More than a decade ago, I started writing a column on everyday consumer frustrations called The Red Tape Chronicles — my mailbag overflowed with rage. Piled high in my inbox every day were missives about mysterious late fees, overcharges, surprise interest rate hikes, and really all manner of sleazy, sneaky [Keep reading]
“Mother had gone to lunch that week with her friends and she said…I may need to move. These people are dying around me. I didn’t realize it was not a joke.” Dozens of older Americans were murdered — in the end, the victims might really number into the hundreds — [Keep reading]
America’s housing market is crazy, which makes most Americans crazy. Fixing it would require something like 4 million new homes to drop out of the sky tomorrow. Or perhaps 7 million. And even that wouldn’t really restore the U.S. social contract with the middle class. If you really want to [Keep reading]
We finally have some numbers on how much fraud is happening at Zelle. Four large banks — Truist, PNC, US Bank, and Bank of America — tell Congressional investigators that consumers report about one-quarter of a billion dollars in fraud and scams on Zelle annually. That doesn’t include data from [Keep reading]
From this week’s inbox: “My wife was a victim of a Bank of America and Zelle scam, we lost $6,800 and the bank told me that there’s nothing they can do. Is this true? It blows my mind that our money is gone just like that. Is there really nothing [Keep reading]
Is the long national inflation nightmare over? Well, that’s a $64 trillion question. Today brought news that the Consumer Price Index rate of increase was flat last month — the first pause in that measure of rising prices since 2020. Wall Street reacted to the news with predictable restraint and [Keep reading]
If you are planning to take your first post-Covid flight soon, be prepared for some dramatic sticker shock. Really dramatic — like first-class-prices-for-coach-class -tickets dramatic. A friend recently posted about her depressing search for a fairly routine cross-country flight that used to cost around $400 — she was quoted around [Keep reading]
Some stories just make me more angry than others. You all know that the Internet is crawling with criminals out there looking for vulnerable people — widows, the elderly, children. There are, incredibly, people who go even lower than that. Criminals are actively searching for very sick people, cancer patients [Keep reading]
“Amazon Prime is *incredibly* popular with Americans. How popular? There are more than 150 million members in the U.S, with many (most?) there to enjoy “free”* two-day shipping. That’s roughly equal to the number of Americans who VOTED in 2020. And Amazon is betting all 150 million will do almost [Keep reading]
As war rages in Ukraine, big technology companies are struggling to keep up. Thousands of small decisions are being made at breakneck speed. Think, for just a moment, about the overwhelming task of sifting through propaganda-spewing social media accounts. Make yourself a tech exec right now. What’s free speech? What’s [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan