uMcDonald’s Memo Says Android Pay Launching This Weekr

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  This memo posted on Reddit states that McDonald’s will start accepting the new Android Pay option on Aug. 26. (Photo: reddit/blackmartian)

  Though it hasn’t received the headlines that Apple Pay has, Google’s Android Pay mobile payment has been slated for a vague “later this year” launch. Recently leaked memos from McDonald’s now seem to indicate that the platform could go live as early as this week.

  This is according to Android Police, which posted a screengrab of a “Mobile Payment Update” note from a McDonald’s location. It states that Android Pay begins Aug. 26 and instructs employees that it will work the same way as Apple Pay works on their payment terminals.

  A second McDonald’s memo, posted to Reddit, echoes the Aug. 26 date.

  What calls the accuracy of this information into question is the mention in both notes that Samsung Pay will launch Aug. 21. It didn’t and isn’t slated to debut until September.

  Android Police believes the confusion can be attributed to confusion with the Aug. 21 debut of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ device. Also, as Mashable notes, Samsung Pay did launch last week in the company’s home country of South Korea.

  Android Pay is definitely in the offing, whether it’s this week or in the weeks to come. We’ll know soon enough whether the Aug. 26 date is real or not.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uRestaurant Says Offensive Comment On Customer’s Receipt Was A Joke Meant For Kitchen Staffr

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  (9News.com)

  A Mexican restaurant in Denver says an offensive message on a receipt was never meant to be seen by customers, and instead was just a form of smack talk between employees.

  A customer who had dinner with her husband at the restaurant on Friday night said she noticed something off below her order of carne asada on their receipt, reports 9News. It read “you f——g Mexicans,” she says.

  “I grabbed the check and I’m looking at it, and that’s the first thing that caught my eye, and I was like ‘whoa!’” she told the station.

  When the couple showed their waitress, they say she didn’t seem worried, saying, “oh, how funny.”

  The couple didn’t find it so funny, but paid their bill and left the restaurant. Later, the family posted a photo of the receipt on the restaurant’s Facebook page, and the woman returned on Saturday for an explanation and an apology.

  “I was a little bit offended as well,” the manager and co-owner told the station, adding that it shouldn’t have made it to the customers’ table. He said the waitress who wrote it intended it to be a joke for the cooks.

  “In the restaurant, you know, cooks and waiters always give each other smack and talk stuff,” he explained. “All our clients are Mexican. We’re Mexican, so it’s absurd that they believe people actually feel that way, but I understand why.”

  He says he and the staff apologized to the woman and refunded her meal.

  However, the customer says she will take her time going back to the restaurant.

  “It should never have been written on a receipt,” she said.

  Offensive message found on restaurant receipt [9News.com]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uTarget Must Pay $2.8M To Settle Claims Of Unfair Hiring Practicesr

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  (Ben Schumin)

  Target Corp. must pay $2.8 million to settle allegations that thousands of people lost out on a chance to be employed by the company because of certain discriminatory pre-employment assessments.

  The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced today that Target agreed to settle a hiring discrimination claim regarding employment assessments previously used by the retailer for exempt-level professional positions.

  According to the EEOC, three evaluations used by the company were not sufficiently job-related and disproportionately screened out applications for professional positions based on race and gender, constituting a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.

  One of the assessments used by the company, and performed by a psychologist, was found by the EEOC to be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Act prohibits employers from requiring that applicants undergo medical exams prior to being offered a job.

  The EEOC probe also found that Target committed record-keeping violations by failing to maintain records sufficient to assess the impact of its hiring procedures.

  During the EEOC’s investigation, Target discontinued use of the questionable assessments. The retailer has since made changes to its applicant tracking systems to ensure that the collection of data is sufficient to assess adverse impact, the Commission reports.

  The $2.8 million payment will be split between the thousands of people the EEOC claim were passed over for positions because of the unfair assessments.

  In addition to the payment, the EEOC says that Target has agreed to “retain an experienced outside consultant to provide a minimum of two hours of training at least once per year to all personnel responsible for the development and implementation of exempt assessments on the topics of record keeping, the ADA and pre-employment medical exams, and disparate impact in employment selection procedures.”

  [via The Associated Press]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uBargain-Hunting Youngsters Extend The Back-To-School Season Well Into Septemberr

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  (Jeff Dailey)

  Back in July, early research showed that families planned to spend slightly more on back-to-school shopping than last year. A different survey by the National Retail Federation shows that families plan to spend less on back-to-school shopping this year. In addition to starting the back-to-school season earlier, it seems that retailers are extending it for longer, realizing that youngsters have learned to bargain-hunt as well as their parents.

  “I think I buy on sale because my mom never buys something unless it’s on sale,” one 14-year-old told an Associated Press reporter. That makes sense: kids who are in school now have spent their whole lives or at least their formative years in either a recession or a post-recession economy, and have also learned how to shop in a retail environment where discounts are plentiful.

  A mere late-summer sales tax holiday isn’t enough to get kids of the Great Recession into stores: they want items to be, say, 40% off. That’s a problem for retailers, who are actually trying to wean us all off deep discounts.

  Teens are shopping more like their parents [AP]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uNew Mexico Group Claims To Have Cooked World’s Longest Tamaler

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  Not the world’s longest, but tamales nonetheless. (rvacapinta)

  Fans of oversized food, prepare to tell your stomachs to shut up: A group in New Mexico is claiming the world record for longest tamale after cooking 116 feet (and seven inches) of the steamed dish in a special device made especially for the occasion.

  The group had planned on the tamale being 120 feet long — with a local company making a special aluminum steamer of that same length to cook it — with 30 chefs using an estimated 120 pounds of masa and 50 pounds of chile. According to the Associated Press, Saturday’s 116-footer should still beat the current Guinness World Record of 66 feet, assembled in Cancun, Mexico in 2011.

  The tamale debuted during a three-day celebration of New Mexico heritage and culture, in the town of Belen. The founder of that event says his 12-year-old son came up with the idea of breaking the tamale record.

  In order to break the record, the group had to document everything, following a 29-page booklet of rules from Guinness.

  “We have to get it up to temperature, and it has to be up to code, so the state of New Mexico will come in and say, ‘Hey you’re good to go’ and then we’ll be breaking the record,’” the festival’s founder told KRQE before Saturday’s event.

  A representative from the ABQ West Chamber of Commerce says the group is preparing to submit all the documentation needed to verify their claim on the longest tamale ever assembled.

  New Mexico plans to cook up world’s longest tamale [KRQE]
  New Mexicans say they dished out world’s longest tamale [Associated Press]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uAshley Madison Offering $378,000 Reward For Info On Hackersr

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• While big companies have been known to offer “bounties” to white-hat hackers to test for weaknesses in their networks and websites to ensure they aren’t one day breached in a cyber attack, it’s too late for AshleyMadison.com, the dating site for cheaters. After the embarrassment of having its users’ private information made very public, the site is now dangling several hundred thousand dollars as a reward for information leading to the arrest of the group behind the massive hack. 

  The Toronto Police Department today announced that Avid Life Media – the parent company for the cheaters website – has ponied up half a million Canadian dollars (approx. $378,000 USD, based on today’s exchange rate) as a reward for assistance from the public to identify the people behind the massive breach and subsequent release of personal information, which included customer names and emails from Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman.

  [NOTE: Though some news outlets are reporting the reward as $500,000 in U.S. currency, Consumerist has confirmed with Avid Life that this figure is in Canadian dollars.]

  Authorities appealed to the hacking community during a news conference Tuesday morning, urging them to “do the right thing” by providing information about the group responsible.

  “This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world and is very unique on its own in that it exposed tens of millions of people’s personal information,” police officials said during a news conference Monday morning.

  Assistance welcome from public that can help ID hackers known as "The Impact Team" responsible for #AshleyMadisonHack is #AMcaseTPS ^sm

  — Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) August 24, 2015

  The Ashley Madison breach came to light back in July, when hackers posted a small sample of stolen data online. The company assured users that all data was secure just a day later.

  However, last week, the hackers released the personal information of about 30 million users. The next day, a second data dump occurred, followed by a third over the weekend.

  One of the motives behind the Ashley Madison attack is the site’s “Full Delete” feature, which charges users around $20 to fully scrub their information from the website. If users don’t pay for the deletion when they stop using the site, their info remains online but is hidden from search results. According to a leaked document, the company makes nearly $2 million a year from people wishing to be forgotten completely.

  Toronto Police ask anyone with knowledge of the hacker group to contact authorities.

  Ashley Madison Website Hack criminal investigation hotline for info is 416-808-2040. Hash tag #AMCaseTPS & twitter account @AMCaseTPS ^sm

  — Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) August 24, 2015

  Anonymous information about #AshleyMadisonHack can be submitted to Crime Stoppers 1-800-222-8477 http://t.co/s26uSiNpM8 #AMcaseTPS ^sm

  — Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) August 24, 2015

  Detectives also warned anyone trying to identify victims of the data breach that they are risking “malware, spyware, virus attacks on your devices.”

  [via The Associated Press]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uLawsuit Filed By Former Pizza Hut Delivery Drivers Claim Company’s Fees Cut Into Workers’ Tipsr

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  (Adam A. Koch)

  It’s not easy being a delivery person — you’re entrusted with getting hot food to its proper destination quickly, and then have face-to-face interactions with customers. The better you perform at your job, the more likely you are to get a nice tip for all that hard work and driving around. Two former pizza delivery drivers who worked for Pizza Hut are suing the company, claiming that their work wasn’t always rewarded as it should’ve been.

  The Associated Press cites a report from the Daily Gazette of Schenectady (which is behind a paywall), saying the lawsuit was filed in Albany federal court, and alleges that the pizza chain violates New York labor laws by pocketing mandatory delivery fees.

  The plaintiffs say many customers get the impression that the delivery fees are part of the gratuity and will be included in the workers’ tips, but instead, drivers don’t get any of that money.

  One of the plaintiffs was a delivery driver for a Pizza Hut in Schenectady from 2005 to 2012, while the other is a Syracuse resident. Their attorneys are seeking a class-action lawsuit that would consider all delivery drivers for the company.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist