uHoverboard Catches Fire At Texas Mall, Federal Safety Officials Record 12 Explosions In 17 Statesr

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• Even as the holidays wind down, so-called “hoverboards” continue to be a hot ticket at retailers and shopping malls around the country. One such busy mall happened to be in Texas where a self-balancing scooter caught fire, marking it just one of dozens of fires reported to federal safety officials in recent months. 

  KHOU reports [warning: link has video that autoplays] that smoke filled part of the Deerbrook Mall on Monday after a hoverboard caught fire at the kiosk selling the devices.

  Local police say that staff at the mall used a fire extinguisher to put out the small blaze before firefighters arrived.

  The mall was evacuated briefly, but no injuries were reported.

  “This afternoon there was an incident with a hoverboard that resulted in a small fire,” mall officials said in a statement. “As a precaution, Humble (Fire Department) was called in. The fire was quickly extinguished. The mall is open for business.”

  Unlike other hoverboard explosions that occurred while the device was plugged in to charge, KHOU reports that the scooter at Deerbrook Mall was still sitting in the box.

  “It just sounded like a small explosion sounded like a bomb honestly,” a woman shopping with a friend at the mall said.

  “It was nerve-wracking, I mean the emergency broadcast went off,” another shopper said. “You could see people who were in the opposite end who were running out, but they obviously thought it was something so serious they were holding their children.”

  The incident in Texas is just the latest in a string of issues for the popular self-balancing scooters.

  On Monday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced it had received at least 22 reports of fires in 17 states, as well as 70 ER-treated injuries.

  #hoverboards: 22 reports of fires in at least 17 states (report to us at https://t.co/qFWdMF6Xk0). 70 ER-treated injuries & counting #GearUp

  — U.S. CPSC (@USCPSC) December 28, 2015

  The agency expects to receive more reports via safer products.gov in coming days and weeks.

  CPSC chairman Elliot Kaye issued a statement on hoverboards shortly before the holidays, saying that investigators with the agency were working “non-stop” to find the root cause for the fire hazards linked to the devices. So far, they believe lithium batteries could be the source of issues.

  “The challenge is to move quickly but also thoroughly and carefully to find out why certain hoverboards caught fire,” Kaye said in a statement. “Every consumer who is riding a hoverboard, who purchased one to give as a gift during the holidays, or who is thinking about buying one deserves to know if there is a safety defect.”

  Safety concerns related to the gadgets began popping up last month when a Louisiana family says the not-actually-a-hoverboard caused a fire that burned down their home. A similar incident was reported in New Jersey on Monday.

  Shortly after that episode, retailers, including Amazon and Target, began pulling the self-balancing scooters until manufacturers could provide proof of safety standard requirements.

  Hoverboard fire leads to evacuation at Deerbrook Mall [KHOU]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uWe’re Pretty Jealous Of This Kid Eating Bacon For The Very First Timer

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• If there’s one thing in life I regret, it’s that I can’t remember the first time I ever ate bacon (or cheese, for that matter. Or pizza. Or Nutella). But through the glory of technology, there’s a whole new generation of kids who will easily be able to look back on their initial interactions with food, glorious food, because their parents are armed with camera phones to preserve the experience in thrilling detail.

  Presenting: a child who, we are to surmise, has never tasted the crispy, savory, wonderful experience of eating bacon, until his parents filmed him for about a minute, exulting in his newfound gustatory appreciation and rehearsing the name of his new beloved over and over.

  “BACON! BACON! BAAACON!” he screams triumphantly, head tilted back, eyes closed.

  At least he’ll be able to grow up and point out the exact moment he fell for bacon, while the rest of us just have to imagine it was a pretty great moment in our lives that we’ll never get back.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uTide Makes Powder Detergent Scoop Bigger For No Clear Reasonr

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• Reader N. has some laundry that’s pretty dirty. She has a toddler, who uses cloth diapers. Yet she’s never used more than one scoop of her preferred detergent, Tide powder. She was surprised recently to open up the box and find a bigger scoop inside the box. Who needs this much detergent? Is Procter & Gamble trying to get customers to overdose on suds?

  

  “I can’t imagine why someone would need the new scoop on the left, which suggests 5 levels and then some,” N. observes.

  We contacted Procter & Gamble, but they didn’t get back to us on this question. Our laundry enthusiast colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports keep an eye on these things, and have pointed out cases where confusing directions could lead customers to use too much detergent with Target’s store-brand detergent and even P&G’s own Ariel detergent. Procter & Gamble also makes Cheer brand detergent, which pulled a surprisingly similar super-scoop-sizing trick back in 2008.

  

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uReminder: You Might Not Want To Display Empty Christmas Present Boxes Prominently On The Curbr

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  There you are, happily and cozily ensconced in your house, playing your new PS4 (as long as it’s not a piece of wood) to your heart’s delight, warm with the Christmas spirit that brought you this shiny new toy. But if you want to keep your new pricy electronics and nice clothing, it’s not a good idea to tip off any would-be thieves of what’s hiding in your home by advertising it with empty boxes.

  Local police stations are busy warning residents this time of year not to broadcast their holiday hauls by leaving boxes out by the curb, plastered with shipping labels or branding that say exactly what they used to contain, or are so big a person might reasonably guess that a big ticket item was once nestled there.

  From Michigan to Missouri, Pennsylvania to Minnesota, law enforcement has been advising folks to be careful when they take out the trash and recycling.

  Cutting up boxes, folding them inside out so their labels and advertising don’t show, or making sure they’re concealed inside a recycling bin are all good ways to keep your Christmas quiet. It’s a long-term effort to keep your house safe, as well.

  “They drive up and down the alley after Christmas looking, and they take note of addresses,” one officer told CBS Minnesota. “Whether they’re going to come back in a day, come back in a week, or come back in three months, they know exactly what’s in the house now.”

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uAuto Parts Retailer Love Triangle Reaches $1B With Icahn Once Again Topping Bridgestone In Bid For Pep Boysr

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  The auto parts retailer love triangle continues to take new twists and turns as the year comes to an end, with Icahn Enterprises once again upping the ante – to the tune of $1 billion – in its bid to steal Pep Boys away from suitor Bridgestone. 

  The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Icahn Enterprises, the owner of Auto Plus, offered $18.50/share – or more than $1 billion – to bring Pep Boys into its fold.

  For it’s part, Pep Boys gave Bridgestone until Thursday to sweeten its previously agreed-to takeover bid.

  In October, Pep Boys agreed to the $835 million sale of 800 retail locations to Bridgestone, which operates 2,200 tire and car service centers in the U.S. Bridgestone currently operates retail locations under the Firestone Complete Auto Care, Tires Plus, Hibdon Tires Plus and Wheel Works brand banners.

  That deal got the bidding war moving, with Icahn offering to pay $837 million ($15.50/share) for Manny, Moe and Jack in early December.

  From there, Bridgestone upped its offer to $17 a share (about $950 million), a deal that Pep Boys also agreed to.

  Under that the deal, the Inquirer reports, if Pep Boys ultimately sells to a different company, it will be required to pay Bridgestone a $39.5 million break-up fee, so to speak.

  Icahn raises offer for Pep Boys; Bridgestone gets Thursday deadline [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uWhole Foods Will Pay $500,000 Settlement To NYC, Submit To Auditsr

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  For the last half of 2015, Whole Foods has been coping with the fallout from admitting that yes, its stores in New York City priced some items that were packaged and weighed in the store incorrectly. After paying an $800,000 settlement last year in California for pretty much the same thing, Whole Foods has will pay the penalty and submit to quarterly audits.

  Overcharges on individual packages of food ranged from 80¢ on a package of pecan panko to $14.84 on store-packaged coconut shrimp. At that rate, the grocer would need to sell 33,393 marked-up shrimp packages to cover the fine, but the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs says that incorrect weights showed up during inspections dating back to 2010.

  In addition to quarterly inspections by city officials, Reuters reports that Whole Foods stores in New York City will also have to train employees on how to correctly weigh store-packaged goods, including important steps like not charging customers for the weight of the container.

  Yes, you can expect some errors to happen when humans are involved in packaging food. However, DCA inspectors said that they checked 80 items in the chain’s eight stores in the city, and found that all of the items they checked had inaccurate weights and prices.

  Whole Foods, for its part, says that its employees didn’t deliberately get package weights wrong and overcharge customers, and that the DCA didn’t accuse them of doing so.

  Whole Foods shareholders and executives won’t be subsisting on whole-grain, sustainably sourced MSG-free ramen packets quite yet, though: damage to the company’s sales means that sales have increased less than they normally would, with sales up only 1.3% halfway through 2015.

  Whole Foods to pay $500,000 to resolve NY City overcharging probe [Reuters]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uBad Weather And High Package Volume Meant Late Deliveries For FedExr

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  Americans ordered what FedEx is calling an unprecedented amount of merchandise online this holiday season, especially at the last minute. They’re blaming that growing habit and weather problems for the delay of some packages, which resulted in some employees working as real-life Santas on Christmas Day to clear the backlog and make sure that as many packages as possible reached their destination by the holiday.

  FedEx foresaw bad weather conditions during Christmas week, and did put out warnings that this could happen. However, they didn’t realize quite how many packages would pass through their system in the pre-Christmas rush, and the company’s systems didn’t cope well with what it called “an unprecedented surge of last-minute e-commerce shipments.”

  Every year’s e-commerce volume is unprecedented, since the amount of shopping that people do online is only increasing. The combination of bad weather in much of the country and robust e-commerce sales among its clients meant that the company dispatched thousands of employees on Christmas and the following day, which was a Saturday.

  According to tracking firm ShipMatrix, about 80% of the packages in Mid-Atlantic states that would have passed through that region’s FedEx hub at Newark airport in New Jersey arrived at their destinations on time. UPS didn’t have similar issues, having vowed to never let anything like the Christmas Non-Delivery Fiasco of 2013 happen again.

  FedEx Cites ‘Unprecedented’ E-Commerce Surge in Christmas Delays [Bloomberg News]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist