uFive People Injured During Unexpected Turbulence On American Airlines Flightr

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  Five passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from the Caribbean island of Grenada to Miami were taken to a local hospital for minor injuries on Thursday, after experiencing some unexpectedly rough air along the way.

  American Flight 982 left Maurice Bishop International Airport in Grenada yesterday morning and landed in Miami with 74 passengers and a five-member crew, with five of those passengers heading to the hospital shortly after, reports the Miami Herald.

  The bumpy air seems to have come upon the plane somewhat unexpectedly, as American said in a statement that the plane “encountered turbulence during flight. The seatbelt sign was illuminated at the time and the pilots did not have any indication of severe turbulence in the area.”

  After hitting that rough patch, American said the Airbus A319 “landed without further incident.”

  And though everyone is probably looking to blame Hurricane Joaquin, which is currently heading for the East Coast, American noted that the turbulence was not related to the storm system, reports CNN: the turbulence hit about 80 miles south-southwest of of Nassau, Bahamas, at 36,000 feet, while Hurricane Joaquin was located 230 miles east-southeast of Nassau.

  5 airline passengers injured by turbulence on Grenada to Miami flight [Miami Herald]
  Five airline passengers injured during turbulence [CNN]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uConsumerist Friday Flickr Findsr

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• Here are six of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uT-Mobile, Experian Data Breach Exposes Personal Info For 15M Consumersr

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• Some bad news to start off October — hackers stole personal information for around 15 million consumers from a database of T-Mobile customers and applicants that was held by Experian.

  According to Experian, the breach revealed the following information about affected consumers: name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, identification number (i.e., driver’s license, military ID, or passport number) and any additional information used in T- Mobile’s credit assessment process. The company says that no payment card or bank account info was included in the theft.

  The compromised data comes from anyone who applied for a T-Mobile account after Sept. 1, 2013 and before Sept. 16, 2015.

  The law requires that creditors maintain records of all credit applicants for 25 months in case it’s needed to answer questions or resolve disputes. Because of this requirement, the hackers were able to access all that historical info.

  Even though it didn’t include credit card or bank account info, a clever ID thief can do a lot with the stolen information. So far, Experian says it has seen no evidence that the data has been used, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be sold to scammy buyers eventually.

  Anyone who applied for a new contract or financed a phone through T-Mobile in the last two years should keep a vigilant eye on their bank and card accounts. Alert your bank and card issuer if you see anything out of the ordinary.

  Additionally, Experian is asking anyone who might be affected to go to http://ift.tt/1PQUic9 if they want to register for two years of free credit monitoring.

  Customers can also call 866-369-0422 or send an e-mail to consumersupport@protectmyid.com if they have questions.

  T-Mobile is putting blame for the breach squarely on the shoulders of Experian.

  “Obviously I am incredibly angry about this data breach and we will institute a thorough review of our relationship with Experian,” reads a letter from T-Mo CEO John Legere to his customers, “but right now my top concern and first focus is assisting any and all consumers affected. I take our customer and prospective customer privacy VERY seriously. This is no small issue for us. I do want to assure our customers that neither T-Mobile’s systems nor network were part of this intrusion and this did not involve any payment card numbers or bank account information.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uStaples Kicks Off Brown Thursday Announcements: Will Close On Thanksgivingr

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  Over the last few years, a growing trend for retailers has been to open up on Thanksgiving Day, sometimes at an obscenely early hour. Maybe that isn’t working out so well for them after all: one retailer that has opened on Gray Thursday for the last few years has decided to close up and let its workers spend the holiday at home.

  In a press release touting its online deals that will start on Thursday, the chain announced that the deals will only be online, and the stores will stay closed. ”

  “On Thanksgiving Day, customers can shop from home on Staples.com and then continue their shopping in stores starting at 6 a.m. on Black Friday,” the company’s president of North American stores and online shopping, Demos Parneros, said in a statement.

  When it has opened on Thanksgiving Day, Staples has at least limited its hours, opening at 9 P.M. in 2013 and 6 P.M. to 10 P.M. in 2014.

  Companies choosing to stay closed on the holiday harvest at least some online goodwill and good publicity, which may or may not be worth the loss in sales. Black Friday weekend sales are actually falling, so maybe other retailers will take the hint too.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uOnly A Few Banks Are Making Their Credit Card Customers Memorize PINsr

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  One compromise that financial institutions have made in the national shift to EMV smart cards from magnetic-stripe cards is that Americans will sign for their purchases instead of entering a 4-digit PIN. Maybe banks think that we’re stupider than the rest of the world, since other countries do use PINs.

  Some banks have faith in Americans, though. Not many, but some. One example is First Niagara, a regional bank in upstate New York: they took over many of HSBC’s consumer branches when HSBC decided to quit the consumer banking market.

  They don’t have very many credit card customers: only about 250,000 cards, which is tiny compared to the Bank of Americas and Capital Ones of the world. However, First Niagara has faith in their customers. They’re the largest bank requiring their credit card customers to use PINs instead of signatures for transactions.

  A few smaller banks are using PINs, including First Premier, a bank catering to less creditworthy consumers that has some notoriously terrible cards. Target also plans to require customers to use PINs once they get around to re-issuing EMV cards for their store cards.

  Here’s the catch: customers won’t be allowed to use the same PIN on both their credit and debit cards. Will they be able to remember four extra digits? I have faith in the American people. Maybe.

  Bank Bets Americans Can Remember Another PIN [Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

u$80 iPad For Sale In Supermarket Parking Lot Was Actually A Tiler

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  There’s one important rule that can save you from a number of scams: when a stranger walks up to you in a parking lot and offers to sell you something, say no. Always say no. If a woman in California had obeyed this rule, she’d still have $80 in her pocket and no pieces of tile masquerading as iPads.

  She told her story to local news hoping to warn others away from the same scam. She says that a well-dressed man driving an SUV came up to her in a Winco grocery store parking lot and offered to sell her an iPad mini 3 for $200, which is $150 below the starting list price for that model. She haggled the price down to $80, and probably felt like she was getting a great deal.

  Well, until she opened up the box and found a bubble-wrapped piece of tile in place of an iPad. She decided to speak out to local media, even though she felt stupid, because the man’s vehicle was packed with other electronics. “He had TV, other iPads and Xbox Ones and also phone boxes,” she told Victor Valley News. That’s a lot of potential victims. Be careful out there, everyone, and stay away from the Some Dude In A Parking Lot electronics store.

  Woman Buys Fake Ipad Outside Winco in Victorville [Victor Valley News]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uColleges Paying Sketchy Agents To Recruit Rich Foreign Studentsr

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  With schools looking for ways to bolster their bottom lines without having to rely on federal funding, a growing number of colleges are paying recruiters to bring in well-heeled students from overseas — even though some of these agents have been caught trying to fake applicants’ transcripts.

  It’s illegal for colleges to pay per-student commissions for recruiting agents if those students get federal financial aid. But this sort of arrangement is perfectly legal if an agent is rewarded for attracting foreign students who aren’t eligible for that aid.

  The Wall Street Journal reports that an estimated 1-in-4 colleges now pay independent overseas recruiters to identify and woo applicants.

  Wichita State University in Kansas pays up to $1,600 per enrolled student to these agents. As a result, it has seen foreign student applications shoot up “precipitously” since 2013.

  And while it might make sense both financially for schools to target international students who often pay higher tuition, critics say the independent recruiting system is rife with fraud and other problems.

  Wichita State acknowledges that it had to cut ties with an agent it suspected of faking transcripts. The school rejected those applicants but continues to use agents.

  Dickinson State University in North Dakota stopped using agents after it was sanctioned by its accrediting body. An audit of the school found that agent-recruited students weren’t fulfilling graduation requirements.

  It’s not just schools that are hiring agents. A large number of students in China looking to attend U.S. schools also hire these same recruiters. That means the agents may be getting paid twice for doing one job.

  A U.C. Berkeley student from China tells the Journal that his family paid around $30,000 to have an agent redo his application essay. He says he was told that “no one knows about the whole application process better than they do so I had no choice.”

  A student at NYU, the school with the highest percentage of international students in the U.S., admits to paying $26,000 to have her essay ghostwritten. The story told in her essay — about her father reforming his life after being dragged out of a gambling den — didn’t actually happen to her.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist