Posts Tagged With ‘ Telecommunications ’

Things are busy, here in my corner of the USA. I’m behind in reporting on what’s happening for National Consumer Protection Week. A lot of my time has been taken up since the first of the year taking part in the Dean Ornish heart health program. It ends Wednesday. I’ll be reporting on its many benefits soon. Activities for National Consumer Protection Week Here are some activities the Federal Trade Commission if offering for the consumer week: Wednesday, March 8 (In-person event) 10am – 2 p.m. HAST: Visit the FTC table at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs NCPW Fair at... Continue Reading

A friend of mine recently received a $300 gift card under Comcast’s reward program. She thought she got it because she’s been a long-time customer. Since I’m a long-time Comcast customer, too, I thought it would be great to get $300 to spend, too. I went to the Comcast website and signed up for its rewards program. I saw a few program rewards that didn’t interest me, so I tried to communicate with the bot through the chat function. It didn’t work. I didn’t get any information about money rewards. So, then I did what I dread: I called Comcast. As I’ve written about many times, Comcast... Continue Reading

I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth highlighting again. A Consumer Reports evaluation of peer-to-peer or P2P payment apps found that users could lose money to fraud or scams and face privacy risks because app providers may share their personal information widely and it’s difficult for users to delete their data. More than half of Americans, 64 percent, use a P2P payment app for payments to and from individuals, including four out of five, 81 percent, of the 18 to 29 age group, a Consumer Reports survey found. Two out of five Americans, 40 percent, say they use P2P payment services... Continue Reading

Unfortunately, I got caught up in the Southwest Airlines holiday flight cancellation debacle around Christmas. Scheduled to return home at 10:45 Monday Dec. 26, I was shocked when my daughter came in my room just as I finished dressing and began packing to go to the airport and said my flight had been canceled. Southwest’s inability to handle winter storms with its outdated computer system and unusual operating method is making headlines across the nation. Southwest uses a “point-to-point” route model that often lets passengers fly directly from smaller cities and regions without having... Continue Reading

If you’re going to shop for deals on Black Friday – the sales are available earlier, stick around longer, and are increasingly moving online – be sure to keep comparing prices. Sometimes prices are marked way up then marked way down. Several times during my journalism career, I’ve written an article on what are the items are likely to be on sale each month throughout the year. When I was a reporter for Senior Voice newspaper in Alaska, I called store managers throughout the state to see if the calendar of monthly sales I’d seen in a newsletter fit Alaska. I happened to interview a classmate... Continue Reading

When I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile, it wasn’t a problem to cancel once I finally got the correct information on what to do. However, some consumers have found it difficult or nearly impossible to cancel a service because companies illegally trick or trap people who use their services. An example is Vonage, a phone company that didn’t give customers an easy way to cancel their services. Vonage used hurdles called “dark patterns” that made people: hunt for the cancellation phone number; go from agent to agent with repeated sales pitches when they called; and pay high... Continue Reading