Wal-Mart Watch Daily Clips - February 13th

Walmart needs to lay off more and hire new. We purchased a very expensive trash can that we don’t really need but could use on Walmart.com. We chose the first shipping option radial which was “Site to Store 2-3 business days no charge”. When it did not arrive I checked “My Account” to find it was scheduled to ship 2 weeks after our reciet stated we should have it. I’ve spent 3 days, more than 1 and 1/2 hours on the phone and multiple calls to different locations to find out what was wrong. It would have been easier to make an online inquiry, but everytime I submitted my question it would return with an error message. We have found this to be very common with sites that have poor or no customer service and more complaints than they can handle.

Customer service told me our receit did not say what it said and we would not get the item, which was 6 hours away in the warehouse, for at least two more weeks regardless of what our receit stated and there was nothing they were willing to do to make this right. Good Day.

We will not be buying from Walmart on line any more nor will we buy from the store unless absolutely necessary. The “savings” is not worth the lack of trust and customer support if needed.

Ken V,

Here’s something for you, from Consumer Reports:

The Maytag Repairman symbolizes reliability right?  Well, maybe not.  We surveyed people who owned front loading washing machines and found that people who owned Maytags were just as likely to ‘need repairs’ compared to other brands.  According to our survey, Whirlpool, GE, Kenmore, LG, Frigidaire and Bosch were just as reliable as Maytag.

The KitchenAid Pro Line toaster cost $250.00, but when we compared the pricey KitchenAid toaster with an Oster Counterforms toaster that costs $45.00, we found that the Oster made better toast.

Dawn Direct Foam was excellent in our tests, but it was the most expensive dishwashing detergent.  Ajax was also rated excellent and was one of the least expensive brands.

LESSON LEARNED: A high price doesn’t always mean better quality!  ~ Consumer Reports

See, I’m not the only one who claims that a higher price, doesn’t always mean better quality!!

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/587906

Wal-Mart’s glow-in-the-dark mystery

Retail giant can’t account for 15,800 of its exit signs that contain a potentially dangerous radioactive gas

“"Poor housekeeping, certainly, but what’s the big deal?
In a word: radiation."”

Alex,

“It turns out that Ontario-based companies SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. of Pembroke and Shield Source Inc. of Peterborough have sold the lion’s share of these signs, which use tritium produced as a by-product from the operation of Canadian-made Candu nuclear reactors.”

So, you are saying that a Canadian firm, is selling dangerous products to Wal-Mart?

“the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission appears more concerned......At the same time, it assured the public there’s nothing to worry about.”

If there is “nothing to worry about”, why are you bring it up?  Maybe, to trash Wal-Mart for NO good reason?

“Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, who teaches environmental health at the University of Toronto, said there’s a double standard in Canada when it comes to regulating tritium. Permissible levels in drinking water here are 100 times greater than in Europe and more than 400 times greater than in California.”

Sounds like this problem is BIGGER in Canada, than the U.S.!!  And, you want the U.S. to follow Canada in it’s Universal Healthcare, I think NOT!!

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“And, you want the U.S. to follow Canada in it’s Universal Healthcare, I think NOT!!"~RDS in

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/589123

“Canada’s health-care system is cheaper than America’s by far (accounting for 9.7 per cent of GDP, versus 15.2 per cent here),” Zakaria writes, “and yet does better on all major indexes.”

Obama once said if he was designing a U.S. health-care system from scratch, it would be modelled on Canada’s universal single-payer formula. But that model is too easily demonized in the U.S. as “socialized medicine” to be politically viable.

So Obama is instead pushing a clumsy public-private hybrid designed to at least provide coverage for the 46 million Americans without health insurance.

Still, Obama finds the “socialized-medicine” bogeyman risible. In an interview in the liberal U.S. journal Nation three years ago, the then-U.S. senator from Illinois was asked if the single-payer option “is revolutionary or reformist.”

“Anything that Canada does can’t be entirely revolutionary, it’s Canada” Obama laughed. “When I drive through Toronto, it doesn’t look like a bunch of Maoists.”

Alex,

“But that model is too easily demonized in the U.S. as “socialized medicine” to be politically viable.”

I guess it is hard for a person living in a country that still bows to the Queen of England, to understand the thinking of a country that broke away from the Queen!!  We also reject the ‘socialistic’ government model and cringe, when the federal government says they want to RUN something, as we have SEEN how they run everything else they get their hands on!!  They can’t even BREAK EVEN on a business that people pay for the service (the postal service)!!

Many of us can’t understand the concept of the government taking from the people who DO IT RIGHT, to support those who DO IT WRONG!!  We believe that if you want good healthcare, you need to do what you need to do to get it!!  I pay for MY healthcare, so why should I be required to pay for someone else’s too?  It’s called, taking ‘personal responsibility’ for your life, decisions and your actions!!

Your not too bright are you Bob(RDS)?  Try reading the article again. When you are done with that one then you can do this one too.

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/589123

............in the industrialized world, only Canada has experienced no bank failures or government bailouts.

Canada’s Big Five banks made a combined profit of $8.2 billion (U.S.) last year, while the top five U.S. banks lost a total of $8.3 billion.

“One of the things that I think has been striking about Canada is that in the midst of this enormous economic crisis,” Obama told the CBC yesterday, “Canada has shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system in the economy in ways that we haven’t always been here in the United States.

The article goes on to say:

For 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world. The U.S. ranked 40th, and Britain 44th.

Alex,

“"And I think that’s important for us to take note of, that it’s possible for us to have a vibrant banking sector, for example, without taking some of the wild risks that have resulted in so much trouble on Wall Street."”

It’s also important to note, that Canada doesn’t have the SAME government as the U.S., making the SAME banking rules!!  Did they tell the banks to make MORE Sub-Prime loans to put MORE people in houses?  Did the banks make NO MONEY DOWN loans to people who could not afford to pay them back, based on the premise that the housing values would continue to go up?  Did the people of Canada, use their houses as ATM machines, taking out second and third loans, to buy boats, cars and RV’s, using their inflated house value as collateral?

See, the problem is, that while the Canadian systems may be working, if they were handled by the U.S. politicians, they would fall apart quickly!!  Do your politicians work for the good of the PEOPLE or their PARTIES?  Ours have forgotten WHO they work for and tend to do just the opposite of what the people want!!

BTW: You’re not too bright either, the sites you told me to read BOTH of, are the SAME one!!

Eliot Spitzer (He Left a Note)

Prior to announcing his resignation as New York Governor on March 12th 2008 Eliot Spitzer issued this notification to the Bush legacy less than a month before. 

Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers
By Eliot Spitzer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; A25

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive “teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function.

But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

continues-

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

The writer is governor of New York.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html