Venditoris: Beware of Scams

Alex and his wife bought into a Groupon offer for Gap, where you could buy $50 worth of merchandise for $25. Everything was going great until they ran into a manager at their local store who refused to even ring up the pants they’d chosen, saying anything already discounted wasn’t eligible for the offer.

Alex writes:

My wife and I went to Gap at Streets of Southpoint Mall in Durham NC to redeem our Groupon ($50 of merchandise for $25). After investing time trying on pants, we presented the Groupon at checkout and were told by [redacted], who presented herself as the manager, that the Groupon was not valid on the pants we wanted. She did not even try to ring it up.

When pressed to explain, she stated that the Groupon could not be combined with other offers or discounts (which is correct). However, we were not using another offer or discount. [She] very rudely insisted that because the pants were on sale for $35 each, that constituted another offer and could not be used with the Groupon. She threw the pants on the counter and turned us away without offering us any alternatives. The customer behind me was given the same treatment: no $35 pants with the Groupon, and he also left without buying the pants.

I was suspicious because [she] did not even attempt to ring up the pants with the Groupon, so I called three other stores in the Triangle area (two in Raleigh NC and one in Cary NC), and asked if there was any problem using the Groupon with the sale priced pants. Each store told us there would be no problem whatsoever using the Groupon with those pants. One store even kindly offered to hold the pants in my wife’s size until we could get there.

I called [the original manager] and asked her to honor the Groupon, in light of the other stores’ responses. After being put on hold, during which she claimed to have called another store, [she] passed me to another manager, [redacted], who in a very condescending way assured me that it was impossible to use the Groupon with those pants and would produce an error message if they even tried. Both … repeatedly blamed the “problem” on Groupon and said that it had nothing to do with Gap or their particular store. I asked for the name and phone number of a regional or district manager whom I could call to help resolve the situation, since there seemed to be a disagreement between stores. [The second manager] refused and suggested I call the generic 1-800 number.

We drove to the other Gap store that had offered to hold the pants, and we purchased them with the Groupon. The clerk even gave my wife some more coupons to use on her next visit. Needless to say, we won’t be visiting the Gap in Durham if we decide to redeem them.

Alex passed this story on to Groupon, and the company responded today:

We heard from Groupon this morning, who said that Gap should have let us use the Groupon and they are upset that this is reflecting negatively on Groupon. They say that they are going to contact the district manager, because Groupon relies on its partners like Gap to honor the deal they agreed to.

The notion of business travelers being forbidden from purchasing X-rated pay-per-view isn’t anything new. The erotic offerings are — so we hear — more expensive than other titles and very few employers want to foot the bill for them. But Winona County, MN, doesn’t just want to tell municipal employees not to order hotel porn; they don’t even want them staying at hotels that offer smutty selections.

Today, county commissioners are considering a “clean hotel” policy that would forbid county employees from staying in hotels and motels that have pay-per-view porn.

But this proposal isn’t just about saving a buck. Rather, proponents claim the policy would help to curb domestic violence and sexual assaults against women.

From a county-issue paper on the policy:

In and of itself, this policy is not a cure-all, but it is an important effort to help prevent a social disease and its related costs to the public. [The paper states that Minnesota spent $212 million in 2006 on costs related to sexual violence]

It is logical to assume that prevention of certain criminal activities would reduce the costs of providing these services… Prevention would also prevent the much greater social cost to the community.

According to the proposed policy, county employees would only be reimbursed if they stay in a hotel that doesn’t offer porn; though there are exceptions. For instance, if the questionable hotel in question is the “host site” for the conference the employee is attending, or if the porn-free hotel is more than 15% pricier than a pornified hotel, then the employee will be reimbursed.

Do you think a policy like this will do anything to put a damper on domestic violence or sexual assault?

County considers ‘clean hotel’ policy [Winona Daily News]

Nathan was paying $48.99 for Time Warner Cable internet and saw they were advertising the same service at $43.99. It wasn’t very hard to find, they put it right on his bill! When he called up to ask to get the same rate, they told him he could only get it if he bundled it with cable TV. So he hung up and called back again, using a different Time Warner Cable number.

This time Nathan got a guy who said that he wouldn’t be giving Nathan the $43.99 promotional price either, instead, he was going to give him it at $39.99! No bundling required. Sweet success.

“If you notice you are paying more than you should be for internet or cable, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself,” writes Nathan. “You could save money just by making a phone call.”

Did Ryanair’s publicity-chasing CEO Michael O’Leary read about that American Airlines flight back in June? In a recent interview, he suggested that one way to reduce costs would be to get rid of the second pilot and just make sure every flight has a flight attendant with a pilot’s license.

“Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it,” O’Leary told Bloomberg Businessweek, adding that a flight attendant on each flight could be trained to help land a plane if something goes wrong.

“If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in,” O’Leary told the magazine. “She could take over.”

“Airline CEO: Nix co-pilot, save money” [CNN]

We say it a lot around here these days: Times are tough. And they just got tougher for the homeless people in San Francisco who had relied on a local McDonald’s for their discount sustenance. A few weeks back, that particular Golden Arches — located in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood — jacked up the price on their former Dollar Menu items to $1.50, much to the consternation of the homeless.

While the franchise’s owner says her reasons for the increase were all about trying to make more money, some of the local homeless folks are convinced it’s all a way to make it too pricey for them to eat there.

Writes the San Francisco Chronicle:

Many homeless think taking away the Dollar Menu is the restaurant management’s ploy to get them to go somewhere else. Management locks the bathroom door and frequently calls the cops. On top of that, Mayor Gavin Newsom and several Haight Street merchants are pushing a November ballot measure that would ban sitting or lying on public sidewalks.

In addition to being a cheap source of sustenance, the former Dollar Menu also gave the homeless who hung out on the restaurant’s patio a semi-affordable option when police would tell them they needed to buy something or move on.

Adds one homeless former McDonald’s customer:

Yeah man, it … sucks… I eat less. I have to get more money. If I don’t have a dollar and I want food, I just end up going to a trash can.

Hassle in Haight over McDonald’s menu change [SFgate.com]

PREVIOUSLY:
San Francisco Hates Your Happy Meals
5 More Homeless Lent Credit Cards To See If They Give Them Back
San Fran Launches Parking Meters With Supply And Demand Based Pricing
Woman Lends Homeless Man Her AmEx Card, Actually Gets It Back
‘Other Guys’ Poster Disarmed In San Francisco
San Francisco Considers Ban On Almost All Pet Sales

If you pay your American Express bill 7 days after the due date, the credit card company says you’re over 30 days past due. Every other issuer only says you’re 7 days late. What gives?

When CardHub investigated, it turns out that the card company won’t assess penalty APRs or report you to credit bureaus any earlier than other credit card companies. However, a consumer who doesn’t know that American Express uses a “different nomenclature,” as one spokesperson put it, could get confused.

Which is maybe what they want. If you think you’re more in arrears with AmEx, you might be inclined to pay them ahead of your other bills.

Late Payment Policy Study – 2010 [CardHub]

Name brands exert a strong power over shoppers: 17% of us think name brand foods are more nutritious, even though there’s little nutritional difference between the two categories. Consumer Report performed taste tests on several food categories to determine whether name brands tasted better than store brands, and found that in some cases the store brands actually won.

Some of the store brand winners:

• Chicken soup: Food Lion’s (36 cents per serving) Lotsa’ Noodles soup beat out Campbell’s Chicken Noodle (41 cents per serving) for having a little more intense flavor. Campbell’s had oily broth, with fatty pieces of chicken.
   
• Orange juice: Publix Premium won over Tropicana for having a bit less of a cooked flavor with slightly less bitter taste.
   
• Hot dogs: America’s Choice (A&P, $2.64 per package) beef hot dogs trumped Oscar Mayer ($3.65 per package) for their juicy and flavorful franks.

Although store brands performed well in the taste tests, “second tier” brands did not. The magazine says,

We tasted second-tier Kroger Value Sandwich Singles Imitation Pasteurized Process Cheese Food and Shoppers Value creamy peanut butter, bought at Albertsons. Testers said the Kroger faux cheese is inferior to Kraft and regular Kroger singles. It’s salty and chalky, with the artificial-butter aroma common in microwavable popcorn. The Shoppers Value peanut butter is so-so, with off-notes (raw-nut flavor) and a bit of bitterness, probably from peanut skins.

“Store brands vs. name brands” [Consumer Reports]
“Consumer Reports Latest Taste Tests Find Some Store Brands at Least as Good as National Brands” [PR Newswire]