The owner of a Chick-Fil-A franchise in Austin, Texas needed to expand his restaurant, which required closing it for a few months. Instead of letting his workers go and wishing them luck finding work elsewhere, he decided to just keep paying them for the four months that the restaurant was under renovation. Wait, really?
Apparently not seeing his employees as disposable cogs in his fried chicken machine, the owner decided that he didn’t want to put his workers’ families through the hardship of being out of work or needing a new job in the interim. Some employees did go work at other local stores during the remodel, and the ones who stayed home had to take some online tests during their paid furlough.
“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want my group to have to forgo their salaries’,” the franchisee told TV station WMAZ. He also gave employees, whose pay starts at $11 per hour, a $1 per hour raise for sticking with the company.
Now the new, larger store is open: it’s twice as big as the original restaurant, which has been open for 15 years. The store’s grand re-opening required helpers to come over from other stores to handle the crowds.
Cities across the country have been cracking down on Airbnb and homeowners who rent through the service but may be playing fast and loose with the rules: from enacting city laws and creating offices to enforce said regulations, to ordering the company to pay millions of dollars in hotel taxes and levying fines against those who provide accommodations through the site. The latest such case comes out of San Diego where a woman was recently ordered to pay $15,000 for renting rooms in her home in violation of city laws.
NBC San Diego reports that a 70-year-old woman must pay $15,000 of a $22,400 fine after she failed to abide by a city order to cease renting her home through Airbnb.
The woman, who has rented two rooms in her home for $80/night since 2012, allegedly violated a city law against operating a bed and breakfast without a permit.
A hearing officer with the city determined that the woman’s rentals fell within the bed and breakfast code because she used her primary residence to provide lodging for less than 30 days to paying customers.
Her status as a possible B&B operator came to the city’s attention in September 2013 after neighbors began filing complaints about what they called a “revolving door” of strangers taking up parking and loitering in their area.
Investigators visited the woman’s home in October 2013 and again in May 2014, eventually mailing a civil penalty notice in August 2014 ordering her to cease operating what they deemed to be a bed and breakfast.
While the woman says at one point she contemplated opening a bed and breakfast, she denied that her Airbnb rentals constitute such a venture and continued to rent rooms.
“She did not feel she should have to cease renting through Airbnb unless and until a judge told her she could not,” the hearing officer said in the decision. “She believed the city was wrong in its application of the Bed and Breakfast law to the Airbnb rentals and did not have the authority to stop her.”
The woman eventually stopped renting her room in November 2014 under the advice of her lawyer, while they tried to determine how city laws applied to her rental.
According to the San Diego Reader, the city does not currently have a specific code addressing short-term rentals, despite the fact it imposes a transient occupancy and other taxes on Airbnb rentals.
The $22,400 fine – of which the woman must only pay $15,000 as long as she ceases rentals and has no similar offense for two years – was calculated by charging $200 per day she failed to comply with the city’s order to cease and desist.
The woman’s attorney tells NBC San Diego they are evaluating their options.
“The issue in my client’s case is not whether you believe people should be allowed to rent their primary home (or rooms in their home) on a short-term basis in residential zones. That is a policy issue,” the lawyer says. “The issue in my case is whether the law the city used to go after my client actually makes her use illegal. The city collected transient occupancy tax from my client while at the same time hitting her with penalties for the very use the tax was for.”
Airbnb sent a letter [PDF] to the city on the woman’s behalf, noting that city leaders have in the past acknowledged code regarding home sharing are confusing and in need of clarification.
“Accordingly, we are calling for the City to stay the full amount of [the woman’s] fine and suspend enforcement efforts against other home sharers until the City Council completes its consideration of these code changes,” the letter states. “This is not an uncommon practice for the many cities who are currently navigating short-term rental reform.”
Car shopping is something that you don’t want to do in a hurry. Especially when shopping for a used car. Especially when buying a used car from a stranger on Craigslist. A couple in Texas learned this important life lesson when they bought what they thought was a nice, cheap, low-mileage van. Well… it was cheap, and it’s a van.
The family says that they didn’t pay attention to what normally would have been red flags telling them to run away, because the deal was so good. The seller flashed his license at them, instead of providing a copy of his information. He claimed to be in a hurry to get back to work, yet made an appointment to show them the car anyway. They told their local CBS station that they ignored these warning signs in pursuit of an awesome deal.
That didn’t work out so well for them. They handed over the cash for the van, and lights on the dashboard began lighting up after just ten minutes of driving. The brakes didn’t work, there was a problem with the alternator, and the fuel gauge didn’t move.
As you were probably anticipating, the car was not what it seemed. The car has a forged title, but at least the title was only forged to conceal information from the buyers, not because the vehicle was stolen. What the seller was concealing was that it had about twice as many miles on it than he claimed (odometers can be re-programmed, which may be what happened here) and that number had been adjusted on the title.
Now the van that seemed like a great deal is waiting for a large number of repairs. An honest seller won’t be mad at you for performing due diligence or trying to rush you, and watch out for deals that are too good to be true.
If someone steals nearly $200,000 from your business and you were able to track down the location of the thief, you’d hope the local police would be willing to arrest that criminal and help you get your stolen money back. But for one American business owner whose money had been illegally siphoned off by a Chinese company, it took payments of cigarettes and cash for the authorities to care.
KrebsOnSecurity.com has the wild story of an unnamed import/export company — we’ll refer to it as Vandelay Industries — that lost $197,000 after the Vandelay accountant’s computer was hijacked during an online session with their bank.
Though they could tell that the funds had been electronically transferred to a company in the Chinese city of Harbin, Vandelay couldn’t get their bank to care, since the company — and not the bank — had been victimized. Unlike consumers, who are protected by federal regulations that limit liability for fraudulent transactions, businesses don’t have the same safeguards.
Luckily, Mr. Vandelay knew a lawyer based in China who was willing to lend a hand. At first, the police demanded an FBI incident report on the crime before they would do anything, but the lawyer was ultimately able to convince them to accept just a local police report.
How? With the help of a gift-wrapped carton of cigarettes and a pledge to pay the officers a portion of the money if they could recover it.
That incentive got things moving, and after only two days, the police have located the company that had received the wire transfer. But in order to actually get to the bottom of things and get that money back, it would require paying for the two officers to fly to Beijing. Vandelay agreed, wiring $1,500 for the tickets while the police froze the account of the company that got the stolen money.
Vandelay then sent a colleague who knows the lawyer in China to meet with the attorney and the officers in Harbin. She opened a new account at a bank in Harbin, then paid the officers the agreed-to percentage for recovering the money.
In the end, Vandelay got back $166,000 of its stolen money, but there was one final roadblock. Since Vandelay didn’t have a business in the region, it couldn’t wire so much money directly back to its account back in the U.S.
But being in the import/export business, Vandelay made a deal with a company they know that does have a business presence in China. That company agreed to receive the recovered funds then pass it on back into the rightful hands of Vandelay Industries, and without taking a piece.
Comcast’s complaint to NAD took exception to several DirecTV commercials featuring Rob Lowe and his alter-ego including “scrawny arms Rob Lowe.” A review panel upheld recommendations that the company stop airing the spots.
A five member review panel for the National Advertising Division (NAD), which is part of the national Council of Better Business Bureaus and a self-regulation body for the advertising industry, reviewed the original recommendations as part of an appeal bid by DirecTV, upholding several of the findings.
Recommendations from NAD aren’t legally binding, but most companies generally follow them. DirecTV announced soon after the original finding that it would appeal the decision.
Now, the appeal process has confirmed the April decision determining that DirecTV’s claims with respect to signal reliability, service wait times, picture/sound quality, and sports programming featured in the “Creepy,” “Painfully Awkward,” “Far Less Attractive,” “Meathead,” and “Scrawny Arms” are not substantiated.
“Because DirecTV did not submit any substantiation for these implied superiority claims, the panel recommended that they be discontinued,” the decision states.
NAD’s original findings came after it investigated Comcast’s complaints regarding the truthfulness of DirecTV’s signal reliability, picture quality, Dolby sound quality, customer satisfaction ranking, ranking in sports broadcasting and even a line uttered by one of Rob Lowe’s alter-egos: “Don’t be like this me. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV.”
The panel announced on Friday that it agreed with several of NAD’s recommendations, including that the company modify the picture quality claim to clearly disclose the limited programming on which resolutions of 1080p is currently available and that DirecTV discontinue the use of the tagline “Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV.”
While the review resulted in the backing many of the NAD’s findings, the appeal panel did not agree that “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe” commercial reasonably implied all sports programming was available in the service’s $19.99/month introductory bundle.
As for DirecTV’s ranking claims, the panel upheld NAD’s finding that the company’s assertion that it “rated #1” were appropriately substantiated. However, the group did recommend that it company more prominently disclose the source information.
Although the outcome of the review continues to call for the discontinuation of the Rob Lowe commercials, the panel admits the ads were funny.
“The challenged Rob Lowe commercials are very funny,” the panel says in its decision. “However, depending on context, even humorous advertisements can convey messages that require substantiation by the advertiser.”
In a statement to NAD, DirecTV says that while it appreciates the “thoughtful consideration” of the ads, it “continues to believe that consumers do not perceive comparative superiority claims in the Rob Lowe advertisements. Whether from news accounts or social media, it is clear that consumers appreciate and understand the central role that humor and exaggeration play in the Rob Lowe advertisements.”
“DirecTV is a strong believer in the self-regulatory process and will take the NARB’s recommendations into consideration when making these claims in the future,” the company says.
Still, it doesn’t appear DirecTV – which stopped airing the Rob Lowe ads in the spring – is willing to ditch the alter-ego concept all together.
Just last month the company began releasing a new round of similar ads featuring New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and his troupe of alter-egos.
Manning is accompanied in his spot with “Bad Comedian Eli Manning,” while Romo showcases “Arts & Craftsy Tony Romo.”
Comcast didn’t just sink $200 million into Vox Media (and a reportedly similar amount into BuzzFeed) just because it wants to support some websites it likes. The cable/broadcast giant is reportedly looking to launch an online video platform that would include new original content from these sites and other popular sources.
This is according to Business Insider, which reports that the platform is currently dubbed “Watchable,” which is not exactly a rousing endorsement of quality.
“Hey Jim, what’s that video you’re looking at?”
“It’s Watchable.”
“Oh.” (awkward silence)
BI’s sources say that Comcast is teaming up with new partner Vox (and purported partner BuzzFeed), along with other sites like Mic, Vice, The Onion (which recently launched “Edge,” a hilarious takedown of Vice’s macho-hipster you-are-there video reports), AwesomenessTV, and Refinery29.
Comcast also has an established staple of online news, sports, and entertainment content from its various NBCUniversal properties.
The partners would sign multi-year deals that would have them uploading all of their video content to Watchable, which would launch on Comcast’s X1 platform, then become available to a wider audience on mobile devices. BI reports that these deals are nonexclusive, so content publishers aren’t limited as to where they can post their videos.
And again, this isn’t just about putting together content you might enjoy. There’s money to be made from advertising. Comcast can help put these videos before a larger audience, resulting in more ad revenue for it and the content partners.
“Comcast is currently the largest seller of video ads in the United States,” one source explains to BI. “As platforms shift to digital, Comcast doesn’t want to lose market share, but they’re losing it to YouTube and Facebook.”
We’ve reached out to Comcast for comment on the BI report and will update if we get a comment from the company.
“We got a lot of crazy phone calls and crazy emails from people who loved the throwed rolls and they are pretty upset about the lawsuit,” says attorney John Meehan of St. Louis, who is not Bill Meehan, also of St. Louis, who is representing the 67-year-old pastor. John Meehan works for his father. J. Justin Meehan, and they call themselves “Meehan Law LLC.” Adding to the confusion, the father-and-son Meehans do handle personal injury cases, so it’s easy to see where an annoyed roll fan could go wrong here.
“However,” they say in an announcement on their website, “we are actually huge supporters of that restaurant, and have stopped there regularly on the way to visit relatives down south.”
She claims that a roll hit her in the eye and caused a scratched cornea and loosened retina, and that she has continuing pain and blurriness in her eye.
Videos of the roll-throwing in action show how this could have gone wrong: they aren’t a 100 MPH fastball, but those rolls are going pretty fast when thrown overhand.
The owner of a Chick-Fil-A franchise in Austin, Texas needed to expand his restaurant, which required closing it for a few months. Instead of letting his workers go and wishing them luck finding work elsewhere, he decided to just keep paying them for the four months that the restaurant was under renovation. Wait, really?
