uLottery Scam Victims Send $300 Million To Jamaica Each Yearr

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  We’ve shared warnings about lottery scams before, but the industry of scammers hurts people beyond the victims and their families. In Jamaica, lottery scams are a massive industry that’s a serious concern for law enforcement. Their victims? Elderly Americans, who send along money to cover taxes or fees on the money they’ve won.

  Lottery scams in JamaicaLott have their roots in call-center offshoring in the late ’90s. Some large customer-service operations still have call centers in that country, but what the industry did was build a large population of adults who had been trained to build a rapport with callers from the U.S. and Canada.

  Criminally-minded call center alumni began to call illicitly-acquired numbers, telling the people on the other end that they had won the lottery, and only needed to send money to cover taxes and fees. You probably know the drill and how this scam works by now, but its victims don’t.

  One family who shared their story with CNN said that the scammers kept on calling even after their patriarch, an 81-year-old man with Alzheimer’s and dementia, and he kept sending them money.

  He shot himself one Sunday while his wife was at church, leaving a note telling his family that he hoped the $2 million would come soon and vindicate him. The calls kept coming even after he died, and his was not the only suicide linked to lottery scams from Jamaica.

  While Americans send $300 million every year to scammers in Jamaica, the country’s economy mostly depends on tourism. Violence between lottery scammers has killed people who aren’t involved in the industry, and it could seriously affect the tourism industry, destroying the country’s legitimate economy.

  Driven to death by phone scammers [CNN] (Warning: auto-play video)
  

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uMustard Shrink Ray Squezes Out An Ounce From Redesigned Bottler

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• Mary bought a new bottle of Heinz mustard, but noticed something when she got the bottle of the condiment home. The bottle had been redesigned, which masked a strike from the Grocery Shrink Ray. Even worse, she thinks that the flavor is now worse. Or does it just seem that way because the jar is smaller?

  

  Here are the two mustard containers: her old jar, the 9-ounce one, is on the right. The taller and more slender 8-ounce version is on the left. While it’s smaller, it seems larger than the old bottle. Funny how that works.

  Meanwhile, noticing her first Shrink Rayed product in person has changed how Mary sees the world. “I just noticed my Kraft mayonnaise is no longer in a 32oz. jar, it’s 30 ounces!” she writes. “How often do we really save empty containers to compare?” Not very often, and when we do, we often notice the redesign without noticing the difference. That’s what makes shrink rayage such an effective way for companies to avoid raising prices.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uIs Giving Up Your Right To Sue Fiat Chrysler Worth $200?r

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  Companies that don’t want their customers to sue have a special weapon: they slip mandatory arbitration agreements into new contracts and service agreements, requiring customers to opt out if they would prefer to retain their right to sue. Yet Fiat Chrysler is trying an interesting tactic: they’ll give you a $200 discount if you sign a piece of paper agreeing to arbitration.

  The problem with this agreement, as Michigan lemon law attorney Steve Lehto has discovered, is that dealers do not actually point out to their customers that they are signing away their right to sue the manufacturer. At least, that’s what the customers told Lehto when they had problems with their cars and wanted to sue.

  The relevant form says at the top that it’s for a “Friends and Family” program when the buyers didn’t know that they were taking part in any such program.

  Arbitration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, the arbitrator and process will be chosen by Fiat Chrysler. If you’re considering buying a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, or Fiat any time soon, keep this in mind and don’t sign it unless you have some kind of weird lawsuit aversion.

  Don’t Get Screwed By Chrysler For $200 [Jalopnik] (via Public Citizen)

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uConsumer, Privacy Groups Urge Federal Regulators To Investigate T-Mobile/Experian Hackr

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  A week after Experian revealed that hackers stole personal information for around 15 million consumers from a database of T-Mobile customers and applicants held by the credit reporting agency, a group of 25 consumer and privacy advocates are demanding that federal regulators open an investigation into the breach.
  

  In a letter [PDF] to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, and Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Edith Ramirez, the groups express their “grave concerns” raised by the “significant” hack.

  “We believe this breach, occurring at one of the nationwide CRAs (Consumer Reporting Agencies), takes this problem to a whole new and dangerous level given the extraordinarily large amounts of critical financial information they hold,” the group, which includes U.S. PIRG, Consumer Federation of America, the National Consumer Law Center and our colleagues from Consumers Union, wrote. “We urge the CFPB and FTC to devote their fullest resources to addressing this issue.”

  According to Experian, the breach included the name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, identification number (i.e., driver’s license, military ID, or passport number) and other information used in the credit assessment process for customers who applied for T-Mobile accounts after Sept. 1, 2013 and before Sept. 16, 2015.

  So far, Experian says it has seen no evidence that the compromised data has been used, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be sold to scammy buyers eventually.

  Additionally, the CRA maintains that the breached server belonged to an Experian “business completely separate from our credit bureau business.”

  Still, because Experian is counted among the three nationwide CRAs, the group fears that the information of the more than 200 million consumers in the agency’s credit report files could be at risk.

  “We believe that it is incumbent on the regulatory agencies to fully investigate this breach, including whether other Experian databases have been breached,” the letter states.

  The group requested that the CFPB and FTC answer several questions regarding the breach, including whether a breach of the data constituted a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and whether the CFPB has the authority to require the nationwide CRAs to provide free security freezes to affected consumers.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uNo, Security Won’t Believe You Need Free Passes To Comic Con So You Can Pursue A Fugitiver

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  We’re sure people working event security have basically heard it all — but there’s always going to be someone out there pushing the envelope to try to sneak in, anyway: officials in Utah said a man attempted to get into Comic Con in September for free, claiming there was a fugitive at the event he had to catch.

  The 29-year-old man was charged yesterday in federal court with two counts of impersonation of a federal officer, reports the Deseret News, for allegedly claiming he was a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

  The ruse was his attempt to get into the VIP area at the convention, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said. The jig was soon up, as a security worker at Comic Con realized something was off, and decided to call the Air Force to check his story out. Special agents from the office he claimed to be with then questioned him, and determined he wasn’t one of them.

  He’s also been charged making a false statement to a federal agent for allegedly telling investigators he had asked for one pass when he in fact had requested two. One for the fugitive? He’s facing three years in federal prison for each count of impersonating a federal officer and up to five years for lying to investigators. He could also have to pay up to $250,000 in fines per charge if he’s found guilty.

  Layton man charged with impersonating a federal officer to get into Salt Lake Comic Con [Deseret News]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uNo, Sears Does Not Owe You A $700 Play House For $12r

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• Shoppers noticed something amazing on Sears.com yesterday: kids’ accessories, toys, and play sets that cost hundreds of dollars were available on Sears.com for only $11.95 for no obvious reason. Parents, deal-hunters, and people who are both flocked to the website to fill up their carts with deeply discounted goodies. What happened next should be familiar to Consumerist readers: the amazing deal was a website glitch, and the orders were canceled.

  Following the standard pattern for these transactions, customers ran to complain to Sears about how their items from the “sale” had been cancelled. (Some of these complaints are a bit disingenuous.) The problem ultimately is that there was no “sale.” There was only ever an error on the part of a third-party merchant.

  

  Like other retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble, Sears is able to expand its online inventory without building new warehouses by listing items from other companies on their site. Sears gets a cut of the sale, the other seller gets visibility, and everyone wins! The only problem with this transaction is that when something goes wrong, it gets attributed to Sears.

  In this case, a third-party seller accidentally underpriced many of their items. Sears and that seller appear to have caught all of the errors: it’s possible that some will ship. Customers were promised $5 gift cards for their trouble.

  

  Now, as much as we like to mock Sears and demand that they do better around here, and as much as we understand the thrill of finding a great deal, here the upset customers are in the wrong. It happens with gift cards and with appliances, but retailers are under no obligation to sell you the item as long as the original error was an honest one.

  Sears website glitch: $500 playsets for $11 [WCPO]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uNetflix Adds $1 Per Month To “Standard” Plan For New Subscribersr

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• Three months after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company wasn’t planning to increase rates in the U.S. anytime soon, the company announced it was doing just that — by $1, at least for one plan.

  Variety reports that Netflix is raising the price of its most popular “standard” plan from $8.99/month to $9.99/month for new subscribers in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America.

  Current subscribers will continue to enjoy the $8.99/month cost for access to two HD streams concurrently for another 12 months before the increase kicks in on their bills.

  “To continue adding more TV shows and movies including many Netflix original titles, we are modestly raising the price for some new members in the U.S., Canada and Latin America,” a Netflix rep tells Variety.

  The company’s other “basic” and “premium” plans were not affected by the increase. The basic plan, which costs $7.99/month, includes standard definition video and only allows one stream at a time. The premium subscription, which costs $11.99/month, includes up to four simultaneous streams and the option of watching Ultra HD content.

  On an earnings call in July, Hastings said the company would continue to offer a reasonable starter price and allow users to slowly climb the pricing ladder.

  “We want to take it very slow,” said Hastings. “Things are going well. There’s no need to be disruptive… It’s really focused on going very steady, very slow, and over the next decade I think we’ll be able to have more and more content and add more value and then to be able to price that appropriately.”

  The standard plan increase comes just two months after the company implemented a 10% price increase to the standard plan for subscribers in Europe.

  The last increase to U.S. subscribers bills came in 2014, and was also $1.

  Netflix Hikes Price of Standard Streaming Plan to $10 per Month [Variety]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist