Q: When is the only time in life that you can’t wait to get older? A: When you’ve used up all your cell phone data for the month and can’t wait for a new month to arrive. I exceeded my monthly cell phone data last month, I believe for the [Keep reading]
DirecTV has wasted a lot of my time this week, and it tried to take a lot of my money, too. I’ll fill you in on the details below, but you already know the story. I canceled service. I was told my bill was paid. Months later I was hit [Keep reading]
Heather Young was nearly 30 and staring down $75,000 in student loan debt when she a made a choice. “I was paying almost $600 a month just in interest — $6,700 a year,” she said, and there wasn’t much she could do about that. “So I thought, ‘I can’t take [Keep reading]
New car loans continue to set all kinds of records — average monthly payments are now essentially $500 — and a long-feared subprime lending bubble has yet to show signs of popping. But suddenly slumping auto sales raise plenty of questions about the overall health of the car sales market. [Keep reading]
Whenever I get in a dispute with a customer service agent, I try to humanize the dialog. “Do you think this is fair?” I’ll ask. And if I can pierce the corporate-speak at all, I usually saying something like, “Look, you are I have way more in common than you and [Keep reading]
One of the saddest chapters of U.S. higher education closed on Monday, as ITT Technical Institute suddenly announced it was shutting down. ITT has been hit with numerous legal actions, and just last week it finally received what amounted to a death penalty from the Department of Education — which [Keep reading]
Young folks have found a new use for “gift” cards. They are buying them for themselves. A new report issued this week by analyst firm Mercator Advisory Group found a big jump in purchase of “retailer-specific” gift cards among millennials. “Nearly 3 in 5 young adult respondents indicated they bought [Keep reading]
Frustration among Starbucks workers who say their hours and pay have been slashed took an ugly turn this week as it spilled awkwardly onto forums at Reddit used by employees to “venti” about the coffee giant. You might recall this summer’s controversy, as workers complained that labor cutbacks left many scrambling for hours. Some baristas said shifts [Keep reading]
Across America, workers are sharing the most intimate details of their lives with employers through gadgets like Fitbits — all to save a little money on life or health insurance. It’s junk science meets Orwell meets Lenin. And we are going down a crazy, creepy path. “Take 10,000 steps and [Keep reading]
How persistent and brazen are phantom debt collectors? Last month, when I emailed a firm named Advance Cash Services asking for comment on collection harassment allegations, the firm replied by saying I owed them $935.76 for an unpaid payday loan. A few days later, I wrote about Susan Marquardt of Chicago, who [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan