Slashdot Mirror
Consumers Union Wants You to Share Your Story
dcgirl20006 writes "Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports launched a new site to help consumers across the country who are dealing with phone bills, cell phone contracts, cable packages and Internet scams.
Consumers experiencing problems are not alone. The site is searchable and consumers can find one that most closely matches the situation in which they are in. We don't have all the answers to every problem consumers may face, but some consumers have shared solutions and suggestions."
That's my story.
Does this work with IRS tax issues? I'd love to post my issues with the IRS in there
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Sharing is bad. the RIAA told me so.
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It's about time some larger, collative body steps in to perform something like this. Incidences of telephone companies (as one example of many) charging the wrong price on bills, or not providing a service, and then not fixing it up for the customer are all too common, and frankly current means of fighting these (ie. TIO, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman in Australia) , although having some power, are by no means a definitive source on _all_ incidents regardless of industry. This is a good move for the consumer in defeating corporate scare / money-grabbing tactics.
Its sites like this that really illustrate just how powerful and useful the Web can be. That and Slashdot of course.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Who got a cellphone but gets no service or caller ID which she paid for? Gotta tell her about this.
It seems to be slashdotted.
...can complain early?
...why do some of the complaints date to 2004?
Also, the few I read seemed to me like more of cases where people failed to read the fine print and then got upset when the other party enforced their contract rights.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am ABDULLAH ALI ABULLAH i am from the republic of YEMEN,but live and work in Egypt,i am the acountant general of Arab Bank plc,and i am on a special assignment to Nigeria-Arab Bank for one year,to run the audite programme.
I have urgent and Very confidential business proposition for you.In august 29 1998, a Foreign Oil consultant/contractor with the Nigerian National petroleum Corporation, Mr.Barry Kelly made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at US$20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million Dollars)this branch. Upon maturity, I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, I sent a reminder and finally I discovered from his contract employers, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation that Mr. Barry Kelly died from an automobile accident.
On further investigation, I found out that he died without making a WILL, and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruitless. I therefore made further investigation and discovered that Mr. Barry Kelly did not declare any next of kin or relations in all his official documents, including his Bank Deposit paperwork in our Bank. This sum of US$20,000,000.00 has carefully been moved out of the bank to a security company for save keeping purpose . No one will ever come forward to claim it.
According to Nigerian Law, at the expiration of 5 (five)years, the money will revert to the ownership of the Nigerian Government if nobody applies to claim the fund.
Consequently, my proposal is that I will want you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin. I am writing you because as a public servant (accountantwith the bank), I cannot operate a foreign account or have an account that is more than $1million. I therefore want to present you as the next of kin (the rightful owner of the fund) so that you can be able to claim it with the help of an accredited attorney. Finally, I urge you to provide immediately your full names, phone/fax numbers and your current mailing address so as to enable us commence the paperwork that will present you as the rightful beneficiary (nextof kin) of the fund. As soon as the money is ransferred to you 70% is for me while 20% is for you.then 10% will be set aside for any expences during the transaction.
Please reply immediately via my Email address. Upon your response, I shall then provide you with more details that will help you understand this hitch free (risk free)transaction.
Thanks and God bless.
ABDULLA ALI ABDULLAH
Alright! All too often, the consumers voice is lost in the shuffle.
I attempted to submit questions about a company that bit me on Slashdot, just to see if I was the only one. After numerous rejected stories I ended up writing an article, and submitting it to OSNews.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10532
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
I thought it was CRASH us now... too late
RP
True story.
It was a while ago and I was keeping it accurate for historical purposes. By the way, stamps are 37 cents. Not 1/3rd of a cent, you fucking dildo.
when i was looking to buy an MP3 player, i started researching my first choice, player A. to my dismay, i found tons of negative feedback about A. i then looked at B. tons of feedback about B. then C ... etc. every player i looked at had a lot of negative feedback. the point is, there are always some number of disgruntled customers. such online reporting cannot be used as an accurate guage of quality. if five people cry foul, you cannot say if it's 5 out of 10, or 5 out of a million.
This kind of witch hunt is totally unbalanced! We need a Corporations Union (independent of Congress) that has a list of consumer tricks to get out of paying bills. Like bankruptcy - they're liable to claim that getting sent to Iraq is making them pay their bills too late to keep their spouse and kids heated through the Winter. Post your list of corporate concerns, like not enough return on campaign bribes, below.
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make install -not war
Given the current political climate (unions are bad), This should not be called the consumer's union, but rather the CIAA:
Consumer Indignation Association of America
They didn't figure out a way to leverage what epinions is doing and just promote that. I know that epinions is business oriented, but it is almost exactly the same concept.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Like customers in tech support who still look for the "any" key, people at large cannot even deal with the basic entanglements they willfully get themselves into. Now we share our stories and knowledge about them?
I wonder how our parents ever got along not having this sort of Internet phenomenon. How ever did they pay the electric bill and understand their furnace service contract without this? Well I pay my cell phone bill and cable bill online by bank card, manage and modify my services by the same web interfaces, and keep track of the bills in MS Money (gnucash seems to be doggedly dedicated to doing things its way instead of mine). How hard is it really to deal with this?
And why do online scams get linked in here? The verious complexities and vagaries of cell phone contracts aren't a scam unless you're too stupid to RTFC and want to blame that instead on the cell company, defining scam as any time you aren't handheld by the other party through everything. News flash to those noobs: "due diligence" applies to all parties in a contract, and doesn't mean the other guy has to do yours for you.
The stupidity in the world never ends. "But you have to help me! I don't know how to press what button to put this silver disc in my Windows!" is but one facet of overall inanity.
I know some will go on about "nightmares" in dealing with their service providers, but I've found 99% of the time, the customer is dead wrong, their provider in the right legally and contractually, and the customer was just too stupid to read their contract, if not too stupid to live. "But it should work the way I think and not the way they say" is not a workable model no matter how much the CU wants it to. It isn't in software, it ain't in banking, and it isn't in utility service.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Oh no! It's their servers igniting!
I expect to see a severe downgrading of the reliability of whatever brand it is they use in the next Consumer Reports, or at least the addition of a column for 'Slashdot survivability'.
Perhaps someone should post a helpful article on their site, when it finally comes back up.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
The company Microsoft is trying to strongarm major computer vendors not to sell any computers without Microsoft's proprietory software to consumers and to charge every consumer a Microsoft licensing fee by raising retail prices for computer systems.
This strikes me as an intent to establish an illegal monopoly. Anyone wants to write the Consumer Union a note about that?
So then the phone says "change battery" and I went to tell them that I needed a new battery since the phone was under warranty. They said that "change battery" just meant charge battery. So I said, "so you mean its just broken, and it means charge the battery instead of change the battery?" and they said, "yeah." So I said, "Well then THAT MEANS THE PHONE IS FARKING BROKEN" in front of their entire store full of customers, and everyone started cracking up. They kicked me out of the store, and I was planning on coming back that night and torching it but I pussed out.
The Care Rep.
I don't know you, but I already hate you. Don't get us wrong its not any fault of yours. Just as a person is smart and people are morons, that is where the hate comes from. And here is some news we don't appreciate your business and wish you would go to hell. The brief contact that one person can have with another, in our case 490 seconds. In case you did not realize it that is the amount of time that we have to take your call find out what you are whining about and eject you from the phone. Don't worry you are not the only one, I take an average of 60 calls a day, some times 100, lets just call it 60. We work 247 days a year, lets average this... 60 * 247 = 14820 calls in a year * 400 seconds = 5928000 seconds, (lets divide that by 120 to bring it to hours) = 49,400 hours a year spent on the phone with people just like you! You may think that your problem is special; I assure you it is not. Most problems a tenured care rep has fixed within the first 35 seconds of the call. If that same rep stops to argue with you be assured that you are wrong. We know our jobs 14820 calls a year do not forget. And yet you whine you cry when you do not get your credit, you try and sway us you try and make us care, remember the first line of this manifesto. The truth is there!
Do you take time away from your work to assist someone that you hate with some thing that they did to themselves? No, you are the average American you spit on them push them kill them hang them enslave them. Do you help them apply credit for them? Its your country, you built it we just enforce the rules that you built for yourselves. Do you feel like you are getting conned? Don't worry that's just business as usual. Have you ever been lied to? Point blank lied to, so someone could get their own way? You know we notate everything, if you don't know now you do. We notate everything in some cases (if you sound like an exceptional ass) every word, we know what happened on Dec 2 of 2003. You cannot lie to us. In addition to which even if its not notated you should do your homework, before you lie to us. If the item or service you want did not exist you could never have been offered it.
How should you deal with us? It's very easy:
1. Be respectful, we are not your subordinates we are not a lower form of life and in most cases we are the only thing standing between you and what you want. And we have ALL the power that you think we do.
2. Don't Yell/Scream, if you feel the need to yell or scream take it out on someone who cares? We don't listen to it we don't care refer to line one. Don't call us in a bad angry mood, go masturbate or something then call us back.
3. Don't masturbate, do whatever you want when you are off the phone. Don't spank it while you are on the phone with us, that is just sick. And happens way too often.
4. Proper English. Axe != Ask, speak clearly and concisely.
5. Suck up. The fact of the matter is, in most cases, you screwed up, which means that I am under absolutely no obligation to do anything. In most cases if it is reasonable I will do something, but it's still my call 100% so if you yell/scream/name call, I will say no. Not because I can't do anything, but because you have not inspired me to help you.
6. Avoid the following phrase "you people". Has anyone used this phrase on you? Consider this part of Respect, and remember we know who you are and where you live. At any point in time I have access to you SSN your address your bank account numbers your credit card numbers I even know when you were born!
7. Have a pen and paper ready. I mean really.
8. Don't swear. If you swear you are in twice as much trouble, we will actually go out of our way to make your life hell.
Once again it is not you that we don't want to like you, and that is the loophole. If you treat us well if you are nice / respectful to us as an individual (we usually hate the company we work for as much as you) we will bend over backwards for you we will generally go above and beyond what we should be doing for you. If we say we cannot do something at this point we generally cannot.
Why must the bank/phone company/etc get off for FREE when they overcharge me?
If I underpay my bill they charge me late fees.
Since there are more countries in the world than TheOneCountry, and Slashdot refers to the global internet community, I think it is better to specify for which country you're talking about the next time. Thanks
After what the Consumers Union did to Suzuki, I'm not inclined to trust them.
Defecation occurs.
Has anybody actually read CR recently? Better still, who has compared the CR from the 1970's with the 2000's? The evaluations and the NEGATIVE reports have been supplanted by mostly happy-talk and non-substantive reviews of major manufacturers products.
The on-line CR has even less to recommend itself. Now they are putting the public out-front to eat the defamation actions where the old CR would have done the research and published the dirt.
I blame the CR board member Burnele Powell, a law professor and law school dean. Who better to blame than the lawyers?
You speak to your mother like that?
with a suspicious movie endorsement
Oh well, at least my lawn didn't turn into lava.
How about people who submit stories about websites to Slashdot without identifying themselves as being personally involved with the site? How trustworthy can this website be when one of their staff, Morgan Jindrich, submits the story without mentioning his own relation with the organization?
I'm a human being. Please treat me as such.
walmart told me so.
Meh.
I often wonder who writes these positive reviews. The only time I have contact with customers after a sale is when there is a problem, I don't often hear that the product is wondeful and works as advertized, I hear "this hunk of shit failed after just four years, I want my money back"
If things go well that doesn't get people to make action. Happy people tend to do nothing.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
This thread ends now: You are Hitler.
I would much rather buy songs at a rate that benefits the record companies ($1 or $2 a song in the mp3/aac/whatever format of my choice), but as long as they insist on being so posessive about their songs, my only option is barely legal sites like allofmp3.
1) Let everybody know about problems and share solutions. Build big database.
2) Once the site is actually useful, switch to a subscription model.
3) Profit
Can you say astroturfing? Seems like a perfect venue for it, to me.
Its monitoring that's the work and the only thing that makes an alarm worthwhile.
Think about a car alarm. Useless, because nobody is there to *do* anything about it.
My alarm company calls the police, and they do come.
Perhaps you live in a ghetto?
My co-worker just spend about a half-hour going through his Bell cellular phone bill. It seems that every month since he started (about 6+ months ago I think) they've screwed up on his bill, and never in his favor. The main screwups seem to be with "companion phones" which are not supposed to be billed when they call each other, often they'll not charge when B calls A, but will for A calling B. This month he found $18 in errors... go figure.
How many people don't check their bills, and get screwed to the cellular company's profit...
Where are you looking that you find so many negetive reviews... perhaps you're just looking in the wrong place(s). I tend to check sites such as Epinions, wherein many of the projects have a nice mix of good and bad reviews. And when reading bad reviews... pay attention to the comments. If somebody is bitching about how an mp3 player doesn't have "as much capacity" as others (which people do, even though the capacity was stated before purchase) you can disregard it... if they're regularly bitching that the thing sucks batteries and corrupts files then perk up a bit...
What do you do to deal with a company that won't respect their warrantees. I've had plenty of people state they bought product X, it broke, and the store was either a pain in the ass or outright wouldn't accept the return. Personally I'm dealing with the local Canadian Tire because the brakes rotors they put in my car keep shuddering something fierce on hills (likely warped rotors)... but they claim it's not their brakes at fault but bad calipers (replaced calipers myself, still shudders, go figure).
Are there any groups to enforce warrantee?
I actually miss their old Check-Rated designation (or whatever it's called now). I can't remember the last time I saw one of those. Best Buy -- oops, CR Best Buy (TM) -- is also less frequent than in years past, but it's not gone entirely. Again, though, I think this is primarily due to the marketplace leveling out.
And I have to disagree more on online CR - not because of the content (it's basically the same as the print, though they do updates every so often online), but because of the easy access (well, easy if you're a subscriber). If the Mrs. is out shopping and looking at an impulse buy, she can give me a call on her cell and I can check it out online in a few clicks. Worth the price of admission for that, I tell ya.
I think in aggregate CR doesn't pull punches, that said their evaluation criteria may not match yours and in their framework of evaluations perhaps overall products have improved since the 70s. As a simple hypothetical to illustrate this latter point, the TV of 1971 and the TV of 2005 are very different beasts (even in the older "analog" tube variety). I would say that probably uniformly the worst 2005 TV is probably more passable than some of the best 1971 TVs...
In the early 70's through the early 80's CR had a grid of 6-12 criterion for each product tested and the grid was published for EACH product.
Today they don't cover as many products, they aren't as comprehensive in their testing and they have become lawsuit-shy.
I'm open to evidence to the contrary, but I became disgusted by the dilution of their "mission" after almost 30 years as a member.
I agree with you that the on-line version is the same as the print content.
I believe that you started reading 10 years after CR made their name. They were the "non-commercial" answer to the UL Labs.
Today, you must admit, CR has dropped the number of testing criteria and the number of products tested.
Consumer Electronics Rebates should be one of the topics. I have had more trouble over 30 and 50 dollar rebates then I ever have had with my cell phone provider.
Except it's 3 years, not one. Had to move last year after only 8 months of being in that contract. Yes, it's a commitment and yes it may seem frivolous to be able to cancel 'because the contract no longer makes sense for me'. However, they have a clause in there that let's them cancel the contract at any time for any reason. All the big companies I've dealt with on issues like this have clauses for themselves - it's not like you can shop around too much if everyone's got the same contracts and won't work with you.
I've already told them I won't ever be using ADT again (had brinks earlier and it wasn't that bad - much better service than ADT). The negative advertising they've had from me over the past few months is much worse than the few hundred dollars they're going to get from me in the next 2 years.
creation science book
Wasn't there something called planetfeedback.com which was supposed to do something similar? Are they still around?
creation science book
How gauche of you.
Most reductions in quality are probably due to fact that the courts are becoming less a protector of individual freedom, and more a tool to insure corporate profit. Since CR is not out to make a profit selling shitty profits, they cannot afford to fight long battles in court. OTOH, corporations are masters are abusing the courts and wasting the time of judges. The corporation know how to extend lawsuits, thereby purposefully increasing fines to huge amounts, and then complain about excessive damages, resulting in awards far less than court costs, and minimal compensation to the injured consumer.
There is really no way for the public to get an accurate picture of a product in a world where the corporation is free to use the courts as thier personal PR department.
And, to address you real concern, CR has always published certain complaints from consumers. Like anything on the net, one has to take it with a grain of salt. Of course, corporations want the average person to beleive everything he or she reads so they can sell thier penis elargement pills.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Okay, Slash', your editing is usually a little sloppy, but "in which they are in" is grounds for a public flogging.
Not much to this site. Mostly a great place to bitch and make businesses look bad. One thing I do notice is there is no way to reply to a story, which is awfully convienent because leafing through what's posted I realize lots of the stories are:
* People who didn't read the fine print on contractual agreements.
* Customer's who don't understand economics of scale (i.e. one person having troubles with cell phone reception in a given area of town does not justify the cost to put in a new tower for the company).
* People who are blaming the wrong person
(i.e. a la carte cable)
Don't blame Comcast because you can't buy channels one at a time. Comcast can't buy their stations from Viacom, ect like that, that is why they don't offer it to you. If you hate this arrangement, talk to TimeWarner (Entertainmant) or NBC Universal, not Comcast.
Now we get to the subject: publishing comments from the public. The original CR was a bi-monthly publication and the room for public comments in the magazine format was greatly limited. From my own observation the entire "critical" letter section did not exceed 12 column inches a year. You can rest assured that they edited the comments very well, indeed. Certainly no more than 24 letters were published in a year, and usually many fewer.
Now CR has decided to provide unlimited bitch and moan space, but no editor. There goes the neighborhood...
Turning to the corporate world: in the original incarnation, CR didn't accept the corporate "freebies" to test, didn't accept advertising and, they bought their test subjects from retail outlets so that they obtained a representative sample of the product (a car to a TV to washer-dryers). After purchasing random consumer end product, CR evaluated them based upon a reasonable objective criterion. The magazine gave a whole page to 2 pages on the testing methodology and the rationale for the testing method. Then they gave a rundown of the winners and losers along with a table showing the names, prices, and performance results for every product tested. Today, we don't see the test results, or the write-up, that the original CR provided.
I do believe that CR has been "chilled" in its speech by some corporate pressures and the "veggie libel" laws. It seems to me that the public bitch and moan page just cheap "content" generator provided in a way for CR to skirt the liability issues by making use of the Telecommunications Act of 1996's "bulletin board liability" shield.
I bought CR for the independent lab results, the professional writing and the high quality editing. Now we don't have the comprehensive testing or the writing - and editing just flew out the window.
I noticed that back in the 90s when CR would always recommend Sears Kenmore products which for the most part are a steaming pile of dung. They couldn't possibly be the best in their category, but CR always scored them highest. I know the official policy is to not accept advertising or sponsorship from a corporation, but perhaps Sears was rewarding them in some other indirect way. I've always been suspicious of this magazine ever since, but they do serve a good purpose overall. And luckily they don't just roll over at the first sign of a lawsuit, or they would probably not be in business today.
The CU site seems to focus more on services, as opposed to products. (Yes, I know Epinions rates services, too.)
CU is the publisher of Consumer Reports, which is the largest general-consumer product review magazine (they test TV sets, refrigerators, cars, and other things.)
What I wonder is, are they going to do anything meaningful with the opinions they collect? Normally, CR conducts random-sample surveys, which are a little more objective than simply collecting everyone's rants.
But they aren't "in business", they're a consumer union - not a "business". At least that's what they say in the masthead.
I bought a phone at Verizon that said it had a battery life of 110 hours. When I actually used it, it lasted 48 hours or less. Now I understand that they fudge it a little, but less than half? So I went down there, and they had the audacity to tell me that the battery life listed was for when the phone was turned off!
This is exactly what I meant in another comment I made in this article. The phone does not live up to the specified battery specs and you're blaming Verizon? They didn't manufacture the cell phone. Cell phones not meeting marketing's claims of battery life isn't new. Verizon's reps' responses were certainly dumb, but they don't write the numbers, they just repeat what the manuafacturer said too.
Unfortunately I didn't notice 2 spaces between sentences, which is the way things are supposed to be (and which avoids misunderstandings such as mistaking the period for a decimal point), because Slashdot "eats" any extra spaces entered.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I am not a consumer, I am a human being.
That is all.
Just as you said, we have the US Congress. I can't imaging a better lobbying organization then that!
I wish congress would lobby for my project. Imagine what a 1 Billion $ appropriation would do for MythTV!
If you get a chance to visit the Consumer's Union open house (each year in early October at their headquarters in Yonkers, NY reachable from NYC by transit easily)- make an effort to turn up. It's really great to meet everyone there and chat with them. These people love what they do and care a great deal about their methods and approach and are happy to talk about things. I find it very uplifting to go on such a pilgramage when I can. (It is a biased sample, since presumable the most enthusiastic and interested people are the ones who are willing to turn up and host an open house in their labs, but still it's great!)
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Sorry for my bad English This article doesn't belong here, it belongs on a site targeting U.S. citizens, not on a site targeting geeks. There are also geeks in the rest of the world, you know.
Yeah, but I let my subscription lapse. Basically, their values have drifted away from my values to the point that their reviews just weren't very meaningful to me anymore.
For example, if they were comparing two home theater systems, they might recommend the one that's pretty much inferior in every way except that it uses $2 less electricity per year. I really wish I could say that was a joke or exaggeration, but it's not.
Since I started their emphasis on efficiency over other qualities, I stopped caring. Don't get me wrong; all else being equal, I like using less energy as much as anyone else. When I'm shopping for a HDTV, though, I really don't care whether one draws two watts more than another. It simply doesn't interest me.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I know, OT, but what use is a forum if you can't give out useful information.
Its not warped rotors.
While they should stand behind any changes they made, if you go elsewhere to get it fixed, its good to know what the problem may or may not be, and warped rotors isn't it. Its possible its pad deposits, but it would be very rare to see that problem on a normal unabused car.
Changing pads and checking things like suspension bushings, alignment and wheel bearings are a better bet. You could have bunged up pads, or something about the suspension under compression in the front may be putting strain on a bad bearing or a bad bushing may be throwing something out of alignment under compression.
Several years ago, I decided I'd like to subscribe to Consumer Reports and tried to do it on their web site. It wouldn't work with the browser I was using (Opera, I think) because of some non-portable code in the site. When I attempted to find a way to contact them online to say their web site was costing them a sale, I couldn't. Now, three years later, they haven't improved.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
That's an example of sloppy testing criteria that CR has adopted. CR is selecting aribtrary, but measurable, criteria for their tests and don't explain how they came to select the test modality.
I guess that they could test every product as a polar bear repellant or as a sunscreen and report those test results, too. Possibly nice to know, but not a measure that you would consider making the purchase.
Helping customers and fixing problems with your business is what customer service should be about. Voicing our complaints and boycotting faulty desing and workmanship is how the system is worked. Consumer electronics are at an all time high for mediocrity and planned obsolescence. The more noise people make, and the more bugs these manufacturers are willing to fix the better the quality of living for all will be.
Being in the service industry it's been my experience that 1 unhappy customer, who isn't just a total dick, can lead to much lost business and a snowball of other complaints once word gets out.
The bottom line is customer service. Supply and demand. Don't even think for a second that some American is going to lose his job if you don't return your p.o.s. mp3 player for a full refund. The person losing their job over it will be some kid in a relatively poor company who will only grow more restless and have a stronger voice in changing his corrupt country. This is life on Earth in 2005. If you want to go around buying junk even though you know it's junk then do so, but don't go around telling people it's ok without expecting to be told to shut the fuck up.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...