Author: Chris Walters

Mass customization isn’t really that hard to pull off anymore, if a retailer is willing to invest the time building a good interface for customers. BusinessWeek has a slideshow of 10 retailers that let you customize the product before purchasing it. You can buy sneakers, purses, shirts, and even jewelry this way, or if you’re feeling really DIY you can go to a site like Ponoko or Shapeways and have product parts made to order.

It’s not necessarily any cheaper to go this route instead of a mass-produced item. A custom stand I built for my iPhone using Ponoko cost me $22 after I included shipping, for example. On the other hand, a custom-made dress shirt from Blank Label will run about $45, which wouldn’t be unheard of in a major department store.

“Cool Things You Can Design Yourself” [BusinessWeek]

Seven Ohio men between the ages of 27 and 50 were arrested last week and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after an investigation found evidence that they were gaining access to strangers’ store-issued credit cards to buy and resale merchandise. The group’s leader, who was also charged, is a 33-year-old inmate at Fort Dix, NJ. Investigators think he initially met one of the Ohio men in prison.

Committing this sort of retail fraud is a lot of work, mostly of the social engineering type, but the FBI says this group managed to steal from $500,000 to $1,000,000 from Lowe’s, Home Depot, Staples, Best Buy, hhgregg, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Sears. Some of the bigger items bought include a tractor, big screen TVs, and stoves.

Here’s how it worked, according to the FBI:

In this scheme, these individuals conspired together to contact creditor customer service departments and utilized a variety of tactics to obtain legitimate and active credit account information. This information was used to defraud employees of these customer service departments into adding an authorized user to an account, or change the account holder information to reflect that of individuals that were part of this conspiracy who would act as “runners.” After these “runners” were added as an authorized user, the “runner” along with one or two associates would then go to a victim retailer and request that a store employee look-up their account from personal identifiers that were obtained from the scheme. At times, the “runners” had to show their valid ID or recite the last four digits of the account holder’s social security number as proof they were authorized to use the account. The “runners” would then purchase items and charge them to the account. The individuals involved in this conspiracy had customers who would then purchase these items from them.

“Eight Arrested in Connection with Major Cleveland-Based Retail Fraud Ring” [FBI]
“NJ inmate, 7 Ohio men charged in credit card fraud” [BusinessWeek]

If you’ve ever been part of the mad dash for seats on a Southwest Airlines flight, you might find this video from AirTran funny. In it, mooing passengers race down the jetway while a Southwest employee makes ridiculous jokes. Meanwhile, AirTran serves its assigned-seat passengers Kool-Aid. Wait, now I’m confused about who’s being mocked here.

“An ‘Udderly’ Hysterical Video” [YouTube via CNN] (Seriously, AirTran? “Udderly”? Why not just go all out: ‘An Udderly Hoofsterical ComMOOOrcial!’)

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If you’re trying to pirate the Japanese erotic manga game Cross Days–and I don’t care what people say, I love that I live in a world where I can type that phrase–you should know that the game’s developers are wise to you, and they’re going to do their best to shame and embarrass you.

According to Japanator.com, game installers floating around Japanese P2P networks come loaded with the digital version of a social disease, a trojan that “gathers data from the computer and pretends to take a survey of players, including asking for personal information.” Then it uploads this information and a screenshot of the person’s desktop to a public website (slightly NSFW).

The fake installer seems specific to Japan; I’m not sure any company would risk the class-action lawsuit smackdown that would happen in the U.S., at least not after Sony’s rootkit fiasco a few years back.

“Wait, pirates! That Cross Days download is a trap!” [Japanator via Destructoid]

Kiplinger says that in the near future, if you’re driving down a rural or less-traveled road, you might find yourself driving on gravel. Road asphalt has doubled in price over the past three years and shows no signs of coming back down, so some states–Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Vermont, and Pennsylvania to begin with–are looking for ways to cut corners. Gravel costs $20 a ton compared to asphalt’s current $400/ton price.

“States Will Use Gravel for Roads Less Traveled” [Kiplinger]

If security guards start carrying guns at department stores, I’m going to stop referring to them as rent-a-cops. Not because they’ve suddenly jumped up on my respect-o-meter, but because they might open fire. At a mall in Virginia last Sunday, a J.C. Penney security guard pursued a shoplifter into the mall parking lot and fired a gun into the air. The shoplifter was arrested, and the police confiscated the guard’s gun. The store won’t say whether it was owned by the guard or issued by management.

On the plus side, wearing clothes from J.C. Penney just became sort of bad-ass if you live in this town.

“Security guard’s gun use at Valley View Mall called ‘crazy’” [Roanoke.com] (Thanks to Tracy, who’s glad there’s a J.C. Penney catalog to shop from)

Jay’s roommate says he was bored at work recently and decided to go ahead and take part in a random telephone survey. Now he’s been fired.

Here’s Jay’s email:

I live with a roommate that was recently let go from his job in the sports industry. He worked in an office/warehouse setting for a company that handles sports equipment for various teams in various leagues. Now you might assume this was a layoff due to the economy, cutbacks, etc., but I assure you the company is very healthy with good sales despite the current economic conditions.

One day while sitting at his desk, he answered a phone call from someone claiming to be doing a survey of local businesses. With nothing occupying him at that specific moment he decided to participate after being ensured it would be very quick. (I completely agree with everybody wondering why he would ever decide to participate in a phone survey, and his response to that is that he was bored at that moment and thought they were official.)

Anyway, after answering a few questions such as is so and so the business address and other yes or no questions, they started asking other in-depth questions. After realizing this was not just a quick survey, he decided to just hang up and didn’t even think further about it. Until a couple of weeks ago that is.

He was called into his boss’s office to answer why he had authorized a new telephone service for the company. Having no idea what he was referring to, my roommate asked for any kind of proof of him authorizing the new monthly charges. His boss produced a recording of my roommate answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions he was never asked, such as ‘are you authorized to make decisions on behalf of the business’ and ‘are you willing to join our service’ , etc.

It seems after his boss found out about the new service, he called the phone service ‘survey’ company and was provided with that recording. Needless to say, my roommate was shocked at the recording and very emphatically tried to tell his boss that he didn’t answer those questions and would never agree that he was authorized to make decisions on behalf of the business as he was there the shortest amount of time (1 year).

His boss then told him that he would try to get it sorted out and get his $30 back (!) and to not make that mistake again. Well after thinking about it, the boss apparently decided that he did not believe my roommate and thought it best to let him go.

So now my roommate is left without health insurance and no way to pay bills or rent this month all because he was naive enough to answer yes confirming his business’ address.

Jay wants to know whether his roommate has any recourse to getting his job back, but I doubt it. His employer, however, would be doing everyone a favor if he focused on the scam and reported it to the phone company, the state attorney general and the FTC.

“Nobody expects the U.S. Census! Our chief weapon is surprise!” A Seattle blogger posted a photograph of a fortune she received in her fortune cookie recently, and it looks like the Census is using surprise fear and surprise surprise, fear, and a ruthless efficiency to remind people to send back their forms. Oh, and they’re ruining fortune cookies. I fully expect to be forced into a comfy chair soon, which all in all isn’t a bad way to be tortured, so meh.

“least expected places” [Not Martha] (Thanks to Al!)
[In case you have no idea what this post is about]
“The Spanish Inquisition by Monty Python” [MIT]

It’s a common, legal practice to protect seafood with a layer of ice before packaging it up for retail sale. It’s also apparently a common practice to add that ice into the total weight of the seafood, and in some cases to add more ice than necessary just to bump up the total weight, which isn’t legal and which defrauds the consumer. The National Conference on Weights and Measures recently investigated seafood packaging in 17 states and pulled more than 21,000 packages of seafood from store shelves, noting that in one particularly bad case ice made up 40% of the total listed weight.

The NCWM won’t name names on which companies are the worst offenders, but a spokesperson told the Chicago Tribune that if you suspect you’re being charged for ice with your seafood purchase, you should report it to your state authority. The FDA is currently investigating the organization’s claims.

“National Investigation Exposes Fraud in Frozen Seafood Labeling” [NCWM]
“Investigation into seafood weight reveals expensive ice” [Chicago Tribune]

A judge just invalidated the patents on two human genes whose mutations have been linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The genes were isolated by a biotech firm called Myriad Genetics, which argued that because it figured out how to isolate the genes outside of the human body then they were patentable. The judge called that “a ‘lawyer’s trick’ that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies.” The company sells a $3,000 cancer screening kit and has maintained a monopoly on the test because of the patents.

“Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent” [New York Times]

One of the cool things about the iPhone ecosystem is there are nearly 17 quintillion apps available for it, and although many of these are crap, the good ones frequently cost only a dollar or two. Even the premium-priced “productivity” apps–things like note pads and to-do lists–rarely cross the $10 threshhold, which means you can load up your iPhone or Touch with a lot of cool stuff on a modest software budget. But if a leaked video of the iPad app store is accurate, you can expect to pay 200-500% more for simple things like 99-cent games, and PC-level prices for more robust apps, on your fancy new iPad.

Here are some of the apps on display in the video, compared to the current prices for their smaller iPhone siblings.

Leaving out the three apps for which there are no current iPhone equivalents, you’d have to pay $53 on the iPad compared to $27 on an iPhone or Touch for the list above.

There’s currently no iPhone version of OmniGraffle, and the OS X version of the program costs $100, so you’ll be paying half that for the iPad version. Still, if every useful productivity app runs between $25-50, you’ll have to invest a significant amount of cash to load up the iPad with useful third-party apps that you won’t be able to install later on a laptop or tower.

Interestingly, the two apps in the list that have been hiked the least are from Apple and Disney. It would seem that Apple doesn’t think supersizing an iPhone app justifies doubling or tripling the price, even if other software developers do.

I’m not saying iPad apps are overpriced, since that’s a flexible concept. Native iPad apps will offer better graphics and in some cases more functionality. But if these sample prices are indicative of what’s to come, you’re going to have to make a considerably higher investment compared to what you’d make with an iPhone or Touch, unless you choose to run only iPhone apps on your new iPad.

It’s not often that a retail store becomes an icon even before it opens for business, but Apple managed to pull off this weird architectural/cultural feat with its glass box Apple store in NYC in 2006–it’s the 5th most photographed landmark in the city and 28th worldwide according to a new study of Flickr images. The man who designed it, 70-year-old Peter Bohlin, has been awarded the 2010 gold medal from the American Institute of Architects for his entire body of work, and he doesn’t like computers and had never designed a retail environment before the Apple store.

According to a feature article on him last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Steve Jobs didn’t care about the lack of retail experience. What he wanted was an architect who could create a “social space” that would compel people to visit, since otherwise it’s easier to just order Apple products online. Compounding the problem was the fact that the actual retail space, while in an excellent location, is entirely underground. That doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity for window displays or daylight, which is why Bohn decided to create a sort of skylight on steroids:

“How do you motivate people to come down into a space like this?” Bohlin wondered. The answer was to make the cube into a giant skylight. “There has always been something magical about a glass building,” he said.

The arrangement, said Cywinski, created a “ceremony of descent.” Instead of being put off by entering a basement store, people feel ennobled, as though making an entrance into a grand house. The sleek glass container becomes “both symbol and portal.”

People now flutter around the Cube like moths, as though unable to resist a mirage. The 32-foot-high vestibule contains a round glass elevator wrapped by a spiral staircase, also entirely made of glass and twinkling like an ice sculpture. Customers will line up just to shoot down one flight in a glass cylinder.

It’s Bohlin’s belief that a well-designed building will “enable people to discover things” about themselves and their desires. “The architecture creates a kind of choreography.”

Well. Okay. I’ve been there and I didn’t exactly dance up and down the spiral stairs, maybe because I was convinced everything was going to shatter around me from the clomping foot traffic of so many tourists, but I’ll admit it’s a pretty cool glass box from the street level.

“Old-school architect creates an iOpener” [Philly.com]
“Meet The Genius Behind Apple’s Beautiful Retail Stores” [Forbes]

Markus, the first legal male prostitute in the U.S., hung his shingle at the Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada in January. Since then he’s had “fewer than 10 paying customers” according to the Associated Press (which seems to imply there were some free samples maybe?), so he’s quitting and going back into porn. In other words, there’s a new opening at Shady Lady, gentlemen. Wait, that totally didn’t sound right.

Here’s an article from January where he compared himself to Rosa Parks; the Shady Lady management banned him from giving interviews shortly thereafter.

“Male Prostitution’s Self-Proclaimed “Rosa Parks” Gives Up Front Row Seat to History” [CBS News]

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Mike was sent to LabCorp for some routine medical tests last week, and what he found was an understaffed, overcrowded dump where patients were arguing that their urine samples were missing, or in one instance stolen while the patient watched. This could just be one badly managed lab, but the Internet is swimming in LabCorp complaints around the country that all repeat the same problems.

First, Mike’s story:

I went to a LabCorp facility in Sarasota, FL, for routine medical tests this month. LabCorp is the only lab available for my United HMO.

When I arrived there were several elderly patients arguing with confrontational LabCorp employees that they had provided urine samples while the staff insisted that they had not. One elderly man stated that he witnessed his sample being stolen by another patient there.

When my turn came, my blood was drawn and I was handed a cup and a plastic lid that looked like a paper coffee cup. It had my name written on it with pen, no number. I was told to go into a bathroom. The bathroom was filthy and there were numerous puddles and spots of urine on the floor, the counters, the sinks. There were also several rings of urine left by previous cups on the counter. It was apparent that the urine was from numerous persons.

I was not given an alcohol wipe or instructed to wipe my hands. The woman scolded me for handing her the cup and told me to leave it on the dirty counter. I told her that the bathroom was filthy and she said someone would clean it later.

I am 50 years old and have utilized the health system in several states, Mexico, Central America and South America. I have never witnessed such a bizarre situation and unsanitary conditions in a healthcare facility.

I searched Google for “labcorp complaints” and there are pages and pages of results. There is even a website called labcorpsucks.com. I guess they are not embarassed.

What is almost equally disturbing, I sent this to many government agencies. Almost all refered me to other agencies, almost all of those agencies refered me back to the agencies that refered them. I received 2 responses that indicate they could see no problems or violations. I disagree because there can be no integrity in the results due to cross contamination. Not to mention urine being stolen to pass employment screening.

Mike sent us photos, but you can probably imagine what urine stains on the floor, toilet, and counter look like. I’d probably have to put so many kitten heads on the pics that they wouldn’t be of much use anyway.

A quick search for complaints on LabCorp flushed out page after page of angry customers who say they were treated rudely, given faulty results, or charged outrageous amounts for routine tests.

At Pissed Consumer, an anonymous consumer last August said at a LabCorp lab in Glendale, AZ, the regulars bring their own folding chairs because the waiting room is always full, even though it seats 30 people. This person also says that after 3 hours of waiting, about half the people who had been sitting there since the lab opened were told to leave because they couldn’t be tested that day.

The complaints at Complaints Board tend to all be more than a year old, but they’re just as bad. “Annie” says after her HMO stopped using Quest, she was sent to a LabCorp located “in the basement of an unmarked residential apartment building on a sidestreet. As I looked around, I noticed cardboard boxes were literally being used as furniture. There was nothing around to indicate that this was a place of business. I felt like I was about to become vampire food. It was actually quite scary.”

(My favorite LabCorp complaint from ComplaintsBoard doesn’t involve urine at all, but worms. Do not read the following under any circumstance: “I had to use lab corp because that was my insured lab. My doctor sent them an obvious worm-filled sample and they didn’t even look at it, sending back that it was healthy. IT WAS FILLED WITH LONG EARTHWORM LIKE WORMS FOR GOD SAKE! My doctor agreed that she saw worms before the sample was even sent to verify the breed of parasite. “)

As far as pricing, a consumer on Ripoff Report says that in January, LabCorp tried to charge $163 for a test that was $78 six months earlier. The consumer says he called to argue the bill and was told that the price had gone up to cover inflation, but that when he said he would only pay the $78, the billing department accepted that.

As you might expect, LabCorp has a BBB rating of F, at least in New York where its corporate offices are located.

Over on his travel blog, Christopher Elliott writes that if you want to ensure you’ll get the reward program miles you deserve, you should hold on to your boarding pass. In his example, a frequent flyer with Air France couldn’t get his Delta miles credited even though the airlines codeshare, because Air France demanded the original Delta boarding pass, which the customer had thrown away. Elliot managed to get the airline to cave on this instance, but he points out that it’s easier (and better in case of an IRS audit) to hold on to them “just in case.”

“Never trash your boarding pass — here’s why” [Elliott.org]

Target has a ban on any sort of petitioning or fund-raising activities in front of its stores, even in California, but G says that yesterday he went to the Target in Vallejo, CA and ran into a group of petitioners at the entrance (see photos).

I went shopping at the local Target in Vallejo, CA and found petitioners soliciting my signature for bringing big industry back or something or other. They segued the petition by asking me if I was a registered California voter and by my answer of yes, I was hit by a barrage of two different petitions to sign in addition to the big industry petition.

I mean, I’m all for grass roots movements and getting out the vote, but I kind of get annoyed and just want to do some shopping. I mean, at first I was peeved Target woud not allow Salvation Army bell ringers and the Girl Scouts in front of their stores but found it quite the hidden blessing when they did not allow petitioners.

G says he tried to speak to the manager to ask why this group was being allowed to petition shoppers, but he was told the manager was unavailable.

Last week, HD Guru pointed out that Best Buy was advertising 3D glasses syncing as part of a $150 installation service for people buying 3D TVs. The problem with the offer is it’s not necessary (or even possible) to manually “sync” your 3D glasses with a 3D TV. Now Best Buy has responded to the post, partly by explaining that some customers might not know that the glasses sync up automatically and that they can depend on Geek Squad to educate them.

From Best Buy, as quoted on HD Guru:

We have some customers who aren’t quite sure how the 3D glasses work, or that the glasses automatically sync with their new 3D TVs. So we wanted to convey that they can depend on Geek Squad to answer their questions during installation and set-up. There is no additional charge for this – and the Geek Squad 3D installation and networking services are included in the total price of this offer.

Best Buy also says that their employees were only just now trained in the 3D services so that’s why they gave bad explanations to HD Guru last week; the company doesn’t address the fact that the syncing service was offered in a printed circular, however.

At any rate, despite the ongoing stupidity of this whole syncing 3D glasses claim, Best Buy clarifies that the installation package actually covers equiment set-up and an in-home tutorial on how to use everything. If you get the service, be sure to ask for your free syncing instructions.

“Best Buy Responds To “3D Glasses Syncing Service”” [HD Guru]

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Sometimes a reader writes in to complain about how the UPS guy left a package in full view of anyone passing by. Not Nick, who was at work yesterday when he saw that UPS had delivered his shipment from from Amazon. Usually the delivery guy hides packages in Nick’s bushes, but this time the notice said, “FD MAT.” Nick writes, “That worried me a bit, as this is a pricey piece of electronic equipment. But my worry was misplaced; the clever UPS man hid this package extremely well.”

Someone who was fed up at Chase made a special deposit on the floor of one of their ATM vestibules in NYC a couple of days ago. Fortunately for the clean-up crew, it looks like it was manure and not actual human poop.

“Manure Pile” [Description Without Place via Gawker] (Thanks to dk!)