Venditoris

Understand the benefits and risks behind paid online surveys. Protect yourself by learning the facts that online scammers don't want you to know. [Link] [Cache]

Here are seven wonderful photos readers added to The Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, picked for neatness and usability in a Consumerist post. Also, be sure to check out our new Photo Gallery to see the latest additions all week long! ash™ more lumens please ash™ photographynatalia photographynatalia twoguns T.M.Y. Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers go and 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, and start hitting "send to group" on your individual photos you want to ... [Link] [Cache]

The FTC has sent warning letters to 78 companies about clothing and household products marketed as being made from bamboo. Many of the products were were allegedly made out of rayon that may or may not have originally been derived from bamboo. The offenders include huge names like Walmart, Land's End, Kohl's, The Gap, and Target. "But wait," you might say, "isn't rayon a synthetic fabric made out of oil or something?" Not quite. Rayon is derived from plants originally, but is so processed that it's not as environmentally friendly as plain old bamboo. Here's how the FTC's press release ... [Link] [Cache]

"Vision Media Television," after getting exposed in a NY Times story as a ripoff production company, has changed its name to "GreatAmericaHD" and is back to its same tricks. The way it works is they call up non-profit organizations with an alluring pitch: a chance to be featured in a nationally-broadcast PBS show anchored by established broadcaster. In this case, Hugh Downs. What they don't tell you is that you'll have to front upwards of $20,000 in production costs, and the "program" they shoot will never see the light of day. The company defends its actions, saying that it only ... [Link] [Cache]

Love him or hate him, Sen. Al Franken D-MN , former employee of NBC, made Comcast's befuddled CEO Brian "Comcatastrophe" Roberts look like a complete tool during yesterday's hearing on the proposed Comcast/NBC mergepocalypse. We don't actually know if Brian "Comcatastrophe" Roberts is generally as confused and awkward as he appeared to be while trying to explain why Comcast would testify that FCC regulations provide adequate safeguards for consumers -- after it just argued that the same rules were unconstitutional . Maybe he's usually pretty sharp. We really don't know. Here's what happened. Sen. Franken said that Comcatastrophe Roberts had ... [Link] [Cache]

Best Buy Sends Customer To Jail For Paying With AMEX Gift Card Bank Sues Victim To Avoid Replacing $200k In Stolen Funds South Butt Rebuts North Face 10 Of The Strangest Unclaimed Airline Baggage Items Ever Found This Weight Watchers Meal Includes A Free Frozen Frog I've spent most of this week contemplating the article, 6 Adorable Cat Behaviors With Shockingly Evil Explanations, which supports my personal theory that cats are evil and bent on enslaving humanity, one plaintive "mew" at a time. [Link] [Cache]

First, there was Pepsi Vanilla. Then there was Pepsi Lime. Now, exclusively at Walgreens, you can get the latest special flavor of Pepsi: Pepsi H1N1. It is also available in frozen pizza, Buffalo wing, and ice cream form. Fortunately, if you're not yet infected, Coke bottles offer the vaccine. Yes, as if their outdoor billboards advertising "H1N1 NOW AVAILABLE" weren't confusing enough, they've now apparently printed up stickers and started slapping them on every surface in the store with no sense whatsoever of how this could be just a bit incongruous. Nah. Thanks to Dan for the photos. [Link] [Cache]

A Long Island family was nearly incapacitated after a local energy company mistakenly delivered oil into a disconnected pipe on the front of their house, dumping nearly 50 gallons of heating oil into their basement. The house filled with nauseous fumes and the father rushed himself and his pregnant wife and four and a half year old daughter to a nearby relative's. The intake valve was a leftover from when the house was converted from oil to natural gas. The fire department recommends filling these pipes with concrete or removing them entirely to prevent these types of incidents. Liability for ... [Link] [Cache]

A judicial commission for California judges censured and barred the recently retired judge Brett C. Klein for showing bias, abusing authority, and grandstanding to the press. At issue was his January 2009 alteration of a class action settlement, where he ordered everyone, including the attorneys, to be paid the same way: via $10 gift vouchers from a woman's clothing store. The suit was filed by a California woman against Windsor Fashions because the store demanded ID from customers who paid with a credit card. The store settled in November 2008, and agreed to pay the attorneys $125,000 and the woman ... [Link] [Cache]

One might think it would be embarrassing to shill for a non-FDA approved herbal "male enhancement" remedy. Jimmy Johnson doesn't think so. Is he broke or something? AdAge says the former Cowboys coach is " an unabashed user," though it seem unclear if he was one before they started paying him. Mr. Johnson is scheduled to premier in a new series of ads for the supplement starting Monday. Apparently ExtenZe is breaking into the grocery store market. A spokesperson for the brand told AdAge: "Yes, there was a lot of concern [about potential embarrassment]," Mr. Yallen said. "But I think ... [Link] [Cache]

A scammy robocaller had spoofed Rodger's phone number and angry recipients of the calls were calling him incessantly, but now it's over. With AT&T's help, he realized that the autodialer had spoofed his new work number, which was being forwarded to his cellphone. So he disabled the call forwarding, kept his cellphone number, and just had his new work number changed. Victory. Unfortunately, due to deficiencies in the caller ID protocol, other victims might not be so lucky. The caller ID system is sent out directly from user device to user device and is easily manipulated. It might be time ... [Link] [Cache]

Andrew Cuomo has announced a lawsuit against Bank of America's former CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, its former CFO Joseph L. Price, and the company itself, for "duping shareholders and the federal government in order to complete a merger with Merrill Lynch." Uh oh! According to the lawsuit, the AG alleges that Bank of America intentionally didn't disclose massive losses at Merrill Lynch so that its shareholders would approve the merger. Once it was approved, the lawsuit alleges that the management tricked the government into "saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they would back out ... [Link] [Cache]

Your suffering may finally be over, fast food fiends. No more awkwardly torn ketchup packets and tomato-soaked fingers. No more dipping your fries into a dollop of ketchup on a napkin or burger wrapper. NO. Heinz has introduced the ketchup packet 2.0, and the future looks...well, remarkably like the containers of McNugget dipping sauces McDonald's has been using since the '80s. But it's still an improvement. This bold technological breakthrough took a lot of research. Heinz struggled for years to develop a container that lets diners dip or squeeze, and to produce it at a cost acceptable to its restaurant ... [Link] [Cache]

Jim and Susan's mortgage is underwater by $160,000. They want to live up to their obligations, they want to keep their home, but they can't do it with a $370,000 mortgage on a house that's only worth $210,000. An attorney told them to send some "jingle mail," just pop the house keys in an envelope, mail it to the bank, and move away. What they really want is a modification so they can stay in their house, but Bank of America has been jerking them around and they don't have faith that this last hurdle will actually get them a ... [Link] [Cache]

Ben says he bought a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive so he could transfer saves and downloaded content from his full old hard drive to a new one. He says he spoke with a CSR named Patrick who refused to let him purchase a data transfer kit because the registration info in Microsoft's system didn't match what Ben told him. Ben writes: After giving Patrick my information he informed me that the information that he had on file did not match the information that he had on the computer. This made no ... [Link] [Cache]

Brian is dealing with a spell of terrible luck and/or incompetence in trying to get his HDTV fixed by Best Buy. He says a tech has caused him to take several days off of work, but has yet to repair his TV due to various bunglings. He writes: I have an LG 42 1080p LCD purchased from Best Buy in March of 2008. I also purchased the PSP to protect my investment for the next 4 years. The TV worked fine up until 12/26. After that point all of the HDMI ports started causing "digital noise", flickering and audio static. ... [Link] [Cache]

One of the Pro-MLMr's here, ChrisDoyle was banned recently. It was a permanent ban as I understand it. Why was he banned? I was told it's because he doesn't "contribute" to the forum, that he only rocks people's boats! What a LOAD OF CRAP!! I'm posting this to my Scam.comBlog, as it's against the rules to question the mods about anything on the forum. If you do that they'll ban you! I believe my time here is short on scam.com for the very same reasons! I contribute nothing but pulling people up short on their Anti-MLM bigotry, ignorance and downright ... [Link] [Cache]

The Associated Press is reporting that a top Japanese business newspaper that we don't understand because our Japanese reading comprehension really sucks says that Toyota will recall 270,000 Prius hybrids over complaints about "inconsistent" braking. Consistently being able to brake, of course, is something you tend to want in a car. The braking problem is unrelated to the floor mat and the "sticky pedal" issue. The AP says that Japan's top business newspaper, Nihon Keizai, is reporting the imminent recall, but that Toyota has not confirmed it yet. Takayuki Fujimoto, a transport ministry official, said the government has yet to ... [Link] [Cache]