uCheckers Is Really Sorry About That Video Of Burger Bun Wiped On Kitchen Floorr

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• After the Internet went nuts over a YouTube video showing a Checkers employee deliberately dropping a bun to the kitchen floor, then rubbing it around for a second before continuing to make a sandwich, the fast food chain has finally issued a statement, claiming the bun was never served and the employees involved are no longer working there.

  In the above statement, a Checkers exec reveals that the incident occurred earlier this summer at a Checkers in suburban Baltimore.

  “I, like you, am appalled, and disappointed by what I saw in that video,” declares the VP of human resources for the Tampa-based chain.

  She adds that the franchisee who owns the location has already investigated and fired the employee. We don’t know if that occurred before or after the video was seen by hundreds of thousands of people in just a few hours.

  “While the employee is apologetic, these actions are completely unacceptable and do not reflect our values or our commitment to food quality,” adds the Checkers exec.

  As for the claim that “the product was never served to a guest,” we may just have to take Checkers’ word on it.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uPunching Another Passenger Will Get You Booted From A Plane, Arrestedr

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  A video of the incident shows the man getting punching another passenger.

  Every once in a while we’ve reported on airline passengers behaving badly – throwing drinks on people, groping fellow passengers, attempting to open doors and other potentially dangerous actions. One such case – that included a few punches – occurred yesterday on a United Airlines flight and ended with one person arrested.

  ABC7Chicago reports that issues on the United flight – operated by SkyWest – from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to Dayton, OH, began when crew members made the decision to return to the gate after a passenger refused to turn off his phone during taxi.

  A video of the incident shows the 31-year-old man getting out of his seat and walking to the front of the plane. At that point another passenger says something and the man punches that passenger.

  Once the flight returned to the gate, Chicago police officers boarded the plane to remove the man.

  However, they had to wrestle the passenger to the ground, during which he allegedly hit one of the officers, ABC7Chicago reports.

  “The Chicago police were right on the spot. Then it was a big fight in the jet way. He was fighting the police and resisting them,” the man who recorded the video said.

  Authorities say the man faces four misdemeanor charges, including resisting arrest and battery causing bodily harm.

  Passenger arrested after punching man on United Airlines Flight [ABC7Chicago]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uHotel Industry Comes Out Against Merger Of Expedia & Orbitzr

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• You might think of Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Trivago as competitors in the online travel-booking business, but most people probably don’t know that all of these brands fall under the Expedia Inc. ownership umbrella. And so will Orbitz if the pending $1.6 billion merger of the two companies is approved. The leading hotel industry trade group says that this consolidation has gone too far.

  The U.S. Justice Dept. is currently reviewing the Expedia-Orbitz deal to see if there are any antitrust concerns, and today the American Hotel & Lodging Association let it be known that it believes there are; that the merger would concentrate too much of the market in one company’s hands.

  “We believe this transaction and the resulting consolidation of the online travel marketplace will result in significant negative consequences,” says Katherine Lugar, president and CEO of AH&LA, in a statement, “particularly for consumers, but also for the large number of our members who are small business owners and franchised properties.”

  Lugar acknowledges that sites like Expedia and Orbitz have generally been a boon for the hospitality industry and that hotels were among the earliest adopters of online booking. But she claims that a combined Expedia and Orbitz would control around 75% of America’s online travel agency (OTA) market.

  That would leave only Priceline — which not only runs its namesake site, but also Kayak.com, Booking.com, and others — as a major competitor in the OTA field. Together, argues the AH&LA, a merged Expedia-Orbitz and Priceline would effectively create a duopoly that controls 95% of the market.

  “The loss of Orbitz could be detrimental for many reasons,” says Lugar, noting that one less competitor means less incentive to innovate for the benefit of consumers. She also explains that Expedia’s commissions to hotels are 11% higher, on average, than those charged by Orbitz.

  “The acquisition could result in Orbitz raising its rates to that level, further driving up distribution costs for hotel operators,” contends Lugar.

  The AH&LA argues that the hotels most directly affected by an Expedia-Orbitz merger would be smaller, boutique operators who often depend on booking sites for reaching consumers.

  “We also believe the combination of Expedia and Orbitz will cause small and independent hotels to pay significantly more to advertise online in the increasingly pay-to-play ecosystem of online search,” concludes Lugar. “Taken together, these effects could substantially drive up the cost of doing business for small and independent hotels to the ultimate detriment of consumers.”

  In response, a rep for Expedia tells the Wall Street Journal that the company has no intention to charge higher commissions post-merger. Expedia also claims that it’s just a “small player” in the huge travel-booking industry, saying that OTAs only account for about 17% of all hotel bookings in the U.S.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uReminder: An Airport Runway Is Not A Safe Place To Drive, Intoxicated Or Notr

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  (kevindean)

  It might be a tempting stretch of road, but the only wheels that should be hitting the runway at an airport belong to planes. In a recent example of such unsafe behavior, police say a drunk driver drove through fences and onto an active runway at the Louis Armstrong International Airport near New Orleans on Wednesday afternoon.

  Authorities say other drivers called 9-1-1 just before 1 p.m. after seeing a Dodge Challenger crash through a perimeter fence at the airport and head onto a runway, The Times-Picayune reports.

  At that point, airport staff had an eye on him and confronted the driver, a spokeswoman for the airpot says. But he continued driving across airport property and crashed through another fence on the other side of the airfield.

  Local police eventually arrested him after a short chase, which ended an auto repair shop when someone reported a suspicious man hiding behind an air conditioning unit. He was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and hit-and-run.

  Despite the fracas, everything at the airport went on as normal.

  “There was no impact to any aircraft operations or any flights,” the spokeswoman said.
  Drunk driver crashes onto runway at Louis Armstrong International Airport, JPSO says [The Times-Picayune]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uLatest Auto Hack Target: Tesla’s Model Sr

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  (Atwater Village Newbie)

  For the third time in three weeks security researchers have taken control of a vehicle through flaws in its computer systems. The latest target? None other than Tesla’s Model S.

  The Financial Times reports that researchers found six significant flaws in the Model S that could allow hackers to take control of the vehicle, including one issue that allowed researchers to turn the car off while it was driving at a low speed.

  The hackers – Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer of Lookout, and Marc Rogers, principal security researcher at Cloudflare – say they decided to target the Model S because Tesla is known to have a better understanding of software than most other manufacturers.

  In order to discover the flaws, the hackers first physically accessed the Tesla and connected an Ethernet cable to enable entry of the car’s system from afar.

  The hackers were then able to control the vehicle’s screens, allowing them to manipulate the speedometer to show the wrong speed, lower and raise the windows, lock and unlock the car and turn the car on or off, the Financial Times reports.

  “We shut the car down when it was driving initially at a low speed of five miles per hour. All the screens go black, the music turns off and the handbrake comes on, lurching it to a stop,” Rogers said.

  When the hackers tried to take control of the car at higher speeds, they report that Tesla’s own safety measures kicked in preventing them from using the handbrake. Additionally, the screens in the vehicle went black, the car dropped to neutral and the driver maintained full control of the steering.

  The researchers plan to provide a detailed account of their experiment at the cyber security conference Def Con tomorrow.

  In the meantime, Tesla said it would issue a downloadable patch to fix the flaws by Thursday.

  Hackers take control of a Tesla Model S and turn it off at low speed [Financial Times]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uAngry Orchard Recalls Hard Cider Because Beer Bottles Aren’t Supposed To Break When You Open Themr

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• After a hard day’s work, what’s better than coming home to a nice cold bottle of hard apple cider (or some people might think, anyway). You know what’s not nice? When that bottle breaks or overflows upon opening. For that reason, Angry Orchard Cider Co. has recalled select cases of its adult beverages.

  The Cincinnati-based brewing company announced Wednesday that it would recall select 12-packs and six-packs of its Crisp Apple Hard Cider after receiving reports from consumers who experienced bottles that overflowed when opened or broke unexpectedly.

  According to the company, two batches of the cider produced in June are likely re-fermenting in the bottle, which can result in increased carbonation levels. That could then lead to the cider beer overflowing or creating enough pressure to break the glass container, which could potentially be hazardous.

  “While the impacted cider poses no health risk if consumed, the team at Angry Orchard took this measure to ensure that products available to consumers meet their high quality standards,” the company states.

  Angry Orchard has notified retailers where the beverages were shipped – including Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin – to remove the products from their shelves.

  

  An example of where the “Freshness Matters” code can be found on an Angry Orchard bottle.

  The affected six- and 12-packs can be identified by the “Freshness Matters” code printed on the top or side panel of the case.

  If that code begins with “June 2016 1665C” and is immediately followed by 4 digits between the range of 0001 through 0700 OR “June 2016 1805C” and is immediately followed by 4 digits between 0001 through 0545, those bottles may have been impacted.

  Individual bottles, which should be handled with extreme care, can be identified by a code printed directly on the glass just below the neck label. If that code falls within the ranges of C16650001 through C16650530 OR C18050001 through C18050415, that cider may have been impacted.

  If a bottle of the Angry Orchard Crisp Apple Hard Cider falls within the designated code ranges, consumers should handle with extreme care and dispose of the product immediately in an outside container.

  The company says it will issue a full refund on the products described above.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uMore Examples Of Target Math: They Never Said It Was “On Sale”r

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• There are two different types of Target math, our name for the unusual ways that stores calculate bulk and sale prices. One type is when a “sale” price is higher than a product’s regular price, which is not the normal definition of the word “sale.” The other is when a bulk package of an item costs more per item than just buying it individually. Now we’ve discovered a new form: random numbers pulled in from nowhere.

  Online shopping cart errors are common enough, but this one has no logic to it. Here’s a screen shot that reader Victor took. “Tell me if you can understand how a $16 product with free shipping becomes a $42 product when the discounts and tax are added in (in the summary box on the right),” he writes. I don’t know. There is no universe where this cart makes sense, especially the part where Victor “saves” 80%.

  

  Pat was shopping at a real-life Target when he thought he’d pick up some Clif bars that were on sale. They had the reasonable sale price of $10.79 per box. “A couple aisles over I saw on an endcap the same boxes of Clif bars that did not have sale tags and were marked at the regular price of…$9.79?” he writes. He checked the shelf where he found the bars originally, and there was an “original” price tag of $9.79.

  

  

  Now, it’s possible that the “7/5″ date on the sale shelf tag is the date when that sale ended, and Patrick was shopping later that same week. July 5 was a Sunday, though, and usually that’s the day that sales and promotions begin.

  

  Lisa sent along this picture of body wash bottles, questioning whether it was “on sale.”

  

  Ah, but Target never said that the bottle was on sale. All the shelf tag says is “As advertised.” They advertised their very reasonable regular price. Apparently.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist