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( Bob ) Toshiba will be leaving the U.S. market for televisions, but you’ll still be able to buy a Toshiba TV later this year. Confused? Like other brands in the TV market, the company will license its name to Compal Electronics. TVs made by Compal will hit shelves starting in March. While you may not have heard of Compal, it’s possible that you’re reading this post on a laptop computer or desktop monitor manufactured by them. They manufacture computers for more familiar names like Dell, Compaq, HP, and… Toshiba. Toshiba blamed the “harsh price competition” in the television market for their struggle to turn a profit from selling TVs in North America. It will also seek similar licensing agreements with another manufacturer for its television products in other countries. Instead of bothering with the television business, the company will simply rent out its name to Compal. This could work out badly if Compal sells subpar televisions. Our alert colleagues down the hall at Consumer Repor...

( The Joy Of The Mundane ) Sure, gift card bonus deals are meant to induce you to buy even more gift cards, maybe keeping the smaller one for yourself. While giving gift cards can be problematic , In the case of a restaurant or store that you already plan to visit or visit regularly, gift card deals area a great way to take advantage of these promotions. Yes, it seems obvious, but the key is to watch specifically for these deals. Sometimes the savings can be substantial. Travis Pizel over at Money Ning started to keep track of bonus gift card deals when he came across them , and encountered quite a few in just a month or so of looking. They even included local restaurants, which he found as part of a package deal at Costco where $100 worth of gift cards cost $80, an immediate 20% off discount. Other deals that he discovered were mostly at national chain restaurants, like Outback Steakhouse (an extra $20 gift card if you buy a $100 card) or the same promotion at Red Lobster. One tricky...

( a lonewolf ) We all kind of know that credit card data isn’t terribly secure , and that the payment information is likely to get swiped eventually. But that information is all theoretically anonymous. Without a name, address, or ZIP code attached, our credit card information doesn’t say much about us personally, right? Wrong. A study released by researchers at MIT this week shows just how easy to spot almost all of us our just by our spending, the AP reports . The research team wanted to know: how much “anonymized” data would it take to identify you? If your ZIP code and name and all other identifying information are stripped away, how many records does someone need to figure out who you are? The answer is: four. At most. Three, if at least one price is included. That’s all it takes to pick you out of a crowd with over 90% accuracy, the research team found. Any three or four transactions can give you away, and it doesn’t have to be anything fancy like air travel. Kleenex, coffee, an...

( gabster_ro ) The Federal Trade Commission hasn’t let the bee out of its bonnet over health claims made by POM Wonderful that it says amount to deceptive advertising, having kept on the company’s case since 2010. Now, eight months after POM made its case before a federal appeals court that it’s not being misleading about the things its juice can do, the court is siding with the FTC. It all started back in Sept. 2010 when the FTC filed an administrative complaint against POM Wonderful, seeking to keep it from making health benefit claims without providing independent scientific research that backed up those claims, and from making statements about disease prevention or treatment without approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The FTC argues that POM Wonderful goes beyond the normal touting of generally accepted health benefits from pomegranates (like that they contain nutrients and antioxidants), and accused it of making statements that its juice fought atherosclerosis, prost...

( Mike Mozart ) A new federal lawsuit filed today claims that Costco and the managers of a Long Island store violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and New York State Human Rights laws by allegedly allowing managers and staff to taunt a fellow employee about his Tourette’s Syndrome, to the point where the man had to be hospitalized. The New York Post reports the 38-year-old man, who has worked as a greeter at the store since he was 19, filed the lawsuit this week in a U.S. District Court, claiming that he was subjected to a hostile environment because of his disability. According to the lawsuit, when new management took over at the Costco store in 2103, they disregarded the company’s Code of Ethics and systematically targeted, discriminated against and physically endangered the man. “Appallingly, instead of ‘taking care’ of [the plaintiff], Costco subjected him to the same discrimination and stigmatism he has fought against his entire life,” the suit states. “For nearly the p...

( Amanda Hoffman ) Verizon has been watching you. If you use their mobile service, Verizon has been tracking your every move on the internet for the better part of the last two years, with no way for you to opt out. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good: the company is finally letting consumers turn off the trackers. The news comes from the New York Times, which reports that Verizon is easing up on the perma-tracking after years of pushback. Here’s how it works: Verizon appends a little header that you can’t see to all web traffic coming out of your phone. The tracker, called a UIDH (unique ID header) is consistent and permanent. Unlike regular site tracking code, clearing out your cookies and upping your privacy settings doesn’t do anything about these. And they build a comprehensive, unique, entirely trackable history of basically everything you’ve ever Googled or visited on your phone. All the time. Usable by third parties (even though Verizon says it’s not). If that feels to you ...

( Marc Wathieu ) Did you know that there’s a pizza season? Pizzerias say that their business picks up in October, and the bump lasts through the NCAA tournament in March. 12.5 pizzas are ordered on Super Bowl Sunday alone. Supporting all of that delivery business in a very literal sense is a crucial American industry: the factories that make pizza boxes. On the surface, pizza boxes are extremely simple. They’re boxes that are used for a very short time to transport a pizza between the oven and the home it’s delivered to. They have to be sturdy and keep the pizza warm, but not trap steam inside so it becomes soggy. This is more difficult than you might think. If you’re into checking where things are made, look at the box the next time you order pizza to see where it came from. The most likely candidate is Rock-Tenn, a Georgia-based company that makes boxes for nationwide chains like Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, Domino’s, and Papa John’s as well as your neighborhood pizza joint. They pri...

It’s been a whirlwind week for the relationship between e-commerce giant Alibaba and the Chinese government. After one agency released a report criticizing the company for allowing fake goods to be sold online through its vendors, and another government group promised to crack down on such practices in general , Alibaba is now pledging to shape up its business practices. Alibaba and its eBay-like subsidiary Taobao at first seemed a bit ticked off by Wednesday’s white paper from the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, which alleged that “Alibaba Group hasn’t been paying enough attention to the mismanagement of the Alibaba Internet transaction platforms for a long time.” Taobao said in a statement at the time that the site is “willing to assume the responsibility of fighting fakes,” while also saying it would file a formal complaint with the SAIC regarding the investigation. It alleged that a top SAIC official demonstrated “procedural misconduct during the supervision proces...

(courtesy Elliott.org ) This is not how Comcast wanted to end a week that saw it having to explain how a supposedly rogue employee could change a customer’s name to “A**hole Brown.” Other customers have since come forward claiming they also had their names tweaked for the worst by Comcast staffers. Once again the complaints come via journalist and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott’s blog , which first broke the news of the A**hole incident. As that story caught fire online, other Comcast customers reached out to Elliott with claims that their accounts were altered with offensive names. One customer’s bill added the word “Whore” to the name on her account. “What’s most interesting is that Comcast said the ‘whore’ was added on Dec. 6,” she tells Elliott. “I have no record of any recent contact with Comcast until Dec. 16. So whoever chose to re-name me picked my account out of a hat. That says there are probably millions of us out there who Comcast employees have renamed. We need t...

( blue_j ) Though we still don’t know a specific launch date, name, or monthly cost of HBO’s upcoming standalone streaming service, it looks like some pay-TV providers are cutting their rates for the premium service or offering discounted promotions in advance of its debut. This is according to TVpredictions.com , which reports that Comcast recently dropped its standard HBO subscription rate from $18.95 to $15, which just happens to be the number that most — including Consumerist readers — are predicting for the HBO streaming service. What’s more, Comcast is apparently offering a promotion that cuts the monthly rate to $10 for people who order online. Comcast’s proposed merger partner is also offering that same discounted rate for online orderers of HBO. That’s the same introductory price that Verizon FiOS is now offering customers for 12 months, doubling its previous promotional offer of six months at $10. Though it still looks like the price will jump to $20/month after that year ...

( gweggyphoto ) While there are those of us who shun the sun and it’s potential to tan skin into a hue other than scariest white, some people find themselves craving the sun’s rays or seeking to get their Vitamin D fix in tanning beds. Those addicts seeking a fix every day could be driven by genetics, a new study says. Being “addicted” to tanning means getting a feel good sensation in the brain, or as it’s known, a high. The study by a senior research scientist at the Yale Cancer Center (via USA Today’s college portal ) whose those high and lows that come with tanning dependence is more about the genes than the person lying in the UV bed every day. “We were interested in tanning, particularly indoor tanning, because of the increase of young people who were getting skin cancer at least in part because of it,” says Brenda Cartmel. “Dermatologists for years have never seen this type of cancer and now they do quite a lot.” The 292 participants in the study included 79 who showed signs of...

This week hasn’t exactly brought good news for women’s fashion. Kate Spade announced yesterday that it would shutter its Kate Spade Saturday and Jack Spade stores , and today, Jones New York announced it would close stores and discontinue its wholesale business. Bloomberg reports that the multichannel women’s sportswear brand will close 127 outlet stores and terminate its wholesale business throughout the year. The company sold apparel in a number of department stores, such as Macy’s, at Jones New York Outlet stores and through its own website. Officials with the company say the move was made after a review of its recent performance and outlook. “We recognize that the Jones New York brand is important to many loyal customers, and we are pursuing strategic alternatives for the brand,” Interim Chief Executive Officer Andrew Hede said in the statement. “We will work with our wholesale customers and vendors to ensure an orderly transition over the course of this year.” Jones Group Inc....

( honeylamb ) Once upon a time, Frank Eliason was better known Comcast Frank , heading up the cable company’s Digital Care team during a time when people began to realize that complaining on the Internet could get results . He left Comcast in 2010 to take his social media and customer service skills to Citigroup, but his legacy of giving a damn about customers remains. So after months of seeing Comcast make one huge goof after another, Frank apparently felt compelled to pen an open letter to his former employer with some good advice. “I have had the privilege of working for the company,” Eliason writes in a lengthy post on LinkedIn , “and I consider many who work there to truly be family, but today I have to say I am disappointed.” Though we take issue with his assertion that Comcast customer service complaints had quieted in recent years — we can testify that they have not — we agree that the last year has been one disaster after another for the company. There was the Aug. 2014 inc...

( list ) Wait a minute…Forever 21 is in legal trouble over an intellectual property issue that doesn’t involve accusations that it ripped off another fashion company’s design? Yes, the fast-fashion superstore is being sued by three software companies that accuse it of pirating their expensive software. The lead plaintiff is Adobe, maker of professional software and a company that would definitely notice if an entire company were using unlicensed versions. It used to be that a use could purchase a copy of a pricey program once, install it from a disc of some kind, and then use it into perpetuity as long as they held on to the disc and a compatible computer. (For example, I’ve been using Adobe CS3 since 2010 and regret nothing.) The rise of cloud computing and software as a service is better for software companies since they an depend on regular income between major releases. Consumers, however, have to pay monthly for programs per user, and we can see how a penny-pinching boss migh...

( j.e.mcgowan ) While cricket doesn’t enjoy the immense popularity it inspires in other countries, fans of the sport who’ve been going without their fixes here in the United States will have a way to watch the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup: In a first for ESPN, the network is selling live-streaming access to the cup’s 49 matches in February and March for $99.99. ESPN is calling it a one-time deal, notes CNNMoney , but if it’s a success, it’s likely that it could happen again in the future. It’s the first time ESPN has sold programming directly to consumers, a trend that’s gaining steam lately. Just yesterday, Nickelodeon announced its own direct-to-consumer subscription, which will start this year. Others like HBO and Showtime have also said they’re planning similar services for customers who don’t want to get cable or satellite services. ESPN is keeping those providers in the loop with this deal, however, teaming up with Dish Network, Time Warner Cable and Mediacom so that custom...

( Rich Rogala ) Once again, a business who is displeased with an anonymous review on Yelp is trying to sue that reviewer and attempting to compel Yelp to reveal that user’s actual identity. But this morning, lawyers for Yelp and consumer advocates were in court to argue that there is no justification for unmasking the writer of this review. In June 2013, a Yelp user with the screen name “Lin L.” wrote a Yelp review for a real estate firm in Texas. The review stated that the agent she worked with was “by far the worst deceitful and money greedy sales agent you would ever deal with,” who “failed to represent us as clients, never explained our contracts to us and not once did he ever ask us what we wanted to keep or take in our home,” along with other claims that she was rushed into selling the house so that the agent could make his commission. Then in May 2014, the firm contacted Yelp to request the removal of the review. After looking into Lin L.’s comments, Yelp decided in June 2014 ...

( don buciak ) In what can only be akin to walking out the front door and realizing you locked your keys and the baby inside, the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight found himself in a spot of trouble after the cockpit door locked behind him, forcing the first officer to make an emergency landing. The flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas landed safely after calling to report there’d been a bit of a snafu with a malfunctioning cockpit door, reports ABC News . “About half way through [the 2.5-hour flight] there seemed to be some talking at the front of the plane. You could see the captain out there,” a passenger told ABC News. “There wasn’t a huge panic but some confusion.” He explained that the door was jammed and he was stuck on the wrong side, the passenger said, calling it “very, very bizarre.” But when the first officer was able to land at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas without a hitch, managing it “perfectly,” everyone broke out into spontaneous applause, he said. Having the first of...

Intuit CEO Brad Smith is sorry. Ask, and ye shall receive. Or rather, create a fuss big enough to let a company know people aren’t okay with changes made to a popular product, and force that company to back down and do the right thing. After TurboTax customers heartily voiced their disapproval over Intuit tweaking its software and charging more for features that used to be included in certain versions of the software , Intuit has reversed course, saying it’ll undo the hell it wrought. Intuit changed which services come with each tier of desktop software — Basic, Deluxe, Premier, and Home and Business — shifting some forms to more expensive versions. One big bone of contention was that the new version of TurboTax Deluxe no longer included four forms that are an essential part of some customers’ tax returns, forcing them to upgrade to the Premier software to gain access to those forms. At first, Intuit tried to make good by offering a $25 rebate to those forced to upgrade, but first ...

( Stephan De Witte ) When it comes to short-term, high-interest loans, payday lenders may get most of the headlines, but auto title loans can be just as perilous for borrowers, especially when the lenders use deceptive marketing. This morning, the Federal Trade Commission announced its first ever legal actions involving title loan operations that misled borrowers. The FTC announced Friday that First American Title Lending of Georgia, LLC and Finance Select, Inc. have agreed to settle charges they advertised, both online and in print, 0% interest rates for a 30-day car title loan without disclosing important loan conditions or the increased finance charge imposed after the introductory period ended. While advertised as short-term loans, title loans can become longer-term, high cost installment loans with payments due over several months. The annual percentage rate of a car title loan can be over 300 percent. If a consumer does not repay the loan within 30 days, high finance charges ...

( Peeping Dragon Photography ) Usually a telemarketer’s call is greeted with annoyance, disdain or even outright anger. But in one recent case, that unsolicited phone call has been credited with saving a woman’s life, from 900 miles away. Workers at a call center in Las Vegas found themselves listening to what sounded like a horrible, violent scene, reports KLAS-TV , after a phone call to a woman in Oregon was picked up, but no one answered. The worker called over her supervisor and had her listen in. “She said, ‘Tina, you need to hear this. I don’t think this is a joke. Something’s happening. I think this lady is getting hit,’” the supervisor said. “The young lady on the other end of the phone never said hello. There was just a horrible whimper.” Her boss also stepped in, saying the phone call was getting “progressively worse.” The workers didn’t hang up the phone, convinced that the “as far as the people in that room were concerned, we were the only lifeline she had.” The workers al...

Here are ten of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness. ( frankieleon ) ( m01229 ) ( benny7am ) ( Corey Templeton ) ( Aaron Fruth ) ( Eric BEAUME ) ( 吉姆 Jim Hofman ) ( Rich Renomeron ) ( m01229 ) (<a href=" Mike Mozart “>Mike Mozart) Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. 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