Posts Tagged With ‘ Organizations ’

With climate change creating more storms and natural disasters, insurance companies are facing unprecedented claims. They’re reacting with raising prices and refusing to offer coverage in some areas of high storm activities. Policyholders are entitled to receive their claims payments under the terms of their insurance policies, and insurers shouldn’t delay or mistreat consumers. Many victims of Hurricane Idalia will be underinsured and uninsured for flood damage. There will be big fights over whether the damage was caused by wind, covered in a home policy, versus flooding, excluded in... Continue Reading

A bill banning the sale of cosmetic products that contain 26 toxic chemicals known to affect human health passed the California State Legislature Wednesday. Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign it. The law would ban hazardous substances such as some borate compounds, lily aldehyde, cyclotetrasiloxane, trichloroacetic acid, styrene, and certain colors. “Personal care products and cosmetics should be non-toxic for everyone,” said Assemblymember Laura Friedman, author of the legislation. “If you consider that the European Union prohibits almost 2,500 chemicals in such products, a ban in California... Continue Reading

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on organizing my historical family photos. About 10 years ago, I had around 200 photos scanned. I named and dated about a third of them. The rest are numbered. I paused the project until I could buy a good scanner so I could scan the rest of the photos myself. Now that I have one, I need to name and date the photos I had scanned earlier and scan probably several hundred more. The next step is making a family record. Should we use Ancestry.com? MyHeritage? Archives? Or, should we use FamilySearch, a free site owned and funded by The Church of Jesus Christ... Continue Reading

It’s irritating and it’s a trend. When you go to retailers and ask if you have any rewards money to apply to your purchase, you’re told you need to go their website to sign up for their rewards program again there. It happened at Office Depot and Rite Aid, companies where I’ve been in the rewards program for years. Since the new pricing at Office Depot showed quite a bit off when I went to buy some thumb drives Thursday, I asked the staff at the store to help me sign up for the new program. Now I’m a member and quality for rewards again. If you spend $500 a year at Office Depot, you... Continue Reading

Most Americans don’t know how often they’re stripped of their rights through widely used forced arbitration clauses that are found in the fine print of everyday click-through agreements, terms and conditions, and other contracts, according to a new study. Arbitration clauses require consumers who have complaints to settle issues through arbitration rather than filing a lawsuit. “Consumers shouldn’t be silenced by big corporations that harm them,” said Shennan Kavanagh, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, an organization that specializes in consumer issues on behalf... Continue Reading

Does it matter that there are too many residential real estate agents? Yes, says a consumer group. More than 1.5 million residential agents, including brokers, compete for home sales usually totaling 5 to 6 million annually. The plethora of real estate agents comes with costs, according to a study by the Consumer Federation of America, that include: Economic inefficiencies including an excessive amount of time spent by agents finding clients. Relatively low incomes of many full-time agents. Frustration by these agents and by many consumers who deal with inexperienced agents. Reinforcement of... Continue Reading

Photo: White House The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law a year ago, has many benefits for American consumers. It began making big corporations pay their fair share in taxes while investing more in items that help the middle class such as creating good-paying jobs, combating corporate price gouging, slashing the deficit, lowering prescription drug costs, and reducing carbon pollution. But while these efforts are helping everyday Americans, a new review from government watchdog Accountable.US shows several industries have never stopped trying to obstruct and weaken the Inflation Reduction... Continue Reading

The Food and Drug Administration has decided that food manufacturers can keep using phthalates, a class of toxic chemicals, in food packaging and food production equipment. It disregarded requests from health and environmental advocates to reconsider that decision based on evidence that phthalates in food are harmful to health. Safer substitutes for these chemicals are available, advocates argue. “There is overwhelming evidence that phthalates in our food cause life-altering damage to people’s health, including the health of babies and young children,” said Earthjustice Attorney Katherine... Continue Reading

It’s not surprising that men are succumbing to the same advertising on looking good that has enticed women to buy for decades. The average adult man in the United States uses 11 different personal care products every day, nearly twice as many as 20 years ago, according to a survey by Morning Consult. The survey also showed that on average, women use 13 products daily, up from 12 in 2004. Combining the usage for men and women, the average adult uses 12 personal care products in a day. The 12 products could be made with as many as 112 chemicals, some of which may pose serious health risks, an... Continue Reading

Consumers with poor credit pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars more every year for basic auto insurance coverage required by state laws, new report shows. “On average, a consumer with poor credit has to pay twice as much for auto insurance as a driver with excellent credit, even if everything else, including their driving safety history, are the same,” said Douglas Heller, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America and the study’s co-author. The report found that nationwide, American consumers with clean driving records and excellent credit pay an average annual... Continue Reading