uGeneral Mills Recalls 1.8M Boxes Of Cheerios, Because Gluten-Free Cereal Shouldn’t Include Wheatr

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  Just months after General Mills revamped its Cheerios brand, introducing several gluten-free varieties, the company has recalled 1.8 million boxes of supposedly gluten-free Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios because the breakfast food might contain wheat — an ingredient that is decidedly not free of gluten. 

  General Mills announced the recall Monday, saying that certain original and Honey Nut Cheerios boxes produced in July at a California plant and deemed gluten-free may contain an “undeclared allergen” – wheat – that could cause adverse health effects for those with gluten allergies.

  The company says “an isolated incident resulted in wheat flour being inadvertently introduced into the gluten-free oat flour system” at the facility.

  Affected boxes of original Cheerios were produced over a four-day period in July, while the affected Honey Nut Cheerios were produced over a 13-day period.

  Jim Murphy, senior vice president of General Mills’ cereal division, tells the Washington Post that the company is “embarrassed and truly sorry” for the issue.

  He says the incident that led to wheat being introduced into the gluten-free oat flour at the Lodi, CA, facility was “purely human error.”

  “We sincerely apologize to the gluten-free community and to anyone who may have been impacted,” he said.

  General Mills says it will remove the affected products from store shelves and warehouses to ensure consumers don’t buy the products.

  Boxes of original and Honey Nut Cheerios affected by the recall can be identified by the “BETTER IF USED BY” code dates and the code “LD” indicating it was produced at the Lodi, CA, facility.

  

  The recall announcement comes just eight months after General Mills said it would begin transitioning five varieties of Cheerios to gluten-free.

  The company says that original and Honey Nut Cheerios produced at other facilities are not affected by the recall. Additionally, the Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios and MultiGrain Cheerios varieties are not impacted.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uDraftKings, FanDuel Defend Themselves Against “Insider Trading” Allegationsr

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  If you’ve turned on a TV in the last month — and certainly if you’ve watched any live sports — you’ve no doubt been inundated with ads for both DraftKings and FanDuel, the two leading online fantasy sports leagues. But both companies are now having to publicly defend themselves as their industry deals with a scandal involving a DraftKings employee who made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a week gambling on FanDuel.

  Before the start of Week 3 in the NFL, a mid-level content manager at DraftKings released data about ownership levels of players in the site’s Millionaire Maker contest. This information, which shows how many people in the contest have put a certain NFL player on their fantasy team, could be incredibly important for someone looking for an edge over the thousands of other players involved in the contest, and it’s usually kept quiet until after the NFL games have started and fantasy lineups have been locked in.

  If that were the end of it, people would probably just chalk it up to a mistake and move on. But when folks learned that this same DraftKings employee made $350,000 that week over at the NFL Sunday Million competition on FanDuel, allegations began to surface that he must have used this data to cash in on the competing site.

  “It is absolutely akin to insider trading,” one sports and gambling lawyer tells the NY Times. “It gives that person a distinct edge in a contest.”

  DraftKings has denied that the employee used the information to place his bets on FanDuel.

  People also wanted to know why a DraftKings employee could be allowed to gamble on FanDuel or vice versa. The two companies did not have a policy preventing this sort of behavior until yesterday, when they both announced an end to the practice.

  “One really has to ask questions over at DraftKings what regulations they have in place and why an employee has access to so much information,” a sports business scholar at Baruch College, City University of New York, explains to the AP. “One thing I find grossly troubling about DraftKings is they spend so much time and money advertising and a lot less time in internal controls and operating in a risk averse manner.”

  In a joint statement, the two sites claim that they put integrity first.

  “Both companies have strong policies in place to ensure that employees do not misuse any information at their disposal and strictly limit access to company data to only those employees who require it to do their jobs,” reads the statement. “Employees with access to this data are rigorously monitored by internal fraud control teams, and we have no evidence that anyone has misused it.”

  In a burgeoning, unregulated industry that needs to win over customers, this scandal — even if the facts are what DraftKings claims them to be — may have done damage by souring users on the sites and drawing the eyes of critical legislators looking to clamp down on what some argue is not very different than going to the sports book at a casino.

  “I’m all for daily fantasy betting,” the head of U.S. operations for a sports gambling chain tells the AP. “I think it should be legal, I think it should be regulated, and I think it should be taxed. But nobody is in favor of unregulated internet gambling and that is exactly what daily fantasy sports is.”

  One gaming industry analyst explains to the Times that this attention “Certainly does not look good from an optics standpoint, and it strengthens the case for additional oversight and regulation.”

  Though both DraftKings and FanDuel have been around for a few years, the two companies each recently received large investments and made media partnerships with pro sports leagues and media networks that have raised their profiles and advertising budgets.

  According to the most recent report from iSpot.TV, four weeks into the NFL season FanDuel is still the third biggest spender on TV advertising, accounting for more than $14 million in commercials over the past seven days. That’s more than Ford, AT&T, Apple, or Chevy.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uPrinter Ink Sale At Staples Excludes Ink For Most Printersr

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• You can’t use this Staples coupon anymore, because it’s expired since reader Chris sent it to us. That probably doesn’t matter in the long run, because you can’t use the coupon on ink cartridges from HP or Epson. “I’m guessing HP and Epson account for 85% of all printers out there,” writes Chris. That seems high, but those are two major brands in the industry.

  Here’s the coupon that he received, as a mobile phone screen grab:

  

  As of 2013, the Digital Peripherals Solutions Consulting Service estimated that HP and Epson together had about 65% of the inkjet printer market. It’s a bit unfair to costumers to have an ink sale that excludes ink for almost two-thirds of the products on the market.

  HP and Epson probably have agreements with retailers that explicitly keep their products out of sales like this. Those agreements are sort of why people dislike the ink and toner industry so much to begin with.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uMiller Reportedly Turns Down $100B Takeover Offer From Anheuser-Buschr

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  With the deadline of Oct. 14 looming for Anheuser-Busch InBev to make a firm offer to acquire fellow beer biggie SABMiller, a new report says that the company’s early informal suggestion of “Hey, what do you guys think of $100 billion?” was turned away for being too low.

  This is according to Bloomberg, which reports that the move to merge the world’s two largest beer companies into an even bigger business hit a speedbump last week when Miller turned down a deal that would have valued London-based Miller at around £65 billion.

  Miller believes the company, which currently has a market cap of around £59 billion, is worth closer to £73 billion.

  The rejection isn’t the end for this boozy romance. The Belgian-Brazilian InBev is continuing to consider its position before making its official offer to Miller.

  If the merger were to happen, the combined companies would likely need to shed a number of their U.S. brands to appease antitrust regulators. A merged Miller/InBev would control around 70% of the American beer market, and 30% of the global market.

  The CEO of one major SABMiller stakeholder, South Africa’s state-owned Public Investment Corp., came out yesterday against the merger, saying “We may be creating some kind of a monopoly going forward which may have a serious impact on the global economy and beer market in general.”

  But while Public Investment is the fourth-largest investor in Miller, the two biggest shareholders — tobacco giant Altria and the Santo Domingo family of Colombia — control a total of more than 40% of the company. Many watchers believe that they will have the final say on whether to accept or reject InBev’s official offer.

  According to local regulations, InBev has until Oct. 14 to come up with a firm offer. However, Miller could ask for an extension on that deadline.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

u9 Things We Learned About HSN’s $2.5 Billion Per Year TV-Commerce Operationr

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  You might not think about HSN very much, but that’s because you aren’t part of their target demographic: women over 35 who enjoy shopping but want to choose from a curated collection of stuff, maybe designed or at least endorsed by a familiar celebrity. If that doesn’t sound like a large portion of the population, you’d be surprised: HSN takes in $2.5 billion per year.

  Racked sent a reporter to their studios in Florida to learn more.

  1. Yes, HSN really does take in $2.5 billion per year from shoppers watching at home, either over the phone or online.
  2. HSN knows a lot about you… if you’re a woman over 35 who likes to shop HSN. Their VP of marketing is really, really into their typical customer: “We love her. We talk about her all the time,” she said. “There’s not a minute of the day that goes by that we’re not thinking about her.” In a marketing context, that’s not creepy. Just intense.
  3. HSN uses wheelchairs to whisk on-air hosts quickly from one set to another. Crew members push them. Yes, the hosts can walk or even run, but if they did, they might get a hair out of place or be out of breath when they have to be back on the air within seconds.
  4. The real-time feedback is intense: on-air hosts can see monitors that show how well an item is selling, and they’re able to answer questions that customers ask when they call in immediately on the air.
  5. The only day the channel doesn’t run live is Christmas, when it plays pre-taped sales segments.
  6. HSN was an early version of the online flash sale: reality star and HSN fashion pitchwoman Guiliana Rancic says that she can sell 40,000 of one item in a day on HSN, which isn’t really how sales work elsewhere in the fashion industry.
  7. The idea of over-the-air shopping was born in 1977 when a Florida radio station received a box of can openers from a cash-poor advertiser, and sold them live on the air. It became a regular show, which spread to local public-access cable and then nationwide.
  8. About 43% of the company’s sales actually come in through the website, and those shoppers aren’t necessarily watching the channel live.
  9. Their website features arcade-style games for customers who feel at home with the brand but don’t want to go shopping right now.

  HSN and the Power of the TV Shopper [Racked]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uCVS Will Offer Glasses And Hearing Aids In Stores As Pilot Projectr

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  Would you like to be able to take care of even more of your health care during a visit to CVS? The drugstore chain announced today that it will experiment with adding two new services to its retail stores, piloting hearing aids in some stores and optical clinics in others. The clinics will have audiologists and optometrists on staff respectively.

  “By expanding our retail health offerings into vision and hearing services, we are providing customers a convenient, single destination on their path to better health,” Andrew Sussman, president of the in-store MinuteClinics, said in a statement, before going on about how CVS no longer sells cigarettes.

  The test markets for The Hearing Centers at CVS/Pharmacy, as they’re calling it, will be seven few stores near Dallas, TX and Cleveland, OH. They cite research showing that it takes people an average of seven years to come to terms with their hearing loss and seek help.

  If help is available six days a week right in the same store where they pick up their prescriptions, the logic goes, perhaps people would seek help for their hearing issues sooner.

  The eye clinic works on a similar principle, making prescription glasses and contacts available to people in a place that they may already visit at least once a month to pick up prescriptions. (Walmart, it’s worth noting, already offers both optical and hearing services in some of its stores.)

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uWhy Did Volkswagen Only Rig Emissions Systems On Diesel Cars?r

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  Volkswagen has admitted to rigging the emissions control systems on 11 million diesel cars over the last seven years, but those only represent a fraction of all the vehicles produced by VW during that time. Why did the carmaker only choose to tinker with its diesel vehicles instead of the larger number of gasoline cars? And how do we know VW didn’t mess with these vehicles?

  These are questions that Consumerist reader Dick has been wondering since the VW emissions scandal first broke on Sept. 18.

  “In other words, we already know that they cheat,” he says. “Why do we seem to think they cheat only with their diesels?”

  First of all, the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency that took action against VW, says it isn’t excluding the possibility that unleaded vehicles could be skirting emission standards.

  “Computer controls on modern vehicles can be used for efficient, effective emission control – but they can also be used to only look like effective emission control,” the agency said in a statement to Consumerist. “This is true for both diesel and gas engines. EPA will be reviewing our compliance protocols in light of the VW case.”

  The agency, which previously announced it would overhaul emissions tests to catch defeat devices – software used to trick emissions tests as a way to evade standards for certain pollutants – says the new compliance processes will apply to both diesel and unleaded gas engines.

  So why has much of the focus surrounding the VW scandal been squarely placed on diesel engine cars?

  Jake Fisher, director of auto testing for our colleagues at Consumer Reports, hypothesizes that it could be the fact that diesel vehicles have generally created more pollutants than unleaded gas engines, and controlling those emissions can be costly for automakers.

  Historically, that’s often been the trade-off for buying a diesel vehicle: higher fuel efficiency but more pollutants.

  Diesel vehicles burn fuel more efficiently because their cycle produces less heat, meaning these vehicles often get better gas mileage, Fisher says.

  On average, diesel-fueled cars are 33% more fuel-efficient than gasoline when it comes to mileage, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

  But the on the flip side, Fisher says, these vehicles release more “nasty” pollutants, such as NOx (nitrogen oxides), into the air than their unleaded gasoline counterparts. In fact, the EPA found the affected VW diesel-engine vehicles produce 40-times the allowable EPA standard for NOx.

  “It’s more difficult to make diesel vehicles that meet emissions standards than it is for unleaded cars,” he says of aftermarket treatments needed to reduce pollutants. “Not only is it more difficult, but it’s more costly in terms of treatments. So there might be more incentive to defeat the system if you can build a [diesel] car at a lower cost.”

  Omitting a system that lowers NOx concentration in diesel exhaust could have saved nearly $300/car, Fisher theorizes, based on his knowledge of the VW case.

  Since every other manufacturer has put in that sort of system, he says it’s possible that the VW cars would not have passed emissions tests without defeat devices installed.

  Still, Fisher says that while it’s more plausible that diesel vehicles would have more use for a defeat device, it’s possible that some gasoline-powered vehicles contain similar emission-skirting software.

   

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist