Author: Chris Morran

In Oct. 2008, a mother of four in Illinois needed to unload her house or face foreclosure. So she worked with Chase Home Financial and got them to agree to a short sale. Unfortunately, more than a year later not everyone at Chase knows the house was sold, because they’re telling the former homeowner she owes almost $45,000 in late payments.

Several months after the sale, she began getting letters from Chase requesting proof of insurance on the home. Puzzled as to why they’d want her to insure a house she no longer owned, she called Chase and was told the oversight was due to a backlog in the loan department.

She continued to receive letters and continued to call Chase, who continued to blame the backlog. The former homeowner says she made over 50 phone calls during this time.

And then, in Jan. 2009, she gets a call from a Chase rep telling her she’d missed a bunch of loan payments and that she now owed them $43,000.

Even after her lawyer got involved and demonstrated that she no longer owned the home, Chase continued to list the loan as open.

She eventually contacted Jon “The Problem Solver” Yates at the Chicago Tribune, who finally got a Chase bigwig to fix the situation.

Or so it appeared.

Two weeks after her story appeared in the paper, Chase was back at it again, contacting the beleaguered former homeowner to tell her she’d missed 27 payments and that the now owes $44,920.67.

Here’s how a Chase mouthpiece attempted to explain the continued error:

What they did is they pulled a call list, and they didn’t exclude certain things that they should have. Now this account has been marked throughout the system. It was just our caller that made a mistake.

Yes, they didn’t “exclude certain things,” like the fact that she’d sold her house 18 months earlier.

Ghost charges from Chase reappear [Chicago Tribune]

For some reason, there are a lot of rental car lots in Florida bursting at the seams with cars they need to distribute to the rest of the country. That’s why several national rental companies are offering dirt-cheap — as little as $3/day — one-way rentals, just so long as you get those cars out of Florida.

On their website Alamo is touting $10/day rentals on compact/midsize cars and $12/day for standard/fullsize “if you’re driving out of Florida.” The rates are available if you rent the car between 4/5 and 5/21 and drop it off at any location in the contintental U.S. except Florida. You can have the rentals for up to 21 days.

This might not be a bad idea for folks in southeast and Gulf Coast states that need a car for a short term.

Hertz has an even cheaper — but more restrictive deal. You have to reserve by the end of March, but if you book certain one-way rentals out of Florida with them for between 4/5 and 6/30, you can get a car for as little as $3/day.

That deal is available for pickup from the following airports: Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, West Palm Beach.

Unlike the Alamo deal, returns are limited to Hertz corporate locations in: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Washington DC, West Virginia, or Wisconsin.

Also, this offer is only available for up to 4-day rentals.

If you’re interested in the Hertz deal, use the code “1WAY” when booking.

Other car companies are offering similar deals, so be sure to ask if you’re in need of a one-way rental out of Florida.

Rental Cars for $3 a Day? Yes, If You’ll Drive Them Out of Florida [Jaunted]

As the slumbering economy forces more people to think of ways to save money, the basic costs of living continue to increase. Case in point: Con Edison is set to jack up rates for electricity to millions of customers in the New York City metro area.

Starting next month, Con-Ed will begin to incrementally raise their rates on electricity by a total of 12.6% over the next three years. In the first year, they calculate the average monthly bill will increase from $83.60 to $87.23. That number would then rise to $90.71 and $94.11 in the two subsequent years.

“A record number of New Yorkers can’t pay their electricity bills as it is today, much less with this increase,” said Garry Brown of the NY State Public Service Commission, which took part in the negotiations for these rates. ConEd had initially proposed a rate hike 40% higher than the one announced yesterday.

Said the company in a statement, “The new three year electric delivery rate plan provides long-term rate certainty for customers, and provides funding for Con Edison to continue investments needed to maintain system readiness and operating reliability.”

In better news: On their August electic bills, ConEd customers will each receive a one-time refund, averaging around $5.35. So feel free to run that air-conditioner an extra few minutes…

What a shock! Con Edison to jack up rates 12.6% over next three years [NY Daily News]

Ten women are charged with using illegally obtained patient information from a Chicago-area hospital to rack up over $300,000 in fake credit card purchases at stores like Victoria’s Secret, Lowe’s and Jared the Galleria of Jewelry.

Here’s how prosecutors say it all went down. One of the women worked for a janitorial service hired to clean the offices of the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation. Taking advantage of the unlocked file cabinets, she would go through folders of private patient information at night, taking down all the info she and her merry band of cohorts would need to obtain credit reports or to have themselves added to the patients’ credit card accounts.

Police say she did this to upward of 250 different patient files.

If this were a movie, it would be at this point that the “me and my girlfriends go on a shopping binge” montage would kick in, because that’s exactly what they are accused of doing.

According to the charges, the women would do most of their shopping in suburban areas, where they could plead discrimination if questioned by a cashier.

In many cases, they were able to purchase big-ticket items like TVs, diamonds and… drywall just by using the credit card number alone.

The women are facing multiple charges, including felony theft, identity theft and organizing a continuing financial criminal enterprise.

This would be the point in the movie where they all start turning on each other.

Oh yeah, for what it’s worth, Northwestern Memorial Hospital says — in spite of all the above evidence to the contrary — that they take patient privacy “very seriously.”

Private patient information stolen from Northwestern used in massive identity theft [Chicago Sun-Times]

Forget those guys who held up a Taco Bell just to score some apple empanadas. That’s small-time compared to the Tacoma-area woman, now facing at least 12 counts of ID theft, who says she did it all “to buy groceries.”

The 27-year-old woman was pulled over by police, who searched her car and discovered a printer/scanner, laminating machine, a metal case holding several licenses with her photo but with different names and an accordion folder containing other peoples’ checks along with hotel receipts in multiple names and credit card numbers.

There was also a “Wonder Woman binder” (which we take to mean a binder branded with the female superhero’s likeness and not a new, special type of binder that is invisible and can deflect bullets). In the binder were the names and ID info for people other than the suspect.

“There are hundreds of additional victims in this case,” said the prosecutor in bringing charges against the suspect. “The defendant possessed hundreds of stolen hotel receipts bearing victims’ names and credit card numbers.”

The police contacted one man whose check for $40,000 was found in the suspect’s folder. He said he’d written the check to a contractor and that the contractor’s mailbox had been broken into.

In court documents, a police officer stated about the suspect’s motives:

She wrote she did it because she needed money, so she had a friend show her how to use her computer to make ‘ID’ and checks … she could attempt to cash to make money or at least buy groceries to be able to feed herself

The suspect is currently being held on $65,000 bail.

Police: Woman with hundreds of IDs said she needed them to ‘buy groceries’ [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Apple’s full-color iPad tablet thingy is set to launch in the coming weeks and it’s predicted that the device will eat away at the huge e-book market share enjoyed by Amazon’s Kindle e-readers. Among the knocks against Kindles by some has been that their E Ink display — while much easier on the eyes than a traditional backlit screen — does not display color images, text or video. But that may change in the next year.

At an electronics trade show in China this week, Prime View International, the Taiwan-based company that produces the Kindle for Amazon, was showing off a number of e-readers that displayed color and could imitate video playback.

The moving pictures generated by these e-readers isn’t exactly video. It’s really just still frames shown in quick succession and the frame-rate does not meet the standard of 30 frames/second.

While there were no Kindles on display, Prime View International has the technology and says they expect to go into mass production on color screens this year. It would be up to Amazon whether they choose to make the technology available on the next generation of Kindles.

Color and Video for Amazon’s Kindle E-Book Reader? [PC World]

Hope you weren’t planning on buying popcorn at the movies this weekend, because you might not have any cash left after you pay for your higher-priced tickets.

A report in Barron’s states that, because year-to-date box office receipts are up 10% from the same time frame last year, theaters are jacking up their prices, especially on 3D films.

Their survey of 10 random theaters (and confirmed by an informal one I did on Fandango by punching in some zip codes from around the country) showed an average 4.1% increase in ticket prices for 2D movies this weekend. Here in New York, that’s translating to about $.50/ticket.

Meanwhile, non-Imax 3D ticket prices are increasing on an average of 8.3% this weekend. Using NYC as an example again, that’s an increase of $1.25/ticket.

Their survey found Imax tickets increasing by 9.9% over last week.

Says media analyst Richard Greenfield:

It appears that theater owners increasingly believe that consumers are so ‘hungry’ for 3D content that they will not mind paying substantially higher prices relative to 2D screenings and that for the best 3D presentation, even greater ticket price premiums are achievable.

Does this put a damper on anyone’s movie-going plans? Maybe we can all hop into the Hot Tub Time Machine and go back to a year when movies were affordable.

Movie Ticket Prices Heading Higher [Barrons]

It’s been known for quite some time that Netflix would be offering streaming video via the Nintendo Wii. And today the video delivery service announced they’ve sent out the first batch of discs to some Wii-owning Netflix customers so that they can finally get the ball rolling.

Reads a statement on the Netflix blog:

We are in the final phase of getting ready for the launch of streaming to Wii. Today, we shipped out instant streaming discs for the Wii to some of our Netflix members. Their feedback will ensure that we deliver a great experience to everyone when we launch.

Netflix on the Wii will be available at no extra cost to Netflix subscribers with at least the $8.99/month unlimited plan.

If you want to be able to use Netflix’s Watch Instantly service in-between games of Wii Tennis or MarioKart, go HERE and reserve your disc. Netflix will notify you when they send your disc out later this spring.

Netflix via Wii — Coming Soon [Official Netflix Blog]

It’s not exactly Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, but on Monday night a trio of hungry robbers held up a Charlotte, NC, Taco Bell just to get some free food.

According to reports, the thee men rolled up to the drive-thru of the Taco Bell around 11:17 p.m. One of them pointed a gun at the cashier but made no demands for cash, just for some food.

The robbers must have had the munchies, because they weren’t even picky about the food. After the cashier handed them some fried apple pies, they pulled away from the bell… and made a run for the border?

This reminds us of two recent incidents where the robbers made off with edible booty, both from Domino’s. First, there was the robber who heisted $36 in wings from a driver. Then there was the delivery dude whose entire delivery of pizza and wings was stolen from him.

Robbers hold up Taco Bell for food [WBTV]

The USPS got one step closer to their goal of eliminating Saturday delivery with the Postmaster General earning approval to take their proposal to the Postal Regulatory Committee next week. If they ultimately get the PRC and Congress to sign off, that would be the end to 6-day service. But will it matter to you if you don’t get your mail on Saturdays?

Postal Service launches 5-day delivery plan [Washington Post]

While many bars and restaurants continue to offer cheap chicken wings as an enticement to get diners and drinkers in the door, the demand for the little bits of bird has increased so much in the last decade that wholesale costs for wings have more than doubled.

According to the Dept. of Agriculture, wings were wholesaling at $.68/pound 10 years ago. These days, wholesalers are charging around $1.47/pound for wings.

“Every time that there is Christmas, wings go up,” says Ivano Toscani of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, where Buffalo wings were first made. The restaurant says they go through about a ton of wings each day. “Super Bowl, wings go up — but the problem is they never come down. They go up and they stay there.”

While prices for wings have soared, the price for chicken breasts have decreased.

“As pricey as chicken wings have been getting until quite recently, they are not enough to carry the bird, so to speak,” Richard Lobb, spokesperson for the National Chicken Council explained. “I think what you’re seeing in the United States is the trend toward boneless wings.”

Don’t tell that to Toscani, who holds true to his chicken wing ways.

“The wings have bones on it, you can’t get away with it,” Toscani said. “The other people they change, they do what they want to do, they want their own identity, they want to establish themself, God bless them, do you what you have to do. Here at the Anchor Bar, we will continue to use chicken wings, and chicken wings has bones, that’s all.”

Don’t know about you, but I suddenly feel a deep desire to devour some wings. Now.

Hot Wings’ Pain Now Felt By Restaurants, Too [NPR]

Somewhere in the last two decades, airplane food went from comedy punchline to premium purchase (though the quality is still often laughable), airline headphones went from “crappy but they’ll do in a pinch” to “crappy but I have to pay up to $5 for them,” and you may soon need to pay to join the mile-high club on some airlines. It was enough to make the folks at KIVI TV nostalgiac enough to look back at 7 former freebies we no longer enjoy.

1. Luggage: Gone are the days of checking your bags for free on most airlines. Now you’re likely paying at least $25/bag — or trying to figure out how to cram everything you need into your carry-on.

2. Food: With the exception of snacks, eating on most airlines is going to cost you a small fortune for food you’d normally turn your nose up at. More and more passengers are bringing grub from home or stocking up at the shops on the airport concourses.

3. Creature Comforts: Many airlines now charge for once-free amenities like pillows and blankets. Once again, passengers are packing their own so they don’t have to pay upwards of $8.

4. Headphones: They’re just about as good as the headphones that came with your transistor radio in 1977, but now you have to pay anywhere between $1-$5 for them. That’s another thing to remember to pack…

5. Leg Room: While airplanes have never really been known as places you could stretch your legs, it’s only recently that airlines began actually charging extra for seats in the bulkhead or exit rows, where you can get those few inches of precious legroom.

6. Booking: Heaven forbid you try to book directly through the airline over the phone or in person. It used to be that airlines offered discounts for booking online, but that’s since become a service charge for when you can’t. Thankfully, with the spread of WiFi and web-enabled phones, it’s becoming easier to book online from just about anywhere.

7. Changing Your Plans: Have to come back early? Or maybe stay an extra day? Even if you’re changing to a less-expensive flight, you’ll likely be paying anywhere from $75 to $300 for the change.

Which ones do you miss the most?

7 air travel perks that used to be free [KIVI TV]

Through tomorrow night, JetBlue is offering deep discounts on dozens of flights as part of their 2-Day Sample Sale, with some flights starting as low as $29 each way.

For example, from the New York City area alone, there are around 50 different offers listed, ranging in price from $39 each way (to Boston, DC, Pittsburgh and others) to $149 each way to San Diego, Salt Lake City or Phoenix.

Additionally, JetBlue has posted what it would cost you in TrueBlue points to fly to these destinations. Again using NYC as an example, it could cost you as little as 5,000 points each way to make those Boston, DC and Pittsburgh flights while the San Diego, SLC and Phoenix start at 11,100 points each way.

Of course there are restrictions on the discounted fares. In addition to having to book your nonrefundable tickets by tomorrow, you will also have to fly between April 13 and June 16.

Go over to JetBlue.com for all the offers and details.

Because nothing says “Happy Anniversary” or “Congrats on the new baby” like an iPhone app, Apple has recently added the Give a Gift feature to their App Store.

Now, when you look at an App in the store, there’s a little button next to the price that says “Gift this App.” You fill in the info, write an optional note (max. 500 characters) and it either sends off an e-mail to the giftee or you can print out a certificate if you’d like something the recipient can hold in their hand. And if you want to gift the same app to several different people, that’s doable too.

However, as Kotaku points out, you can’t gift apps internationally. So if you’re trying to woo that French girl you met while on vacation last summer, you’ll have to send her a real gift.

Apple Adds Ability to Gift Apps, Games in iTunes [Kotaku]

Fans of high-end retail shopping may be in for some sadness. The CEO of Saks & Company says they are definitely closing two Saks Fifth Avenue stores in Portland, OR, and that other underperforming stores may soon be on the chopping block.

According to CEO Stephen Sadove, decisions on which money-losing stores get the axe will be made as each store’s lease comes up for renewal. He said that breaking the lease would be more expensive than continuing to operate an underperforming outlet.

There are currently 53 Saks Fifth Avenue stores and 55 Off 5th outlet stores. Sadove says the company’s goal is to focus on “our most productive stores.”

Though they’re both in the Pioneer Place Mall, the two Portland stores have different closing dates. The men’s store is slated to be shuttered by the end of April, while the main store remain open until July 31. So readers in the Portland area should keep their eyes open for bargains as those dates near.

CEO says Saks may close a few stores [Reuters]

In news certain to please the Schrute family of Scranton, PA., Shell and youngster biofuel company Virent just announced they’ve started up production at their plant that can convert beet sugar into gasoline and gasoline blend components.

The plant will eventually be using other items, including corn stover, wheat straw and sugarcane pulp, at their demonstration plant in Madison, WI, which currently only has the capacity to produce 10,000 gallons per year.

One of the main difference between the biogasoline being made by Virent/Shell and ethanol is that, unlike ethanol, it will be able to be dropped right into petroleum pipelines without any corrosive effects.

According to Virent, their product “has the potential to eliminate the need for specialized infrastructure, engine modifications, and blending equipment necessary for the use of gasoline containing more than 10% ethanol.” They also claim that the biogasoline has a higher energy content and delivers better fuel economy.

Fuel produced at the Madison plant will be used for engine and fleet testing.

“Renewable fuels that provide high performance, reliability, and lower emissions are now closer to reality as a viable alternative for transportation fuels from crude oil,” said Lee Edwards, CEO of Virent. “Virent’s industry leading collaboration with Shell is focused on delivering material solutions to global challenges in energy security, environment sustainability and job creation.”

A reader named Braden wrote into Consumerist to show us that, in addition to all sorts of toys and games available on the ToysRus website, you can also pick up a Sightmark Accudot 243 Laser Boresight for your rifle.

Here’s the link straight to the product, which is priced at $29.99, $10 off the list price.

Interestingly enough, while the product page appears to be a legit in-stock item — I successfully added it to my shopping cart, though I did not finalize the purchase — I couldn’t get it to come up by searching on the site. Even clicking on the “Rifle Accessories” category page above the picture yields no results.

In an effort to save some cash during these troubled times, Travis decided to get rid of his cable TV subscription. And when he called up Time Warner to give them the bad news they said fine… that’ll be $30.

According to Travis, the Time Warner CSR on the phone told him that, because he was still keeping Time Warner’s 10mbps internet service, the charge was because they had to send a technician out to his house to “put a filter on my line.”

Heres’ Travis to explain what happened next:

I explained to her that I had been an internet customer for a few years and that they had sold me on the basic cable when I called up about six months ago to ask about digital cable rates. I have given them over $1500 in my internet and basic cable business over two and a half years, and I really couldn’t stomach the $30 fee when there are other options (AT&T) in my area. Plus, they didn’t make the disconnection fee clear when they sold me the service. She didn’t want to budge on the fee.

I asked her if there would be a $30 fee if I canceled all my services, and she said no. So I told her that I would be looking into my other options and perhaps calling back to cancel. She then offered to lower the fee to $15, but I still don’t think I should have to pay it. I feel like sending the tech out to change my service is a part of the cost of doing business. It doesn’t even sound legal to me, although I am not a lawyer.

I’m not a lawyer or a technician, but it would seem to me that if the cable company can turn your service on and off remotely when you don’t pay your bill, or when you add/subtract premium channels, they should be able to turn off the TV signal while keeping the internet signal live.

Surely there are readers who can clear up whether or not a service call is needed for this…

Earlier today, we wrote about — and even posted the coupon for — Starbucks Free Pastry Day. And according to the coupon, “Pastries included in the offer are: Croissant, Muffins, Bagels, Breads, Pound Cakes, Scones, Rolles, Doughnuts, Coffee Cakes, Morning Bun and Cheese Danish.” But according to Consumerist reader Anthony, his local Starbucks weren’t being so generous.

According to Anthony, he went to two separate Starbucks in his neighborhood and was told at both locations that Cheese Danish was considered a “premium” and they were only offering free coffee cake and doughnuts.

Sez Anthony:

I zoomed in on the coupon on my iPhone and showed her where it says Cheese Danish and she said they aren’t honoring that. I didn’t want to make a fuss as it’s the morning and there were lines and I didn’t want to hold them up… Coincidentally other people also asked for something else and were turned down.

In the coupon it does state that “pastry selection vary by location,” but scanning through the comments from this morning’s post, it seems that most people were able to get what they wanted, pastry-wise.

Did anyone else experience the same problem as Anthony today?

A judge in California sentenced to jail a couple convicted of selling more than $100,000 worth of stolen goods online… after they went on The Dr. Phil Show and bragged about it.

In November 2008, the hubby and wife appeared on the wise-crackin’ headshrink’s show and ran down the details of how they heisted toys and resold them online. Sadly, it’s not an uncommon practice. Just one that people don’t usually brag about on a popular national talk show.

Mr. Sleazeball earned himself 27 months behind bars while the Missus got off with only 366 days in the clink.

Per their lawyer, the couple appeared on the show to ask for Phil’s help in curbing their supposed shoplifting addiction, but they alleged the show’s producers were more interested in the details of their schemes than in helping them.

However, in his sentencing remarks, the judge pointed out that the couple had been trying to get on the show for months previous to their appearance and had pitched themselves to producers for a weight loss episode.

Their appearance on the show obviously didn’t do anything to help, as they continued on with thieving and reselling until they were busted by the police in March 2009. In fact, authorities say there were still 500 boxes of unsold stolen items in their house.

The judge also had some harsh words for Dr. Phil: “What a charlatan this man is,” she said. “What a terrible, terrible man.”

Shoplifters who were on ‘Dr. Phil’ headed to prison [Sign On San Diego]