uAtlantic City Files Lawsuit Over Loan Program That Promised Relief For Struggling Residents, Businessesr

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  (shonuff444)

  Back in 2013, Atlantic City launched a loan program aimed at providing up to $40 million in financial relief to the city’s struggling homeowners and businesses. But after nearly two years and an investment of $3 million, the people of AC have received little help, leading the city to file a lawsuit against the company hired to administer the program.

  The Associated Press reports that Atlantic City is suing ZeMurray Street Capital to recoup the $3 million it gave the company to run the Community Loan Program.

  Atlantic City alleges in the lawsuit that the company and operator W. Wesley Drummon misrepresented themselves, failed to deliver the promised services and failed to return the invested money when requested.

  The loan program, which was launched by then mayor Lorenzo Langford, was meant to help get the residents and businesses back on their feet during the city’s ongoing economic downfall driven by its floundering casino industry.

  At the time the agreement was signed in 2013, ZeMurray claimed it had the “experience and expertise necessary to establish and administer” the program.

  Funds from the program were meant to be lent by ZeMurray through the Tennessee Business and Industrial Development Corp. But according to the city’s lawsuit, that never happened.

  Instead ZeMurray Street Capital allegedly used most of the funds provided by the city to purchase a finance firm in Tennessee, the AP reports.

  To make matters worse, according to the suit, the purchase of TN Bidco was assisted by two brothers of an aide to Atlantic City mayor Langford.

  The purchase was delayed by Tennessee regulators, and as of May 2014, has still not received a final approval, meaning the company was unable to make loans outside of Tennessee.

  Since then, the company has had management of more than $6.6 million in government-backed loans taken away by the Small Business Association, the AP reports.

  A lawyer for the company denies the allegations leveled in the lawsuit, saying the city’s lawyers reviewed the loan program agreement.

  Both parties are due in federal court on Friday, the AP reports.

  Atlantic City sues over failed community loan program [The Associated Press]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uThis Former Pizza Hut Is Now The Liquor Hutr

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• Pizza Huts are distinctive buildings. They’re so distinctive that there’s really nothing else like a Pizza Hut in the chain restaurant landscape. They have steep mansard roofs, brick exterior walls, and trapezoidal windows, and it takes significant renovation for them to not look like Pizza Huts anymore. That’s why we appreciate when new occupants surrender to their destiny and just call their new venture a “Hut.”

  For example, there’s The Liquor Hut in Blackwood, New Jersey, which we learned about from the amazing site Used To Be a Pizza Hut. While that site uses the store’s existence as an opportunity to bash New Jersey, we’d like to point out that the real lesson here is about embracing the inevitable. Your store was, and will always be recognizable as, a Pizza Hut. Embrace that. Make the most obvious thing about the exterior of the store something that also makes it instantly recognizable from the road and serves as a marketing hook.

  This doesn’t work for all businesses, of course. While I would definitely choose to make my final arrangements at a Funeral Hut, if a funeral home in a former Pizza Hut decided to use that name, most people probably wouldn’t.

  It’s disappointing, though, that there is more than one Christian church in a former Pizza Hut, and neither of them is called Jesus Hut. This is a lost opportunity, and deeply disappointing.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uCustomer Grateful For D.C. Restaurant’s Gumbo Leaves $2,000 Tip On $93 Billr

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• It’s always nice to be appreciated for your hard work in any form, but when someone goes out of their way with a hefty chunk of change, you better believe it makes people excited. Thus was the case with a regular customer at a D.C. restaurant who loved his gumbo so much, he tipped $2,000 on a $93 lunch bill.

  Not only did he leave the massive tip unexpectedly, he outlined who at the restaurant should get what — $1,000 for the chef and $500 each for the server and owner of the restaurant, reports the Washington Post.

  The man lives nearby and comes to the bar a few times a month, the owner told the paper, and has taken a liking to the restaurant’s gumbo. He has emailed with the chef and the owner in the past over food pairings and beer selection. The chef had recently emailed with the regular, asking him to tell him when he was coming in the next time so he could make the gumbo he liked.

  With a date set up for Monday for the gumbo, the customer and his friend dined on gumbo, fried chicken, sides and beer, and even got two quarts of the stuff on the house as a “thank you.”

  It wasn’t until after the bartnder was cleaning up that she noticed the receipt had a huge tip tacked on to the $93 total, with a note reading “Thank you for the Gumbo!”

  “I was in utter shock,” she said. “I was completely speechless. I had to do a double take.”

  She showed her boss the receipt, and he was surprised as well, sending a thank-you email to the patron the next day.

  “This is the kind of stuff you see in the restaurant business that happens to some guy in the Midwest or the West Coast,” he said. “You think, who are these people who give these extraordinarily generous tips that just made a server or bartender’s day? And then sure enough, it happened to us.”

  As for the anonymous customer, he told the owner he’s happy with what the restaurant has built and that he’s proud to be a customer. Two thousand dollars worth of happy, it seems.

  After gumbo and beer, customer leaves a $2,000 tip at a D.C. restaurant [Washington Post]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uSprint CEO: Unlimited Data Works For Now But “Is Not Forever”r

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• 

  (Misfit Photographer)
  

  
  The era of unlimited mobile data has been in rapid decline over the past few years. It turns out that consumers really like using mobile broadband and that wireless companies really like making money, and when the two go hand in hand the whole “unlimited” thing doesn’t really work out in business’s favor as much as “charge for data” does. Sprint has been trying to attract new customers by fighting against that tide, but even the top exec of the company now says that’s ultimately likely to be a losing battle.

  That’s what Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure told audiences at the Code conference this week in California. Sprint, which is the country’s fourth-largest wireless provider behind T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, started pushing new unlimited data plans as recently as last August — but they’re not going to be able to last forever.

  The main reason Sprint has to work so hard to bring new customers on board these days is because, bluntly, their network is terrible. The data speeds are slow and unreliable, and so using a significant amount of data at will, as subscribers are generally accustomed to being able to do with AT&T or Verizon, is just not going to happen. And Claure acknowledged that reality.

  “That’s fair,” he told the Re/Code moderator who said, basically, that Sprint’s network sucks. “I’ve been in this job for eight months and when I came, you were right, our network was absolutely drop-dead last.” But, Claure continued, serious upgrades are coming: “You can expect in the next 18 to 24 months, hopefully inviting me here two years from now, that our network will be ranked number one or number two.”

  But upgrades take money, and change the equation.

  “Unlimited is not forever. Let’s be very clear,” Claure said. “The better content, the better services, they’re going to consume more data.”

  “For now,” he continued, “unlimited works very well. User consumption is below our cost of producing data. But in the future, we might increase the cost of unlimited or we might eliminate unlimited at one point in time. Today, our customers have a choice. … Obviously, if we’re going to build a great network, in which you’re going to have great video from all the different partners that we have, the unlimited equation doesn’t work. But for now, it works very well.”

  Sprint CEO: Unlimited Data Is Great but It May Not Be Here to Stay (Video) [Re/Code]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uNYC Officials Set On Rooting Out Errant Food Vendors Who Don’t Post Pricesr

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  (KitanaOR)

  It started with one vendor accused of selling $30 hot dogs to unwitting tourists, but now New York City officials want to make it clear that food carts must have their prices listed for customers to see if they don’t want the long arm of the law to come knocking.

  The Department of Consumer Affairs has embarked on a “crackdown” on street vendors who aren’t displaying their prices, reports the New York Post, focusing its efforts on where tourists and visitors are commonly found.

  “We are cracking down on vendors not posting prices — especially in key business and tourist corridors throughout the city,” Consumer Affairs Commissioner Julie Menin said. “We take consumer protection very seriously in New York City, and we want to make sure no visitor to our great city and no New Yorker is taken advantage of by ­unscrupulous vendors.”

  The agency’s inspectors have been told to pay special attention to vendors who either hide how much their items costs or just make them up on the spot.

  Along with the now infamous hot dog vendor caught on tape in downtown Manhattan, the NYP says it also spotted about a dozen vendors breaking the law around City Hall — in other words, right near the area where laws are made against such shady dealings.

  The paper says one vendor tried to sell a reporter a hot dog for $7, changing the price for the jumbo wiener to $8 an hour later. When asked to see his prices, he pulled out a sheet of paper with hot dogs listed at $4, and said the extra money was added on for sauerkraut no one asked for.

  Consumer Affairs officials say there have been 20 complaints about food vendor ripoffs since 2014. Anyone who encounters a cart without prices listed or is charged more than the posted price can submit a complaint to the agency online at nyc.gov/consumer or call 311 in NYC.

  NYC declares war on free-market hot dogs [New York Post]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uData Breaches Now Cost Companies An Average Of $3.8Mr

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• 

  (Mr Seb)

  The aftermath of a now all-too-common data breach can be frustrating for consumers: canceling credit cards, monitoring credit reports for irregularities, and working with banks to recoup unauthorized purchases. But the hacks can also be expensive for the targeted company, with the average cost now sitting at a 10-year high of $3.8 million.

  That figure is courtesy of a new study [PDF] “Cost of a Data Breach” conducted by data-security research organization Ponemon Institute, which looked at data breaches at 350 companies in 11 countries.

  According to the study, the past 12 months – punctuated with several high-profile breaches from JPMorgan Chase, Sony, and Anthem Insurance, just to name a few – saw a significant increase in the financial responsibility incurred by companies suffering hacks.

  The new average cost in 2105 of $3.8 million represents a jump of 8% when compared to $3.52 million in 2014 and a 23% increase over 2013 figures.

  The study ties organizations’ higher expenses to several factors including the fact that cyber attacks are simply more common, customers aren’t returning to the company after a breach and the increased cost of fixing the cause of the attack.

  Although the average price of investigating and fixing a breach increased from $760,000 to $990,000, the most costly part of a breach is loss of business. In fact, lost business constituted nearly 40% of the costs related to a data breach in 2015.

  According to the study, data breaches cost organizations an average of $1.57 million in lost business, an increase from $1.23 million lost in 2013.

  As the overall expense of a data breach has increased for companies, so has the average price of a compromised record.

  The average paid for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information increased from $145 in 2014 to $154 in this year’s study.

  While all types of companies saw an increase in the cost related to breaches, different industries were affected more than others.

  For example, if a healthcare organization has a breach the average cost could be as high as $363 per stolen record, while breaches in the transportation industry run about $121 per record.

  The education industry has an average cost per record of $300, and average price for a record in the public sector is $68.

  [H/T Credit.com]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uSeattle Couple Realizes After Three Months They’ve Got A $1M Powerball Ticketr

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  (Lisa Brewster)

  You know how they say, “You can’t win if you don’t play?” That’s true, but you also can’t really win unless you remember to check your ticket. That was the case for a Seattle couple who bought a Powerball ticket, left it in the car for months and then decided to check it after all. Turns out they’d won $1 million.

  Officials with the Washington Lottery say the Powerball ticket sat in the couple’s car for three months — including during a break-in where a thief stole a pair of sunglasses sitting on top of the ticket, but left the winning paper behind — before they thought to check if they’d won anything.

  They’d already lost out on the $350 million jackpot drawing in February, but hadn’t explored other possibilities.

  “We didn’t even think about a second chance prize,” the couple told the Washington Lottery, saying the ticket could’ve been lost entirely.

  They just recently checked the ticket online and realized they were winners after all. The store where they bought the ticket will win too — a $10,000 selling bonus.

  The couple now plans on planning trips to Paris and Iceland, as well as taking care of their house. Everyone else is planning on double-checking all old tickets stuffed in odd places around the house/in wallets/under the car seat.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist