uATM-Refilling Crew Leaves Bag Of Cash Behind, Then It Disappearsr

4 4 4 9

• 

  (earth2kim)

  Sure, all humans make mistakes, and sometimes we even make mistakes at work. However, you have to feel really sorry for the ATM company employees in New Jersey who left a bag containing $141,000 outside of a building where they were working…and accidentally left the bag behind. Local police say that the employee responsible for leaving the bag had to be transported to the hospital when he learned that it had been stolen. We hope that he’s okay, but there’s something very weird about this incident.

  It turns out that a bag containing $141,000 in tens and twenties isn’t very big, and it doesn’t have a huge dollar sign printed on the side like in cartoons. Police say that the ATM-filling crew was only about seven miles away from the site when they realized that a bag was missing, and someone had already walked off with it.

  How does that happen? Did they know what was in the bag? Police don’t know the identity of the person who picked up the bag and Someone driving past in a van noticed the unmarked bag, and was caught on surveillance camera picking it up.

  Police are urging the person to come forward, since the rule of “finders keepers” doesn’t really apply to a bag sitting on the lawn on private property. “Anytime you find property that’s discarded on the side of the road, it’s not just fair game for you to pick it up and say, ‘Well, you left it, I found it,'” as a police spokesperson said. Indeed.

  Mahwah Police Searching For Van After Man Grabs Bag With $141K Left Behind By ATM Worker [WCBS]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

u10 Things We Learned About Who Really Made Your Subarur

4 4 4 9

• 

  (Shawn Toohey)
  

  The carmaker Subaru is having a great decade so far: their sales have doubled in the United States and they’re having trouble keeping up with the demand. While that’s great news for Subaru, an in-depth investigation from Reuters shows that Subaru and its suppliers have turned to some questionable but legal labor practices to keep the Foresters coming down the line.

  You should check out the entire investigation from Reuters, which includes a diagram of which parts of a Forester come from which suppliers, and video interviews with workers.

  1. Subaru’s sales have doubled in the United States since 2011: its Forester SUV crossover is especially popular here. Its marketing features loving families, cute dogs, and exceptionally long-lasting cars, all with the slightly baffling tagline, “Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.”
  2. Subaru’s manufacturing center is in the city of Ota, Japan, north of Tokyo. While some vehicles sold in the U.S. are assembled in a plant in Indiana, parts come from Subaru and its suppliers in Ota.
  3. Subaru and its suppliers hire workers from the developing world, some of whom are in Japan to apply for asylum. Reuters talked to workers who came from 22 different countries in Asia and Africa.
  4. Workers also come to Subaru’s suppliers through labor brokers, the same kind used in the clothing and textile industries, and up to a third of their pay goes to the brokers.
  5. Some workers come to Subaru through traineeship programs, where the ostensible goal is for the trainee to learn skills and bring them back to their home country. The problem is that trainees can’t switch employers once they get to Japan, and the United Nations and U.S. State Department say that conditions for trainees can be like forced labor.
  6. Chinese trainees whose pay stubs Reuters reviewed earned about half what a Japanese temp worker would have earned for the same job.
  7. Japan is unique in that it has needs workers but also limits immigration, which is why Subaru apparently depends heavily on guest workers and trainees. Reuters estimates that 30% of the labor force in the plants in Ota are foreigners.
  8. Factories that make parts for Subaru also make parts for other Japanese automakers, including Honda, Toyota, and Nissan.
  9. Subaru makes about 80% of its cars in Japan, and its increase in sales coincided with a change to the law that lets foreigners seeking asylum work on renewable six-month permits.
  10. Subaru says that its suppliers must obey the law in their hiring and treatment of their workers, and that the company isn’t equipped to check the labor practices of all of its suppliers.

  Subaru’s secret: Marginalized foreign workers power a Japanese export boom [Reuters]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uBill Would Allow Consumers To Sue When Bankrupt Debt Isn’t Removed From Credit Reportsr

4 4 4 9

• 

  (Chris Blakeley)

  Under federal law, when someone erases a debt in bankruptcy, their bank is required to update their credit reports to indicate the debt is no longer owed. To ensure this happens, legislators have introduced a new bill that would give credit card borrowers with inaccurate credit reports the power to sue their bank or a third-party debt buyer for damages if they continue to send so-called zombie debt to credit reporting agencies.

  The Consumer Reporting Fairness Act of 2015 — introduced by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown — aims to make it easier for consumers who discharge credit card debt through bankruptcy to fix errors and obtain accurate credit reports.

  Under the bill [PDF], creditors and debt collection agencies would be required to notify credit reporting agencies (CRAs) when a consumer’s debt is canceled by bankruptcy. If notification doesn’t occur and reports continue to include inaccuracies, consumers could then sue for damages and fees.

  As the Wall Street Journal points out the proposed bill would clear up confusion when it comes to large banks selling debt to third-party debt collectors, as current laws do not provide an explicit requirement that these entities notify credit reporting firms of a debt’s discharged status.

  Brown contends that debts prior to bankruptcy may be double counted, further marring consumers’ credit reports.

  The proposed bill comes at a time after several consumers filed lawsuits accusing banks of letting endangering their financial status by leaving discharged debt on their credit reports, the WSJ reports.

  In some cases, the borrowers say the inaccurate data made it more difficult to obtain a job, find an apartment or acquire lines of credit, because the mark was seen as a “delinquent debt” on their credit report, the WSJ reports.

  These issues were only magnified because in some instanced the original creditor sold the debt to a third-party debt collector.

  Such was the case for Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, which agreed in May to remove debt consumers eliminated during bankruptcy proceedings from their credit reports to resolve several consumer lawsuits.

  The financial companies allegedly ignored the discharges in order to make money by selling off the debt to collectors, who then refused to correct issues unless borrowers paid the debts that were already cleared.

  More recently, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $136 million and revamp its debt sales after state and federal authorities found the company sold zombie debts to third-party buyers — those debts included accounts that were inaccurate.

  Federal Lawmakers Propose Credit Reporting Changes [The Wall Street Journal]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uLands’ End Still Making Its Way After Divorce From Searsr

4 4 4 9

• 

  (Nicholas Eckhart)

  The new CEO of Lands’ End, who came to the company from high fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana, wasn’t a customer of the company before she went to work there because she wanted their classic basics for her own wardrobe. No, she shopped there to get her kid’s school uniforms. Now she’s leading the company into its future after the divorce from Sears Holdings.

  Fortune magazine interviewed new CEO Federica Marchionni, who explained that she didn’t see much that looked appealing for her when she went to pick up her son’s school uniform. That’s bad: even fashion executives wear lounge pants and wool coats sometimes, don’t they?

  Her plans involve expanding into more countries, and creating a women’s line that is “fitted and modern” among the chinos and floral cashmere cardigans. She also has very concrete plans like marketing their swimsuits more aggressively year-round in temperate areas of the country where people go swimming year-round.

  The company’s future is still tied up with that of Sears: 235 of its stores are still mini-stores inside of the local Sears. So far, they only have 14 standalone Lands’ End stores in the U.S. It’s hard to build a brand identity separate from Sears when you are still physically located inside Sears and using Sears cash registers.

  Lands’ End CEO on her post-Sears plan: “I am here to move the needle” [Fortune]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uGoogle Can Now Show You The Best Time To Pick Up Your Dry Cleaningr

4 4 4 9

• Waiting in line is often an annoying, but unavoidable aspect of everyday life: grabbing lunch, picking up a prescription, cashing a check, just to name a few. Now instead of just telling you how much time it will take to drive from one place to the other, Google has used its skills (all that data it collects) to create a new feature that gives a little more insight on just how busy the coffee shop is at 8 a.m. (busy).

  The new mobile search feature, unveiled in a Google+ post today, aims to help consumers save time by showing them the busiest times of day at millions of businesses around the world.

  To utilize the feature – which doesn’t really have a name – people just enter the business they’re looking for in Google’s search box. The generated results will now not only include the store’s phone number, address, and hours, but also a scrollable bar graph that shows the fluctuations of foot-traffic for all days of the week at the location.

  The example provided by Google in its announcement shows the changing traffic at a local coffee shop. The resulting graph depicts the busiest hours of day at the location, but doesn’t explicitly tell you how long you should expect to wait.

  While it’s likely that this new feature will be helpful when trying to determine when might be the best time to sneak out of the office for lunch or head to the post office, the results aren’t foolproof.

  Don’t count on using the information to see when that amazing hole-in-the-wall store is busy, as a spokesperson for Google tells TechCrunch that results generally only appear for places where users are “commonly curious about how busy it typically gets.”

  [via TechCrunch]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uT-Mobile Now Exempts 33 Streaming Music Services From Data Limits, Adds Apple Musicr

4 4 4 9

• 

  (kris krüg)

  Last year, T-Mobile added a benefit for their customers that no other mobile provider had tried: data used for music streaming services doesn’t count against their data allowance. Since the launch, Big Magenta has taken suggestions from their users for new services to add, and now they’re up to a total of 33 services that are part of the program.

  The latest, of course, is Apple Music, though its corporate cousins iTunes Radio was already part of the program. In their statement announcing the addition of Apple Music to the program, T-Mobile says that their customers stream a total of 131 million songs per day, or an average of 2.2 songs per person across their entire customer base.

  T-Mobile offers theoretically unlimited but throttled data: if you use your entire quota for the month, your connection speed will slow to a crawl for the rest of the month. However, the exceptions for music services means that even if Instagram becomes unusable, you can still stream music at regular LTE speed.

  Notably, the music service exemptions aren’t sponsored data: T-Mobile isn’t asking Apple or Spotify to pay them directly for the mobile data that their customers gobble while streaming music, which is similar to an idea that AT&T keeps revisiting.

  T-Mobile adds free Apple Music cellular streaming, offers free next-gen iPhone upgrades to iPhone 6 buyers [9to5Mac]
  Music Freedom List [T-Mobile]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uStupid Scammers Sell Play-Doh “iPhones,” Get Caught When Victim Asks To Buy Morer

4 4 4 9

• 

  Hint: This is not a leaked photograph of the next iPhone. ( photo: frankieleon)

  Dear dumb criminals: If you’re lucky enough to trick someone into buying an iPhone box full of Play-Doh, consider your crappy, evil job done and move on to the next victim. Because if that buyer calls you back asking to purchase more “iPhones,” they’re either less-intelligent than you, or you’re about to be arrested.

  According to CBS Detroit, a group of scammers tricked a Metro PCS store into buying what appeared to be iPhones in factory-sealed boxes, but which turned out to contain worthless lumps of Play-Doh and clay.

  So the store owner decided to con the con artists. He called them and asked if he could purchase additional iPhones from the men, who obliged.

  The three men didn’t realize that maybe someone was onto their clever ruse until they got to the store for the second transaction. While waiting to be paid for their expensive crafting supplies, the men had second thoughts and fled the store.

  Police were able to track the four men down. Searching their rental car turned up more clay-filled iPhone boxes and $500 in cash.

  Three suspects, including a minor, were charged with larceny by false pretenses and attempted larceny by false pretenses. All entered pleas of not guilty, and we really wish we could be there to hear an explanation if this ever goes to trial.

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Chris Morran via Consumerist