We've all been there: You call customer service, get bounced around, transferred, and dropped. Or worse, your issue never gets resolved even after you talk to someone. You probably know you can escalate to a manager, or even higher, to "executive" support. But at that level, there's an art to getting what you want. Here's what you need to know.
Being frugal is good. Saving money is such an obvious benefit to our lives that it drives our whole economy. As finance blog The College Investor points out, though, we aren't meant to stay frugal forever.
Maybe you're finally getting around to saving for your retirement, and you're wondering how much you should expect to save. An analysis from USA Today found that, on average, most people will need to save $82/day to retire comfortably.
One thing I learned in retrospect about becoming a parent is that most products designed for babies (and their parents) are just not necessary or worth sinking your money into, like many breastfeeding supplies . Some, however, are worth spending more on, especially the stuff that keeps your little one safe.
We're all a little forgetful sometimes. Whether that's forgetting to do an errand or losing your keys, it's easy to get frustrated when you forget something simple. However, as The Wall Street Journal points out, two different factors tend to make us forget things, and they're pretty easy to correct for.
A well-arranged kitchen can make a huge difference in how efficient you are in that space. So if your fridge door often gets in the way, How To Be A Handyman offers a DIY guide to change the direction it opens.
Being lactose-intolerant can feel like you’ve been cursed to a life without cheese, but not all cheeses contain high levels of the sugar. To see which cheeses are your friend (and which will give you trouble), just take a peek at the nutrition label.
Chrome: Love it or leave it, Facebook chat is probably one of the most prolific chat programs in many of our lives' simply because most people we know are on Facebook. If you'd like to use it as its own separate messaging window, Facebook Chat Pop-Outs can help.
Stuffed peppers are a delicious way to cram an entire meal into a self-contained edible container. However, when they cook, they can sort of deform. Keep the mess contained by cooking them in muffin trays.
Life hacking is all about doing things easier, but it's important to remember that not everything is easy. There aren't many "get rich quick" schemes in life—whether you're talking about money, productivity, relationships, or something else. Sometimes, the hardest tasks are the ones that matter the most.
Sometimes, you need to be ready to leave town on a whim, which is why part time driver and office executive Aaron G's bag includes everything he could possibly need to travel on short notice.
Insomnia can be very frustrating and we've all been through it—staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, hoping to catch a few winks before the dim blue light of dawn shows up. Luckily there are ways to improve your sleep. At soon-to-launch startup Casper, co-founders Philip Krim and Neil Parikh have been hard at work testing quantifiable sleep products to find out what makes for a better night's sleep. With Philip's entrepreneurial acumen and Neil's background in robotics with NASA (among other things), the duo hope to help people engineer their slumber. Have a question about sleep or the lack thereof? Philip and Neil will be here for the next hour so ask away.
(KLN TV)
As a child, one of the great wonders of life is witnessed the first time you press your face up to that thick plastic, eyes agog as a great claw appears from the sky to descend upon a mountain of toy delight and delicately pluck its chosen prize, to carry it triumphantly aloft and deliver it to eagerly waiting hands. And we all totally wished we could be inside that big plastic box filled with toys.
Alas, inside a transparent treasure chest is no place for a child. But that didn’t stop a three-year-old Nebraska boy who went missing Monday night from wandering across the street from his home and crawling into the bowling alley’s claw machine. He then settled down to do what else? He played his little heart out, reports KLN-TV.
His mother called 9-1-1 when she realized he was gone and he was soon found in the machine, which he would’ve had to enter through the prize delivery hole without anyone seeing him.
“You have to weave your way in and out so he had to work pretty hard to get in there,” the machine’s owner explained. “I had heard about this happening in other parts of the country, it’s kind of a rarity.”
And it sounds like he was pretty happy in there while the fun lasted.
“I really don’t think he noticed any of us outside the machine because he was just picking up stuffed animals and putting them down where they come out of,” says the bowling alley’s bartender.
There’s another way to get out of the machine, luckily, as the owner supplied the key to the machine and the boy was rescued. He’s uninjured and his mother isn’t in any trouble for letting him get in there in the first place, as cops say she reacted quickly in reporting him missing.
Even better? The kid didn’t leave that wonderland empty-handed, because that would be totally cruel. He went home with a new plush toy, a story that none of his friends will ever be able to rival at any party in his adult life, and the envy of millions of American kids for years to come.
Missing boy found safe playing inside toy claw machine [KLNTV.com]
Some very innocent toy planes that were not involved. (JoelZimmer)
As a classy establishment, we aren’t going to post the blurred or un-blurred versions of the photo in question: there are plenty of other sites that have preserved the image, and you can satisfy your curiosity within a few clicks.
The airline told the New York Daily News that this was all a pretty innocent mistake. A spokesman explained to the New York Daily News that a random Twitter user had publicly tweeted the image at the airline, and one of the company Twitterers copied the URL in order to report the offending image. In a horrific computer clipboard mixup, they added the picture’s address to a tweet sent to a frustrated customer instead.
The US Airways spokesperson says that the person responsible will not be fired for the mixup: they were originally out to protect the company from being associated with such filth.
US Airways’ pornographic tweet was ‘an honest mistake’ by employee, won’t lead to firing: airline [New York Daily News]
All those Ronald McDonald’s must know what they’re talking about when it comes to the new Taco Bell breakfast menu. According to a new report, consumers have latched on to the concept of the Waffle Taco and catapulted Taco Bell to the top of the so-called breakfast wars.
The Waffle Taco, A.M. Crunchwrap and other breakfast fare at Taco Bell have added significant sales and traffic to the fast-food chain and consumers seem to like what they’re feasting on, Business Insider reports.
According to a recent Citi Research survey, 33% of consumers prefer Taco Bell’s new morning offerings over McDonald’s traditional breakfast. Free coffee didn’t seem to help the golden arches, which was only preferred by 24% of consumers. However, nearly 43% of consumers said they would eat their first meal at either fast food joint.
So what’s the favorite breakfast item at Taco Bell? Survey says: the Breakfast Burrito, of course. The burrito was preferred by 36% of consumers, while the Waffle Taco was a close second with 31% of consumers saying it was their favorite.
“The initial indications are positive for Taco Bell,” Citi Research analysts wrote. “While this development is clearly not a positive for McDonald’s, it is still early and it may be possible for both McDonald’s and Taco Bell to continue to grow at breakfast at the expense of other competitors.”
And that could be just the case. The survey found that the newfound love of breakfast won’t slowing down, as 61% of consumers who preferred Taco Bell say they plan visit the restaurant once a week for their breakfast fix.
Customers Prefer Taco Bell Breakfast Over McDonald’s [Business Insider]
That’s what your enterprising criminal mastermind is up to these days, reports security expert Brian Krebs. Krebs (who you may remember as the guy who broke the news of 2013′s Target data breach) says that scammers are gaining access not to individuals’ materials, but instead are going big: directly to the HR departments of the companies that employ dozens or hundreds of people.
The hackers gain entry to HR software at “compromised organizations” and dig around until they find themselves a database full of W-2 forms. Once scammers have access to that giant pile of forms, they immediately try to file federal returns on all of them. Then all they need to do is misdirect the money from a refund back to their own scammy pockets:
Successfully-filed returns are routed to prepaid American Express cards that are requested to be sent to addresses in the United States corresponding to specific “drops,” or co-conspirators in the scheme who have agreed to receive the prepaid cards and “cash out” the balance — minus their fee for processing the bogus returns.
Krebs found that one particular piece of third-party payroll software, Ultipro, seems to be the favored target. The problem doesn’t seem to be with the software itself, though. At least, not according to the company that makes it. A marketing executive for that company, Florida-based Ultimate Software, told Krebs that the security hole isn’t an issue of a code vulnerability that they can fix, but is instead “the result of stolen login information on the end-user level.”
Meaning: someone manages to steal an HR employee’s username and password, logs into the system masquerading as that employee, and then steals all the information they need for a profitable wave of identity theft.
From there, it takes the bad guys very little time to try to file all those fake returns, because they’ve engineered software to do it for them. The crimeware, as Krebs calls it, can take all the data and methodically fling it at an e-filing service — in this case, H&R Block’s. And the nefarious evildoers behind it have found a way to profit from it twice over: not only are they committing tax fraud, but they’re also licensing the software to others so that they can do the same.
Tax return fraud is nothing new; the concept has been around forever. The sheer scope and near-automation of the process afforded by the digital era are newer, though. The IRS issued an estimated $4 billion in fraudulent refunds in 2012 alone. So far, Krebs reports, this particular scam seems tied to over $1 million in fraud.
Today is the deadline for filing your 2013 federal taxes. Hopefully the procrastinators among us sliding their returns in just under the wire won’t encounter any problems. But if you do find out at 11:59 tonight that someone else pretending to be you got there first, take these steps to start getting the situation sorted out.
Crimeware Helps File Fraudulent Tax Returns [KrebsOnSecurity]
Nope. Not a phone.
Benny and Rafi Fine, or The Fine Brothers, have had a successful run with their YouTube series showing kids reacting to unfamiliar things. This time it’s no different, with “What the heck is that?” as the common sentiment when they’re faced with a Walkman.
And no, children, not everything is a phone. Back in my day, we had one phone line and a very short cord, and if you wanted to stay up playing games and talking to your friends on the Internet all night your dad would be pretty peeved about the AOL bill.
Unless you’ve ever felt the sweet satisfaction of a perfectly executed mix tape — WITHOUT any weird radio DJs piping in on it — then you just won’t understand, kids. You just can’t.
Some days it’s hard to motivate yourself to go to the mall to shop, it’s just easier to shop online. We’ve all had those days, okay, maybe it’s just me, but still, tendencies like that are creating a problem of sorts for retail workers. The more efficient we’re becoming at buying our goods, the fewer retail workers are needed a new report shows.
Retail is constantly evolving, from shopping online to big box stores popping up in every town. But while those changes might seem great for consumers, they aren’t so welcome for retail workers, The Atlantic reports.
The retail industry added just 49,000 jobs between 2001 and 2013, meaning it really didn’t grow at all.
The Atlantic likens the rather stagnant growth in the retail sales workforce to two main causes: the Amazon Effect and the Walmart Effect.
One reason why shopping retail has become more efficient is that you can simply do it from your home. Instead of walking up and down aisles of the local department store, you can mark of each item on your shopping list with a quick click of the mouse. If consumers are shopping more online, there is less need for workers to be stocking shelves or working cash registers.
The Walmart Effect works similarly. Each employee at Walmart does the work of about 1.4 local retail workers, the Atlantic estimates. So, when a new supercenter opens a county will likely lose 150 jobs.
(The Atlantic)
The most tell-tale sign that things have changed is the difference in job growth between retail outlets.
Department stores have lost more than 200,000 jobs this since 2000. Additionally, specialty stores, like book stores, computer stores and photo stores, have mostly disappeared from the retail landscape. Instead, big box stores have taken over, adding nearly 500,000 jobs.
The Sad, Slow Death of America’s Retail Workforce [The Atlantic]
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time–a little-noticed section of the 2008 federal farm bill did away with the 10-year statute of limitations on debts to the government, and the feds set up an infrastructure to take these debts out of individual taxpayers’ refunds. Sounds reasonable enough if the debts were incurred by the taxpayer during their adult life, but that isn’t always what happened.
The Social Security Administration sought overpayments from the ’50s and ’60s, made to people who are now deceased. Dead recipient? No problem: the Social Security Administration would simply start with the recipient’s oldest child, find any siblings with income who were owed tax refunds, and go down the line, taking their tax refunds until the debt was satisfied.
In some cases, the government couldn’t even prove to the ostensible debtors who had received an overpayment in the first place. They also didn’t do anything sensible like send letters to living relatives of the person who received an overpayment so they could straighten out the issue before having their tax refunds taken away.
Good news: the Washington Post reports that the government has responded to taxpayers’ reasonable outrage at this program. Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin released a statement yesterday explaining that they’ll stop sending the names of intergenerational deadbeats over to the Treasury Department:
I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to recover debts owed to the agency that are 10 years old and older pending a thorough review of our responsibility and discretion under the current law.
Well, that’s good. Maybe they should have looked into that whole “responsibility and discretion” thing before using this program to retrieve overpayments from the ’60s.
Social Security stops trying to collect on old debts by seizing tax refunds [Washington Post]
Comcast’s speed has rebounded to its fastest ever since bottoming out in January.
Netflix has released its latest Speed Index numbers, and in the two months since their paid-peering deal was announced, Comcast has jumped from the worst cable Internet provider in the group (only performing slightly better than standard DSL services) to the fifth-fastest provider in the U.S., with an improvement of 65% in downstream speeds.
While this is undoubtedly good news for Comcast subscribers who had been watching their Netflix signal degrade since last summer, as Comcast allowed the traffic to bottleneck, the precedent being set by this arrangement gives rise to some bigger-picture concerns, especially if Comcast’s merger with Time Warner Cable is approved.
1. ENCOURAGING THE OTHER GUYS
Comcast has shown the other ISPs that its strategy of refusing to open up peering connections worked to bring the country’s largest bandwidth user to the bargaining table. While Comcast is larger than any of the other ISPs currently trying this tactic (we’re looking at you AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS), its success at getting Netflix to fork over the cash will only embolden the other providers to stick to their guns, even as FiOS and U-Verse continue to provide substandard speeds.
Remember, Comcast had an incentive to look good for the regulators investigating its merger with TWC. Verizon and AT&T have no such pressure and can continue playing this game of chicken until they get paid.
And when they do get paid, you can rest assured that Netflix will have to get that money from subscribers, which means higher rates, fewer selections, less investment in technology.
2. AN UNCLEAR FUTURE
It’s not known what, if any, considerations the Comcast/Netflix deal has for the 10 million or so customers Comcast could acquire if the TWC merger is approved. TWC has not acted to let Netflix service bottleneck and has instead maintained middle-of-the-pack status for quite some time.
Will be forced to pay even more money just because Comcast buys TWC? If not, will Comcast allow Netflix service to inherited TWC customers to degrade in order to justify getting more money from Netflix?
3. BARRIERS TO ENTRY
Netflix, with its large, established international customer base, is currently able to afford paid-peering deals. But what about its competitors that are just trying to crack the market, or the ones that are making their case right now to some venture capitalists? Streaming video content is already an incredibly complicated and expensive proposition without having to worry about being punished by the cable companies who often control the last mile of data to the home, and many of whom have competing services of their own.
Alas, while FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has said that peering and interconnectivity are indeed within his agency’s purview, his office recently confirmed that these issues will not be part of the updated net neutrality issues the FCC is currently drafting.
Comcast, when compared to other large ISPs.
Not the toy plane in question (photo: jayRaz)
In a simple response to a complaining customer earlier today, the airline’s Twitter account responded, “We welcome feedback… If your travel is complete, you can detail here for review and follow up” with what we presume was supposed to be a link to a page on the US Airways website, but was instead a link to a Twitter photo of a naked woman inserting a toy plane into a place where it was not intended to be inserted.
By linking to that photo, it not only went into the US Airways’ Twitter feed, but received prominent placement on the feed’s page as the most recently shared photo.
And there it stayed for at least an hour, before the airline got wise to its gaffe and deleted it, along with issuing this apology:
We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating.—
US Airways (@USAirways) April 14, 2014
If you came here looking for the photo, we’re sorry. We won’t be posting the pic — not even a blurred version — but there are plenty of sites that have posted screengrabs so that this moment in Twitter-oops history will be preserved forever.
In fact, budget cuts and fewer agents mean the chances of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service are lower than they have been in years, the Associated Press reports.
Last year, the IRS audited only 0.9% of people making less than $200,000; the lowest rate since the agency started publishing the statistic in 2006. For consumers who made more than $1 million last year, only 10.9% were audited; the lowest rate for that group since 2010. Officials with the agency expect both numbers to be even lower this year.
“We keep going after the people who look like the worst of the bad guys,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen tells the AP. “But there are going to be some people that we should catch, either in terms of collecting the revenue from them or prosecuting them, that we’re not going to catch.”
Still, the chances of pulling a fast one on the government aren’t too great, either. Officials say, improved technology will help to pick up the slack where agents may have once worked.
The agency’s computers are likely to catch errors or discrepancies on tax returns. For example, if you report making $40,000 in wages and your employer tells the IRS you made $50,000, the computers will catch that.
While the likelihood of getting audited is lower this year, so is the chance of actually reaching someone at the IRS to answer your tax questions. Last year only 61% of callers to the IRS received help. Officials say this year won’t be any different.
Although you probably won’t face an audit this year, it’s always nice to know the five mistakes that most often lead to correspondence with the IRS.
And, as always, remember that Consumerist’s very own Tax Dad has been answering consumer tax questions this year.
Chances of getting audited by IRS lowest in years [The Washington Post]
(**bc**)
Norovirus is a gastrointestinal illness that is a hardy, fast-spreading, quickly-mutating pathogen. It’s that hardiness that makes the virus such a scourge in hospitals, nursing homes, and on cruise ships.
Based on interviews with employees and customers, the local health department believes that a customer in the restaurant was contagious last weekend, contaminating surfaces simply by touching them. In an ordinary restaurant, they might touch a chair, a doorknob, and maybe the communal crayons for children, but this was Chuck E. Cheese’s, filled with arcade games and play equipment and a wide variety of terrifying disease vectors.
“As we are always concerned about the health and safety of the families who visit our stores and we are aware that the norovirus has plagued many residents this spring,” a spokesperson for the chain told Twin Cities Business Journals we will continue to be hyper vigilant in maintaining our rigorous sanitation standards.”
The health department asked staff to wipe down every possible surface with a bleach solution, which is the best way to kill norovirus. That said, it’s also a good idea to wash your hands before you eat. Or touch your face.
Hennepin Co. Investigates Norovirus Outbreak at Chuck E. Cheese’s [Twin Cities Business Journals]
(KUSA TV)
I know, I know, you totally thought of this first (“So like, what if instead of chips? We could put in money? And get out weeeeed?”). I believe you, friend.
But time and tide wait for no man, and the tide has already come in for American Green’s new ZaZZZ, the first machine that verifies a person’s age before dispensing pot and pot products, reports KUSA-TV (link has video that autoplays).
“They would swipe their driver’s license at which point multiple cameras would allow us to use some advanced biometrics to make absolutely certain that the person who swiped the card is the owner of that card,” the owner of the company behind the new machine explains.
The machines won’t just be sitting out in the open for anyone to take advantage of and possibly try to plunder, but are instead designed to remain inside legal dispensaries. Sort of like an automated express kiosk at a grocery store.
The owner of the first store to host the machine will help make sure no products grow legs and walk out the door without being paid for, as each item will have a radio frequency identification chips on them.
“This takes a little pressure off of the people monitoring the medicine area so they don’t have to look over shoulders. You can fit a lot more choices in a small area,” he says. “There’s no theft issue, There’s no product disappearing.”
Until it gets back to your apartment and the five roommates you live with. Then it’s up to you to lock down your stuff. And hide your Cheetos, while you’re at it.
Company unveils first age-verifying, pot vending machine [KUSA TV]
People all over the world were horrified but also intrigued to learn that in New Zealand, Pizza Hut offers a crust stuffed with cheese (good) and Marmite, a yeast-based paste (ew). Fortunately, the chain’s Kiwi outposts have redeemed themselves with a new offering: the Chilli Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza. Better yet: those hot dogs are actually cheese dogs.
The crust stuffed with hot dogs is nothing new, having already hit the U.K. and Australia. Yes, inside the crust are hot dogs with flecks of cheese mixed in, then covered with chili sauce (spelled “chilli” there for some reason). No, not sriracha: the sauce is like the tomato-based broth of chili the stew. In a pizza crust. Yeah, we don’t know.
You can also add your own ketchup and mustard to the crust to go along with the hot dogs.
Around the World: Pizza Hut New Zealand – New Chili Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza [Brand Eating]
Manassas Crime Report: Restaurant Tables, Chairs Set Aside for Fight PotomacLocal.com On April 11, 2014 Manassas City Police was dispatched to the 9000 block of Centreville Rd in reference to a hit and run involving a motorcycle. Upon arrival, officers learned that the accused, Felix Alexander GAINES, was under the influence of alcohol ... and more » |
