General Mills did the predictable thing today and, after refusing to answer questions from The New York Times, wrote a blog post criticizing the paper for getting the Cheerios story wrong yesterday. Feel free to believe the firm — and every other corporation — which tries to say that forcing [Keep reading]
Pope Francis is saying and doing all the right things. He’s eating meals with prisoners. He’s washing the feet of the disabled and the elderly. He’s living in a humble apartment and has rejected Vatican comforts. Imagine if someone nailed him to a cross for it? Today is Good Friday, [Keep reading]
Cheerios, Betty Crocker and Pillsbury might sound like the most American of American brands, but it sure sounds like Betty and friends hate America. Perhaps you spotted a New York Times story today about consumers giving away their right to sue Big Brand companies if they do something as simple [Keep reading]
Smart phone theft is exploding nationally, but carriers this week promised to deploy a simple new technology that could soon render stolen phones useless. Consumer Reports said Thursday 3.1 million consumers had their smartphones lifted during 2013, double the number of victims in 2012, according to its annual State of [Keep reading]
If you are paying more than 20 percent of your income in federal taxes, you are doing it wrong. That’s roughly what the Obamas pay every year — hey, at least it’s more than Mitt Romney. As you should know by now, Obama pays a lower real tax rate than [Keep reading]
Americans would gain free access to their credit scores and new rights to challenge errors that keep scores low under a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. The “Stop Errors in Credit Use and Reporting (SECURE) Act” is sponsored by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The legislation [Keep reading]
Surprise! Spirit Airlines is the undisputed champion of airline passenger complaints. In fact, it’s quite literally in a different league than other airlines — so much so that graphic artists making a chart of complaints had to omit Spirit (see above). Surprise No. 2, he said sarcastically: Among all other [Keep reading]
Heartbleed is the latest guts-of-the-Internet calamity that you should know about, but can’t really do much about. In short, the very thing that was designed to keep Internet communications secure — part of the system that puts that little lock next to your web addresses on top of your browser [Keep reading]
Ever call a company for help and get faced with an aggressive and unwanted sale pitch instead? At least one company has finally been slapped on the wrist for that. Bank of America will have to refund $700 million to consumers to settled charges that it deceived customers through ad-on [Keep reading]
Nearly everyone I know is busy to the point of being frantic, but being busy isn’t only a matter of having a full schedule. Often, I feel like the weight of the things on your schedule matters even more. My biggest worry isn’t having a full schedule — I love [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan