The above messages are all fake; they all landed on my smartphone in the past couple of days. You’ve probably seen them, or texts just like them. If they feel relentless, that’s because they are. According to Robokiller.com, Americans received 19 billion fake texts in June. Just in June! That’s [Keep reading]
You roll over in the morning, and you impulsively reach for it. You walk away from your desk and dig into your pocket for it. You have a free second or two waiting for a bus….or waiting for a red light…and you grab it. When you can’t get at it, [Keep reading]
Imagine getting a flurry of emails and calls from angry people claiming you’ve stolen their money — by promising them a job that doesn’t exist. And you have no idea who they are, or why they are calling. Work-from-home scams aren’t new, but I’ve seen enough data points lately that [Keep reading]
It’s rockets and feathers. All over the economy. As economists and politicians keep wringing their hands about inflation, I sure wish they would read up on asymmetric price adjustment — a phenomenon dubbed “rockets and feathers” in this 2009 paper. Prices rise faster than they fall. Inflation always “sticks” longer [Keep reading]
The $15 minimum wage battle cry always rang hollow to me. I know, $15 sounds like a lot to people who grew up in the 1970s or 80s (the minimum wage was $3.35 when I got my first job. Come to think of it, this would be a fun first [Keep reading]
We all want tech to solve the world’s most vexing problems — and we’ve all spent time with tech that hasn’t lived up to its promises. The printer that lets us down as we’re rushing to a meeting. The concert ticket app that suddenly fails as we’re trying to get [Keep reading]
We’ve all had the maddening experience of being shuttled off to a mindless chatbot when we need real customer service help. Few things can raise your blood pressure like a nonsensical automated response designed as a stall tactic when you have a real crisis on your hands. I hope you [Keep reading]
This is the summer of the blockbuster concert, and why not: Music fans have years of pent-up Covid frustration that they are ready to release. Sold-out shows by megastars like Taylor Swift are the perfect venue to release all that energy. Unfortunately, all this pent-up demand has created the perfect [Keep reading]
Welcome to this scam roundup. I’m trying something new; a quick collection of scam stories that have come across my desk in the past week, along with follow ups on stories we’ve told at The Perfect Scam podcast, which I host for AARP. Seen a scam? Contact me here. I [Keep reading]
By my calculations … at the low end, she may have stolen 3% of the population of Montrose. Last week I introduced the story of Diana McBride, who had just begun a quest to discover the truth after her step-dad’s cremains went missing following his untimely death. When Diana’s mom, [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan