Remington Products — changing the company name from Lady Remington to Lia Sophia in 2004.

From now until the end, Lia Sophia is selling thousands of items for up to 50% off when purchased through its reps.

Lia Sophia going out of business [Chicago Tribune]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Pasting A Copyright Notice On Your Facebook Timeline Still Won’t Work

This will not work.

It’s like an annual tradition: Facebook announces revisions to its privacy or data use policies, and the people of Facebook Nation respond by copying and pasting a boilerplate notice warning Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies that their political rants and snapshots of their kids’ drawings belong to them, thank you very much. The problem: this does not actually work.

If you want to control who can see what you post, pay a visit to the kindly Privacy Dinosaur, who can walk you through the basics of controlling who sees your stuff.

The legal notice trend is only slightly less pointless than the “Cancer is bad: share if you agree!” memes that my Facebook friends share: at least it alerts people to impending policy changes, even as it encourages people to take completely ineffective action against them. You can’t change which parts of the Facebook terms of service apply to you by pasting them on your wall any more than you can change the terms of your mobile phone contract by shouting into the phone that you would really, really like to use your unlimited data service to tether your computer and download from BitTorrent.

That privacy notice you’re posting to Facebook? It won’t work [CNET]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

If You Have A GM Car Recalled For Ignition Problem, Now Is The Time To Get It Fixed

(frankieleon)

It’s been many months since General Motors finally got around to recalling more than 2 million vehicles for a problem with the ignition switch that has been tied to dozens of deaths. Many recalled cars have yet to be fixed because there weren’t enough parts to make the repairs, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says sufficient replacement switches are now available so there is no reason to wait any longer.

While the recall involved more than 2 million cars, only about 1 million are believed to actually need new ignition switches that can’t be inadvertently turned off when bumped by a driver’s knee or weighed down by heavy keychains.

If the switch does turn off, the driver will lose power steering and braking, making it difficult to control the car. Making matters worse, the airbags will not deploy in the case of a crash. As of last week, GM acknowledged that at least 35 deaths have resulted from this defect, which people at the carmaker knew of more than a decade in advance of the recall announcement.

Vehicles included in the recall are the Chevy Cobalt (2006-2011), Saturn ION (2003-2007) Pontiac G5 (2007-2010), Pontiac Sky (2006-2010), Pontiac Solstice (2006-2010), Chevy HHR (2006-2011), and the Saturn Sky (2007-2010).

NHTSA has an online tool at SaferCar.gov that allows all vehicle owners to enter their car’s VIN and see if it is affected by this or any other recall.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Walmart Shopper Thinks No One Will Notice 6.5 Pounds Of Cow Tongue Shoved In His Pants

(MeneerDijk)

We understand that the very act of wearing pants is kind of like adorning your legs in potential pockets — as long as nothing falls out the bottom, you’ve got fabric fit for carrying stuff. But just because you’ve got room in your pants to spare doesn’t mean it’s okay to shove stolen meat (or seafood) down there, as yet another bad consumer has shown us this week.

Police in Florida arrested a man they stay attempted to boost more than six pounds of cow tongue by stowing it in his pants, reports WKMG Local 6.

According to officials, the man grabbed the cow tongue from the store’s cooler and shoved it down below, before attempting to walk out of the store like he didn’t have lots of meat in his pants.

His subterfuge was incomplete, however, as loss prevention officers nabbed him and called the police after he ran out of the store.

Cops caught up with him and retrieved two beef tongues, valued at $35.35, from his pants. He was charged with petit theft.

Man stole 6 pounds of cow tongue from Walmart, stuffed it in pants, DeLand police say [WKMG Local 6]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Computer Glitch Informs Frustrated NYC Commuters They Don’t Have Enough Money To Ride

(afagen)

Whether you live in New York City and take public transit or are a straphanging commuter in another city, you know the ultimate frustration of swiping your card during the morning rush and having the system inform you that you’ve got “Insufficient Fare” and need to go add money. The screams of rage were even louder yesterday morning when a computer glitch messed with 10,000 commuters who otherwise thought they had plenty of money to ride.

The yowls and groans of about 10,000 New Yorkers rose yesterday morning, after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said a snafu had hit some MetroCards, prompting an error message when Long Island Rail Road Customers and Metro-North riders tried to use the cards for traveling on the city’s subways and buses, reports CBS New York.

“Because of a technical problem with the coding for the monthly unlimited MetroCards that are on the back side of the monthly tickets for Long Island Rail Road customers and Metro-North customers, the MetroCard portion is not working at turnstiles or on buses,” an MTA spokesman said.

In a city that’s already ticked off at Monday morning, that didn’t go over so well.

“I’m so angry,” one commuter in transit said. “I can’t go to work. I’m late.”

“I don’t feel very happy about it,” another said, while I’m sure various others were just seething in silent rage as they do on a daily basis anyway.

The “insufficient fare” message flashed for about 10,000 riders total, who first came into the city using LIRR or Metro-North trains. The MTA has since apologized.

“We recognize this is an inconvenience; we appreciate your patience and apologize for the error,” the MTA said.

Customers who weren’t able to snag a replacement card yesterday morning can buy new, unlimited 30-day MetroCards today and will not be charged for the other, defective cards. Riders will also get a credit for any other subway fare they had to purchase yesterday.

Glitch Hits Monthly LIRR, Metro-North MetroCard Users, Snarls Subway Access [CBS New York]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist