uIllinois AG Sues Company For Dumping Medical Files Containing Patients’ Personal Info In The Trashr

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  (CBS 2)

  When you get medical treatment, the information that goes into your file is extensive and can contain a whole lot of personal information like your name, address, Social Security Number as well as your medical history. That private stuff should be kept from the prying eyes of others, which is exactly the opposite of what Illinois prosecutors say one company did when allegedly dumping medical files in the trash.

  CBS 2 in Chicago says it tipped off Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office after finding thousands of medical files in a Dumpster in February, and that she’s now filed a lawsuit against a company called Filefax for allegedly violating the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and the Personal Information Protection Act.

  Medical, financial and other personal records were just dumped in the garbage, files Filefax was hired to store, maintain and eventually destroy, the lawsuit alleges.

  “So they’ve completely violated the law,” Madigan says. “They completely violated peoples’ trust and we want to hold them accountable for that.”

  CBS 2 reported that a Dumpster had been filled with records on multiple days in February, and that one woman filled her blue recycling can up 10 times with 1,100 pounds of medical files that she said Filefax gave her permission to take and recycle.

  “It cannot simply be given to anybody who walks into their office saying that they’d like to allegedly have this to be recycled,” said Madigan, who says each mishandled medical file could result in a $50,000 fine.

  The company that hired Filefax to take care of its medical records said in a statement that it had notified impacted customers, and had ending its contract with Filefax in favor of a “different company for secure storage and destruction of medical records.”

  2 Investigators: Lisa Madigan Sues Medical Records Company After Files Found In Dumpster [CBS 2]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uPolice: “Serial Stowaway” Known For Trying To Sneak Onto Planes Arrested At Two Chicago Airportsr

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  (Brad Clinesmith)

  A woman who’s been caught multiple times — with varying instances of success — trying to sneak aboard planes without a ticket has been arrested at two Chicago airports within a month trying to pull her signature stowaway move, police say.

  Officials in Chicago say she’s been arrested twice recently, once at Midway Airport and in April, at O’Hare International Airport, reports the Chicago Tribune.

  Transportation Safety Administration officers told police on Sunday that a woman was loitering near a checkpoint. Officers found she had no ticket and no reason to be there, a police rep said, and charged her with misdemeanor criminal trespass to state-supported land, a minor charge.

  But then they realized she’d done the same thing at O’Hare last month and had been arrested on the same charge, which meant she was violating the terms of her bond, and instead booked her into Cook County Jail. On April 24, police said officials found her loitering in a restricted area near a ticketing counter in the international terminal. Again, she had no ticket and no reason to be there.

  She’s now scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

  The 63-year-old woman has been busy in the last year: Last August she managed to fly without a ticket from San Jose to Los Angeles, and was then arrested a few days later at LAX. Then she managed to get to Florida from Minnesota in February on a plane without a ticket, even posing as a resort guest before her ruse was discovered.

  Woman known as ‘serial stowaway’ arrested at Midway, O’Hare [Chicago Tribune]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uMicrosoft Reportedly Adding DVR Feature To Xbox One Over-The-Air Broadcastsr

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  Xbox One’s new live over-the-air network broadcasts could soon include a DVR option.

  When Microsoft announced last month that its Xbox One would have the ability to provide users with live over-the-air content from local broadcast networks, the company said the new feature would allow viewers to pause the action for up to 30 minutes. But a half-hour just isn’t a lot of time for today’s busy TV watcher, which is probably why the company is reportedly looking to add a DVR feature to the console

  Ars Technica, citing a Thurrott post, as well as unnamed sources, reports that the recording tool could appear on the Xbox One as soon as the end of the year.

  The addition of DVR capabilities on the gaming system would further differentiate it from its rival PlayStation 4, which doesn’t offer such options. Sony does, however, offer its PlayStation Vue live TV streaming service in select markets. That service does include access to some local broadcast channels.

  According to Ars Technica, there’s really no reason why the Xbox One shouldn’t be able to accommodate a recording feature, as the device could theoretically store shows that pass through the external HDMI to its hard drive or even a USB drive.

  However, the publication does point out that while DVR capabilities would likely be convenient for consumers, it might pose a few issues with content providers selling products through the Xbox video store and other outlets.

  Report: Xbox One to get DVR functionality, “probably this year” [Ars Technica]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uHere Is Comcast’s 10-Point Action Plan For Winning Over Customersr

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  The full Comcast Customer Experience Action Plan is at the bottom of this post.

  For years, Comcast’s plan to win over customers was to do absolutely nothing because they — just like most cable companies — were the only choice. But with its pay-TV subscriber numbers dropping, the company is realizing that can indeed lose customers by treating them horribly. In an e-mail obtained by Consumerist, Comcast leadership has outlined its optimistic plan to win back all those customers who hate being residents of Kabletown.

  “As a company, we haven’t always put the customer first and we need to do a better job,” reads the e-mail sent out to employees by Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit. “We need to look at everything we do through a customer lens.”

  Smit then goes on to outline the plan — hiring most customer service staff; opening new call centers — we wrote about earlier, before reading the minds of just about every single person seeing this e-mail:

  “There are a lot of skeptics who don’t believe we can do this,” he writes. “Impressions are lasting and it’s going to take time and proof to change their minds.”

  At the same time as that e-mail went out, Comcast shared with employees its 10-point Customer Experience Action Plan. You can read the whole thing below, but here are some of the more salient points:

  4. Being on Time, Every Time
  As mentioned in the earlier story about Comcast’s customer service turnaround plans, if a Comcast tech is late for an appointment, the customer’s account will be credited $20. The company’s goal is to “always be on time” by the third quarter of this year. Comcast says it will be hiring hundreds of new techs and bringing its dispatch operations in-house, rather than relying on various subcontracted services.

  5. Get it Right the First Time
  No one likes calling customer service, and the dislike only grows when you get passed from rep to rep before (maybe) finding someone who can resolve your issue. Comcast says it is going to try to minimize call transfers and seek higher rates of “first call resolution.” Techs will also be performing Home Integrity Checks before leaving a house to hopefully catch any errors that might lead to someone having to come back.

  6. Keeping Bills Simple and Transparent
  “We are simplifying our pricing and making it more consistent across the company,” reads the plan, which says that bills will be completely redesigned for 2016 to “make them simpler and clearer.”

  Comcast says it will also be giving receipts for all orders and returned equipment so that there should always be a paper trail when there’s a dispute.

  8. Rethinking Policies & Fees
  “We are reassessing all of our policies and fees and getting rid of ones that customers find particularly frustrating,” reads the plan, “like change of service and equipment return charges.”

  10. Keeping Score
  We’ve long heard from Comcast employees and contractors that the level of their success was based on things that had nothing to do with providing good service, but on metrics like how quickly the call was ended or how much you were able to upsell a customer on add-on products and services. Comcast now says that its employee scoring will measure “performance based on customer satisfaction.”

  Here’s the full list crafted by Comcast:
  

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uWould You Tip Your Lawyer Or Your Dentist?r

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  (Smiley Kailee)

  In discussions of the custom of tipping, you never hear typical consumers wish that they were expected or asked to tip their service providers in more industries. Yet Square, a service that lets small businesses accept credit card and direct mobile payments on phones and tablets, gives any business the opportunity to prompt customers for a tip.

  Of course, Square’s standard plan collects a percentage of all payments that their customers receive, so collecting a fe extra bucks on every transaction is a boon to them. Letting merchants decide whether to ask for a tip or not is a useful feature, though, and has led to businesses prompting people to tip where it may not be expected.

  Those businesses include health care settings, like doctors and dentists. Sure, we expect to tip in the hospitality business, and people who provide some personal care services…but why do we tip a massage therapist and not a dental hygienist? Why do we tip the dog groomer who might clean a pet’s ears, but not the vet tech who gives rabies shots?

  The person in charge of Square Register says that providers of professional services (think lawyers, accountants, and business consultants) that use Square to collect fees like being able to add a tip line to the in-person checkout process, and that their customers appreciate it, too. They do? Is secretly wanting to tip your attorney a thing?

  Would you tip your dentist? [CNN]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSelf-Driving Semi Trucks Hit The Highway For Testing In Nevadar

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• Maybe you’ve gotten used to the idea of seeing driverless vehicles perhaps one day casually cruising alongside your car on the highway with no one paying attention behind the wheel, but semi-trucks, well that’s a much different — and bigger — thing to get used to.

  A company called Freightliner now has a license to test its autonomous tractor-trailer truck in the state of Nevada, it announced in a press release, and already has one of those trucks in operation already. It’ll begin test driving on public highways. Nevada is one of only a few states that has laws that allow for such licenses.

  These won’t be ghostly visions of driverless, giant semis roaming the roads, as a licensed truck driver will be in the driver’s seat, though the Freightliner Inspiration is designed to drive by itself on limited access interestates. A human driver will then take control of the vehicle when it’s in city and suburban driving situations, notes CNNMoney.

  Using radar sensors and cameras to stay in its lane and avoid hitting other cars, the Daimler AG-owned truck could help reduce driver fatigue, the company says, allowing them to be more productive while on the road. A driver could get paperwork done or plot out the next trip while the truck pays attention to the road.

  “We don’t believe that everyone is going to jump on immediately,” Wolfgang Bernhard, head of Daimler’s commercial truck operations told CNN. “It’s a process.”

  Self-driving semi hits the road [CNNMoney]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uWoman’s Car Mistakenly Booted 4 Times Because Someone Else Has Identical Vanity Plater

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• A driver in New York City has repeatedly gone out to her car and found she couldn’t drive it because once again her vehicle had been booted due to hundreds of dollars in unpaid parking fines. Problem is, this driver says she’s never been ticketed and that she’s being punished for the bad behavior of someone else who had the same vanity license plate number.

  The driver tells CBS New York that her car has been booted four times even though she has no unpaid parking fines. The city’s Dept. of Finance, which oversees parking violations, even acknowledges that these are cases of “human error.”

  So what exactly is going on? It appears that this driver’s car is being confused with another vehicle that has or had the same vanity plate. How can that happen? In New York, vehicles of different types can apparently have the same vanity tags. Parking enforcement agents are supposed to check plate numbers against other known identifiers for a vehicle, like a VIN, before issuing tickets or slapping a boot on the side, but they weren’t doing so in these cases.

  CBS tracked down the woman who racked up the hundreds in parking fines with the same vanity plate, and she didn’t seem too concerned that someone else was being penalized for her failure to pay.

  “It’s not my problem,” said the alleged scofflaw. “I’m sorry it’s happening to her.”

  In response to the story, the Dept. of Finance says it is “instituting brand new measures to reduce the occurrence of human error when booting cars that may share the same license plate combination as another vehicle.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist