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Consumer News & Alerts

August 20, 2001

ON THE COURTHOUSE STEPS ...
After years of stonewalling, Ford is offering to settle a California class action suit that charges the automaker churned out defective ignition switches for years. Now that most of the cars involved are rather long in the tooth, Ford is hoping it can pull its old extend-the-warranty trick rather than doing a recall that would insure the problem was fixed in every vehicle.

SELL THE FORD STOCK
A $1 billion trial in Texas isn't doing much for either Ford or Bridgestone/Firestone. Expert testimony last week portrayed vehicle design as the culprit in Explorer rollovers. And company documents indicate Firestone knew that its penny-pinching was increasing the risk of tread separation. (You have already sold Bridgestone/Firestone, right?)

SELL THE SEARS STOCK TOO
With the ink hardly dry on the Sears Homelife bankruptcy filing, customers of its National Tire and Battery stores are in full-scale revolt. Everyday brings reports even more bizarre than the day before. For example ...

• They put Kelly's tires on backwards and Floyd is tired of having to show the staff how to do simple things like balancing a tire;
• Joseph feels he was gypped out of the "one-hour-or-less" bonus;
• Paul thinks the staff should spend less time hot-rodding customers' cars and a little more time learning how to perform simple maintenance tasks, like installing a battery.

IF IT MOVES ...
Let's face it, governments -- local, state and federal -- like to tax things. And even in its withered state, the Internet represents a juicy target for mayors and governors. They'd like to tax every transaction on the Web ... and may soon be able to do so.

What do you think?
Should cities, counties and states be able to impose a sales tax on Internet transactions? That's the topic in the Consumer Forum this week.

HI, IT'S ME. OR IS IT?
Electronic greeting cards are a moderately tacky idea to start with. They can quickly become downright dangerous, as Salaam learned when a female employee used Blue Mountain to send herself a mushy e-card with Salaam's return address. We tried the same procedure and, sure enough, there's nothing to ensure that the sender's identity is accurate. Pretty dangerous, we'd say.

INTEROFFICE MEMO
Anyone with a fax machine has received those annoying but somehow legitimate looking faxes promoting cheap cruises and claiming to be from the "corporate travel department." Since our corporate travel department is the Southwest Airlines Web site we never had any trouble deciding these faxes were probably not quite what they seemed. Others weren't so lucky but at least the Federal Trade Commission has put one of the larger promoters of this particular scam out of business, at least for awhile.

PUT YOUR FAITH IN ...
Susann has invented something or other having to do with the utility business. Instead of hiring a patent lawyer to protect her ownership in her invention, she went to someone she heard about on a "Christian" radio station, thinking they would be more trustworthy. Big mistake. Religious broadcasting is big business and its practitioners are businesspeople who profit from their self-proclaimed holiness.

CALL THIS A PARTY?
We have nothing against smoking. If it didn't cause millions to die a slow, agonizing death that often follows a decade or two of ghastly disability, it would be just swell. But we're hoping there's a special place in hell for the fiends who make their ghoulish living dreaming up promotions that entice young people to puff their lives away.

DANGER: EXPLODING DOORS
We don't normally expect glass shower doors to explode but it can happen under certain circumstances. When it does a soothing soak can become a ghastly bloodbath. Ask Cindy.

RECALLS

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