jikToys ‘R’ Us Can’t Beat Discounters On Price, Invites Everyone Over For Play Datesde

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(Nicholas DiMaio)

Toys ‘R’ Us has a problem: they’re a specialty store that people love, but they must compete with mega-discounters like Walmart and online vendors like Amazon on price. When they can’t do that and still make money, how are they to survive? The company’s new idea: get kids in the door by creating an experience, not just a place to buy toys.

The company has been working on a turnaround for the last ten years or so, and Head Giraffe and CEO (not his actual title) Antonio Urcelay explained to Bloomberg that the company wants to make sure that families see it as a specialist in stuff to play with. They’re planning a prototype store that will feature large play spaces for kids, and demonstration units for technology for them to play with.

Will selling itself as an indoor playground of sorts work? Will getting people in the door mean selling them some toys? What Urcelay knows is that the company is improving its sales numbers even though they aren’t offering as many deep discounts as they used to. Stores will still match prices offered elsewhere, but they know that they aren’t able to compete with Walmart on price. Instead, they aim to train employees better, arm them with more product knowledge, and make the stores into something different that general retailers can’t compete with.

Toys ‘R’ Us Seeking to Ward Off Discounters by Adding Play Space [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikL.A. Man Claims Identity Theft Has Left Stranded Him In Mexico For Weeksde

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(Noah Jacquemin)

A U.S. citizen from Los Angeles says his visit to Mexico has lasted much longer than he anticipated, after he claims someone stole his identity, prompting border officials to keep him out of the country for now.

He was coming back from Mexico at the San Ysidro border crossing on March 1 when he found himself stuck, reports ABC 7 News.

Instead of handing over a passport to verify his citizenship, he says he showed his California identification card, Social Security card and birth certificate because he doesn’t have a passport. When agents ran his fingerprints, someone else’s picture showed up in the system.

“Then all of a sudden it became a nightmare. The agents of Customs and Border Patrol accused him of being an impostor and told him, ‘No this is not your ID,'” his attorney told the media.

His lawyer claims border officials arrested him and kept him in custody for three days, allegedly pressuring him to sign a false document saying he had invented a fake name in order to go free.

The family believes someone stole his identity and somehow got another person’s photo to appear with his name. As such, the man’s lawyer has since written to the Inspector General to investigate possible criminal conduct.

While the attorney admits that yes, a passport would clear all this up, why would he, when his system has worked in the past?

“Obviously, he should have had a United States passport, but because he came and went with the same documents… he didn’t go get a passport,” his lawyer says.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a valid driver’s license is enough to prove citizenship to enter the country from Mexico, but it’s unclear if state identification cards are included in that.

He remains in Mexico for now, while authorities at the U.S. Consulate are reportedly investigating and trying to get him a passport. That process could take two to three months.

LOS ANGELES MAN STUCK IN MEXICO AFTER IDENTITY STOLEN [ABC7 News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikRising Moon Organics Ravioli Recalled For Potential Spinach Listeriade

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Yesterday, we predicted that more prepared foods that include organic spinach would be recalled in the coming weeks after a Washington state farm told informed its customers that routine testing had turned up Listeria bacteria in its spinach. While a link between these recalls hasn’t been announced, another all-organic product including spinach has been recalled: Rising Moon Organics frozen ravioli.

Here’s what you need to know if you’ve purchased New Moon Organics products: the varieties recalled are the Garlic & Veggie, Spinach Florentine, and Spinach & Cheese ravioli. They will have sell by dates between December 22, 2015 and January 20, 2016: check against the recall notice to be sure.

The companies involved and public health agencies do not yet know of any illnesses caused when people ate these products, which is good. Most healthy adults would notice just a brief stomach bug with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle stiffness, or a fever. That’s annoying and you might have to call in sick to work, but survivable. For young children, elders, people with compromised immune systems, the consequences are more serious: listeriosis infection is life-threatening. Listeriosis can also cause miscarriage and stillbirth in pregnant women.

If you purchased this product, you can return it to the store where you purchased it for a refund. If you have any questions about the recall, give the company a call at 510-429-0356.

Carmel Food Group Recalls Rising Moon Organics Frozen Ravioli Due to Possible Health Risk [FDA]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikStudy: Some Popular Android Apps Tracking User Location Once Every Three Minutesde

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(Manik_K)

While it can be very useful to have say, a weather app on your smartphone that knows where you are when you want to find out current conditions for your location, does that mean that those apps should be able to know where you are even when you aren’t using the app? That’s a question raised by a new forthcoming study that found about dozen apps for Android smartphones are not only tracking where you are right now, but three minutes from now. And three minutes after that. And so on.

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University found that dozens of popular Android apps collected device location (including GPS coordinates accurate to within 50 meters) an average of 6,200 times, or about every three minutes during a two-week study period, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Researchers recruited 23 users of Android’s version 4.3, with participants able to use their own choice of apps after installing software that logged app requests for a variety of personal information including contacts, call logs, calendar entries and camera output, along with location.

Even when an app provides a useful-location based service, some of those requested the data more often than would be needed to provide that service, researchers said.

For example: Groupon Inc’s app requested one participant’s coordinates 1,062 times in two weeks. Does Groupon need to know where you are? Sure, when you’re acvitely trying to find a deal. But the rest of the time…?

“Does Groupon really need to know where you are every 20 minutes?” asked Norman M. Sadeh, a Carnegie Mellon professor who co-wrote the study. “The person would have to be accessing Groupon in their sleep.”

In another part of the study, The Weather Channel’s app requested device location an average 2,000 times, or every 10 minutes during the study period. Which, unless you are really nervous about a storm ruining your outdoor party or an oncoming tornado, seems a bit excessive.

If you’re wondering, the research didn’t include comparable results from iOS users, because unlike Android which groups all its permissions for apps en masse — you can’t download an app if you don’t agree to all its permissions — iOS devices allow for users to adjust what data is collected by an app on an individual basis (click here for more on how to do so).

So I can have the Weather Channel app on my iPhone and turn the location data off (which isn’t that useful to me, but hey, I can do it).

It’s no secret why app developers want to cull as much location data as they can get, with marketers paying good money for online ads that can be targeted to individual users based on location information. That might mean an ad or a coupon for a retailer could pop up on the company’s app if it detects a user is nearby or even inside a store.

In previous research, Sadeh and his fellow researchers found that when an app is asking for your location, 73% of the time it shares that information with an advertising network. That’s something many people are likely not aware of when they give an app permission to access their location.

During the study, researchers found that when users were given a “privacy nudge” to tell them how many times apps collected their personal data each day, 95% of participants reported reassessing their app permissions and 58% chose to restrict apps from collecting data.

But should we have to be nudged?

“The defaults for location data are entirely backward. That data should only be revealed at a particular moment for a particular purpose. Instead, devices routinely reveal location, leaving the user subject to constant tracking,” Marc Rotenberg, president of the privacy advocacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the WSJ.

Apps Track Users—Once Every 3 Minutes [Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikYour Personal Data Could Be For Sale In RadioShack Bankruptcy Auctionde

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(cmorran123)

Have you handed your name, address, e-mail address, or phone number over to RadioShack as part of a purchase or, inexplicably, when you returned an item that you bought with cash? As the bankruptcy auction of the smoldering remains of The Shack continues into its second day, we’ve learned that one of the assets for sale is RadioShack’s customer list, which includes more than 65 million mailing addresses and more than 13 million e-mail addresses.

Sure, many of those customers have most likely moved since they bought that extended warranty on their remote control car back in 2007, but many of them haven’t. Do you expect when handing over your contact information that the company will sell that information eight years later? Maybe you do assume that. We all certainly should.

Bloomberg reports that Standard General, a hedge fund with an almost suspiciously generic name, is the winner of the auction for a little less than half of the chain’s pre-bankruptcy store network, as well as the brand name and other assets at the corporate level.

AT&T has already weighed in on what they think ought to be done with their customer data in RadioShack’s hands, and the state attorneys general of Texas and Tennessee have filed objections to the sale of customer data. (RadioShack is based in Texas.)

RadioShack’s Bankruptcy Could Give Your Customer Data to the Highest Bidder [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikEPA: Vacationing Family “Seriously Exposed” To Toxic Pesticide While Staying In Luxury Condode

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(catastrophegirl)

When you’re staying in a fancy, luxurious vacation condominium at a Caribbean resort, there’s a certain expectation that your health won’t be seriously threatened. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says members of a Delaware family have become seriously ill after their $800-per-night condo at a resort in the U.S Virgin Islands was possibly fumigated using toxic pesticides normally found in industrial farming.

The parents and their two teenage sons were airlifted back stateside after becoming ill during their vaction in the Caribbean island of St. John, reports USA Today, and have now been stabilized and are getting “tremendous medical care.”

Investigators from the EPA are now investigating what poisoned them by taking air samples of their unit at a Sirenusa resort, officials said. The family was reportedly exposed to the pesticide soon after checking in on Wednesday last week, but didn’t show symptoms until Friday when they began having seizures.

An EPA administrator said the poison was caused by methyl bromide, an odorless pesticide that can be fatal or cause serious central nervous system and respiratory system damage. It’s restricted in the U.S. due to its “acute toxicity,” and is only allowed to be used in certain agricultural settings by certified applicators. It is :not authorized for use in dwellings,” the EPA says.

Investigators say it appears methyl bromide was possibly used to fumigate the family’s condo and others “to deal with indoor bugs,” and that the agency knows who applied the chemical. They’re now investigating whether or tenants at Sirenusa or other places where the contractor worked to fumigate rooms have become ill.

“We’ve got resources on the ground and we need to find out exactly what happened and we’re also focused on ensuring that this doesn’t happen again,” Judith Enck, administrator for the EPA’s Region 2 said.

The condominium is owned and managed by a company called Sea Glass Vacations, which hasn’t commented on the incident.

Del. family poisoned in Caribbean has ‘stabilized’ [USA Today]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikMore Than 100 National Consumer Groups Urge The CFPB To Issue Rules Over Forced Arbitration Clausesde

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( SarahMcGowen)

Just weeks after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report showing that tens of millions of Americans have clauses in their credit card, checking account, student loan and wireless phone contracts that take away their rights to sue those companies in a court of law, more than 100 consumer groups have signed a letter urging the Bureau to address the use of forced arbitration clauses by issuing rules forbidding the clauses.

The consumer groups, which include the Center for Responsible Lending, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center and our colleagues at Consumers Union, sent the letter [PDF] to CFPB director Richard Cordray reiterating the need for the bureau to create rules to protect consumers.

“Few practices are as abusive, unfair, and deceptive as the widespread use of forced arbitration clauses,” the letter states. “Forced arbitration funnels consumers into a private system set up by corporations to protect and hide harmful and unlawful corporate behavior. Not only do these terms eliminate the right to a jury trial in a civil action, limit discovery and make meaningful appeal impossible; they also often prohibit consumers from banding together in a class action as an effective way to seek legal accountability.”

According to the CFPB’s report, 53% of credit cards currently have arbitration clauses, 92% of prepaid debit cards are subject to arbitration, and 99% of all payday loans in California and Texas include the restrictive clauses. In all, more than 93% of consumers under these clauses have no idea they’ve had their rights taken away from them.

Additionally, the report found that most arbitration clauses include a ban on class actions, even if the group of wronged consumers hope to seek joint arbitration. As the report pointed out, these bans have become an important tool for credit card companies who frequently cite their arbitration clauses as a way to preempt group litigation.

The prevalence of forced arbitration clauses stems, in part from a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gave credit card companies more of a reason to use arbitration clauses. At the time a divided SCOTUS ruled that the clauses could be used to preempt class-action lawsuits, even in cases where class actions are the only economically feasible way for the plaintiff to make its case.

Following the CFPB’s report on forced arbitration clauses, several national consumer groups applauded the study, saying it proved financial institutions used the clauses as a “license to steal.”

Consumer groups contend that by eliminating class actions the financial industry can ignore laws far more easily and operate with impunity.

“We believe that the final results of the CFPB arbitration study offer concrete evidence that the use of forced arbitration clauses is harmful to consumers, and therefore, it is in the public interest and in the interest of consumer protection to prohibit the practice,” the groups state. “The CFPB must act now to use its statutory authority to prohibit the use of forced arbitration clauses in contracts for consumer financial products and services, and restore consumers’ right to choose how to resolve disputes with financial institutions.”

The national groups urge the CFPB to follow recent federal government actions that curb forced arbitration clauses.

In the past, Congress banned forced arbitration in transactions with military servicemembers with respect to payday loans, vehicle title loans, and tax refund anticipation loans; auto dealers and automobile and truck manufacturers; livestock and poultry growers; and employees of government defense contractors with Title VII and sexual assault tort claims.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist