uPackage Of Spinach From Sam’s Club Comes With Free Frogr

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  Frogs: keep out. (Jess)

  A woman in California was not pleased when she prepared a salad for dinner and saw a small, speckled frog nestled between the spinach leaves. Sure, people sometimes pay good money to have frog legs for dinner, but those frogs are usually, you know, purpose-raised. And cooked.

  The factories that process salad greens put a lot of effort into ensuring that a minimum number of frogs end up in our salad bowls. The woman who found this frog (warning: giant dead frog picture at top of article) purchased the affected bag of salad at Sam’s Club, and the spinach came from Taylor Farms. (If that name sounds familiar, it was bags of Taylor Farms lettuce that PBS and NPR found piled up in a landfill in a recent story on food waste.)

  “I’m just really disgusted. I don’t think I can ever eat a salad again,” the woman told a local newspaper. “How could they miss a dead frog?”

  Someone at Taylor Farms explained in some detail how a frog could have ended up in the container of spinach: the company uses vibration tables and laser sorters to remove insects, animals, and any other debris that might have been harvested along with the greens.

  It’s possible, they explained, that the little frog had been concealed behind a leaf when this batch was sorted, or and the laser was not working properly when this batch was processed. The company didn’t respond when a reporter from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune asked whether there have been other reports of frogs in other containers of spinach.

  While the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t get involved unless there’s a widespread frogs-in-food trend, you should still consider giving the agency a call: it’s through reports from consumers that they’re able to spot trends.

  Dead frog found in packaged spinach, Covina woman says [San Gabriel Valley Tribune]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uNewly Married AT&T/DirecTV Unveil Underwhelming Combined Wireless/TV Plansr

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  The AT&T/DirecTV combo platter saves money, but only for new customers, and after 12 months, it’s really just a $10/month bill discount.

  Now that the merger of AT&T and DirecTV has cleared regulatory hurdles, the newlyweds are going public with their first combo platter offering that pairs of AT&T wireless phone service with DirecTV satellite TV. Unfortunately, the more than 20 million current DirecTV customers are going to be left out in the cold on this announcement.

  Starting on Aug. 10, new DirecTV (and, where available, AT&T U-Verse) customers can bundle together pay-TV and AT&T wireless service for a promotional price of as little as $200/month. That’s for the entry-level DirecTV Select service and a 10GB/month AT&T wireless plan that can be shared across four different lines. It’s effectively a $10/month discount off of getting the two services separately.

  For TV service with more channels, you’ll obviously be expected to pay more, with the DirecTV Premiere tier bringing the total promotional cost up to $275/month.

  And, to repeat, all these prices are promotional. After a year, they will go up by around $35-40/month.

  Current DirecTV or U-Verse customers who are thinking about changing their phone service to AT&T can get up to $300 in bill credit, but only if they buy a new phone through the AT&T Next installment plan and trade in their old phone.

  Customers in areas served by U-Verse can get AT&T Internet service with promotional pricing starting at $30/month for up to 6Mbps, or $40/month for up to 24Mbps. But again, remember that these are promotional prices that will go up after a year. At this point, AT&T isn’t even saying what that price will be, other than saying that the “prevailing standard rate” will apply after the 12 months are up.

  Today’s announcement is a bit underwhelming, as the deals boil down to little more than slight discounts for bundled services. But the combined companies pledge that more is to come.

  “Today is the first of many planned moves to enable our customers to enjoy a premium entertainment experience almost anywhere,” said Brad Bentley, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services. “We’re going to deliver more TV and entertainment choices to more screens – when and where our customers want it.”

  As part of the merger process, AT&T promised that it could bring affordable wireless broadband service to rural Americans. A review of FTC documents in March turned up some details on that plan, like the fact that it’s not going to be satellite broadband, but instead what’s known as Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology, which basically uses dedicated wireless spectrum to carry broadband back and forth between a box on the user’s home and one on a nearby cell tower.

  No word yet on when AT&T will be prepared to provide more details on that service, but let’s hope it’s more inventive than just a $10/month discount.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

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uYotaPhone 2 Cancels U.S. Version, Offers Limited Refunds Insteadr

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• It’s easy to understand why gadget fans were interested in the Yotaphone 2: it’s an Android smartphone with a regular touchscreen on the front and an e-ink display that can display widgets or function as a power-saving regular screen on the back. When the company behind the phone announced in May that a U.S. version compatible with our LTE networks here in the US would become available, lots of people stepped up to place orders, including reader Steve.

  The company used Indiegogo for the pre-order process, and took in almost $300,000. The first 100 backers could reserve a phone for $500 each, and they cost $525 each after that. They would be unlocked GSM phones which would work with T-Mobile or AT&T or compatible MVNOs on their networks, such as Ting or StraightTalk. Most importantly, unlike the phone’s international versions, it would be compatible with LTE networks in the United States. The phones were supposed to ship next month…and then the company dropped the bad news.

  It’s important to note here that even though this was a crowdfunded pre-order process, the campaign was no sketchy crowdscam. Yota Devices is a fully-grown company that sells actual devices in other countries, and the YotaPhone 2 has been on the market elsewhere since May of this year. There were rumors that the company would be selling their phone through T-Mobile.

  They sent this update to backers:

  The reason for our cancelled launch is due to unforeseen delays including both production and delivery of the North American variant of YotaPhone 2 from our manufacturer. This despite spending months finalizing and securing the deal to bring to life the North American variant of YotaPhone 2, and when we launched this campaign we were confident our supplier would be able to follow through with their commitment. This was a shock to everyone at Yota Devices, and our leadership team, including our CEO, met with the manufacturer last week in a last-ditch effort to find a solution but the logistics were insurmountable and the device would simply arrive too late. In turn, we believe that the likelihood of a severe delay in these shipments would have created a conflict with our international road map for 2016, leaving Indiegogo supporters behind when customers in other regions will be offered a newer, cheaper and better YotaPhone.

  A later update to the IndieGoGo page gave users two options: to have the international phone shipped to them instead: it’s the same device, but not compatible with the LTE that we use in this country. While this is the most professionally-handled crowdfunding failure that we’ve ever seen, reader Steve, who let us know about this, pointed out one problem: they’re issuing refunds for customers who want them through Square Cash, a service that needs to be tied to a debit card to work. What if, like Steve, you don’t have a debit card?

  Steve made his pre-order pledge more than two months ago, so disputing the charge on his credit card is out of the question. He’s asked the company whether customers who don’t want to use Square have an alternative option, and we’ve contacted them too. We’ll update this post if we hear anything.

  YotaPhone 2 won’t be coming to the US [The Verge]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uMozilla Displeased That Windows 10 Changes User’s Default Browserr

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• Over at Mozilla HQ, they make web browsers that run on various platforms, including Windows. Over at Microsoft, they have their own new browser that is part of Windows, and they’d really like everyone to use it. According to Mozilla, the new version of Windows steamrolls over a user’s preferred app settings and makes Microsoft’s Edge browser the default. Mozilla is not fond of this change.

  In an open CEO-to-CEO letter, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard tells Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella that the Mozilla team was disappointed to learn that the the new version of Windows overrides current preferred apps by default, unless the user knows how to change this while installing Windows.

  “We appreciate that it’s still technically possible to preserve people’s previous settings and defaults, but the design of the whole upgrade experience and the default settings APIs have been changed to make this less obvious and more difficult,” Beard explains. Most people might be able to figure this out, but they don’t know that they’ll need to do it. That’s the reason for Mozilla’s campaign.

  The open letter is because Microsoft hasn’t responded to Mozilla’s queries about the situation or why Windows installation overrides the user’s current preferences.

  Windows 10 is a free upgrade for current home users of Windows 7 or 8, which means that it’s sure to be a popular upgrade. Mozilla has put together its own education campaign for users to show them how to get Mozilla’s Firefox back as their default browser if they’ve already upgraded: it’s less than a minute long, but not everyone would be able to figure this out intuitively.

  Safeguarding Choice and Control Online [Mozilla]
  An Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control [Mozilla]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSling TV Says Comcast-Owned NBC Stations Are Blocking Its Adsr

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  (Sling TV)

  There’s a rumble brewing in telecom town: Sling TV is accusing Comcast of keeping its ads off some NBC stations’ airwaves. Which is exactly what the big bad cable company in its recent marketing campaign would do, Dish Network-owned Sling says.

  Sling threw down the gauntlet in a blog post on Thursday by CEO Roger Lynch.

  “We recently learned that NBC blocked Sling TV’s new advertisements from airing on its owned and operated (O&O) stations. For anyone who needs a reminder, Comcast – the standard bearer for ‘Old TV’ in the U.S. – owns the NBC broadcast network, and by extension, its O&O stations across the country,” Lynch writes. “At this time, NBC’s O&O stations in San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have rejected the ads.”

  In contrast, Lynch notes that Sling’s ads are currently running on ABC, CBS and Fox O&O stations and affiliates, “as well as independently-owned NBC affiliates (emphasis on ‘independently-owned,’ or in other words, not owned by Comcast).”

  The ad in question features pre-teen bullies employed by “Old TV” beating up on average customers: the meanies administer wedgies and wet willies, treat customers to scathing admonitions when they try to get out of contracts and literally beat down on folks who resist.

  Though Comcast is not named in the ad, Sling thinks it’s no coincidence that the company has responded this way, as it reinforces the campaign’s truth that traditional pay-TV players “just don’t get it,” Lynch says.

  “And what is it that they don’t get?” Lynch asks. “Innovation benefits customers.”

  He goes on to point out that many customers are sick of long-term contracts, expensive programming bundles, high prices and poor customer service.

  “Instead, we want TV on our terms. To come and go as we like. To watch great content, including sports, on the devices we own and use. And perhaps most importantly, we want rational pricing,” the post reads. “This is what our new commercials call out. This is what Comcast doesn’t want you to see.”

  It’s worth noting that Comcast recently announced its intention to test its own version of live TV that streams through the Internet, aptly enough called “Stream.”

  This would differ from Sling TV: Comcast says Stream would include stations like ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, NBC, PBS, Telemundo and Univision, that are freely available over the air for anyone with a decent antenna, as well as HBO.

  Sling, meanwhile, peddles a “Best of Live TV” lineup for $20/month with a slew of channels like A&E, Adult Swim, AMC, Bloomberg, Cartoon Network, CNN, Disney Channel, ESPN, ESPN2, Food Network, Lifetime, TBS, TNT and others in its base package, as well as various add-ons like HBO, available for $15 per month.

  In any case, Lynch sees Comcast’s move to ban Sling ads as a compliment.

  “Hey, if they’re going to go through the trouble of banning our ads, we must be doing something right,” Lynch says. “I hope you take our commercials and share them with your friends.”

  (H/T Wired.com)

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist