Current Events in February 2018

Tide laundry detergent developed a handy way to wash your clothes. Instead of measuring detergent, you simply toss in a prepackaged detergent pod.

For some reason, some person decided to video themselves eating one of these soap pods and put it on social media, daring others to "accept the challenge." What happened next was predictable. Eating Tide laundry pods became "a thing," causing doctors and poison control officials to warn of the dangers.

Now the Consumer Wellness Center has put some research behind those warnings. Commissioned by Science.News, the Center conducted a laboratory analysis of a Tide laundry pod and identified 700 unique and potentially dangerous chemicals.

You can find the lengthy list on the Science.News website.

Promoting awareness

Mike Adams, who is lab science director at the Consumer Wellness Center and author of the popular science book "Food Forensics," says the public -- parents especially -- need to be aware of what's in the laundry pods.

"Many of these chemicals pose very real risks to human health as well as aquatic ecosystems," Adams said.

Tide’s warning label on the product advises consumers to "call your local Poison Control Center or doctor immediately" if the product is swallowed.

"Concentrated detergent pacs can burst if children put them in their mouths or play with them," the warning label reads. "The liquid inside is harmful if put in mouth, swallowed or in eyes. KEEP PACS OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN."

Absent from the label

But Adams says the label does not name specific chemicals on the packaging, leading him to believe consumers could be unaware of the potential dangers.

"Given the toxicity of this product when ingested, many consumers are now wondering whether it's safe to wear those same chemicals on their skin," said Adams. "An even bigger question is what happens downstream when these chemicals are rinsed out of clothing and flushed away."

As we reported in 2013, a seven month-old child died after eating a laundry pod, the first known fatality.

Proctor and Gamble CEO David Taylor, whose company makes Tide, says he can't understand why people are eating his product and he's not sure what to do about it.

"Ensuring the safety of the people who use our products is fundamental to everything we do at P&G," Taylor said in a January 22 blog post. "However, even the most stringent standards and protocols, labels, and warnings can't prevent intentional abuse fueled by poor judgment and the desire for popularity."

The 2017-2018 flu season is underway, and this year’s particularly aggressive strain is causing a higher-than-average number of workers to call in sick.

Consequently, U.S. businesses could end up losing $15 billion in lost productivity, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. -- a global outplacement and executive coaching firm that crunched the numbers.

Cases of the flu have soared across the nation and remain widespread in 49 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health officials have called this year’s flu season the worst in over a decade.

Officials say the severe flu season is on track to equal the 2014-15 outbreak that caused 56,000 deaths and millions of sicknesses in individuals over the age of 18.

"If this strain sickens as many people as during the 2014-2015 outbreak, over 18 million workers could miss work due to illness," said Andrew Challenger, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

Stay home

The firm estimates that this year’s flu virus could cause more than 18 million U.S. employees to miss at least four eight-hour shifts. At an average hourly wage of $26.63, it says flu-related time off could end up costing $15.4 billion in lost productivity nationwide.

To help keep the flu virus from spreading to co-workers and interrupting business, health experts say it’s best to stay home if you’re sick.

“The current strain is particularly aggressive and those who are sick can be contagious for up to seven days. Workers who have the flu or need to care for someone with the flu should absolutely not come into work,” said Challenger. “This is exactly why employers have sick leave benefits.”

What employers can do

Employers should aim to be accomodating to sick workers by allowing them to stay home without fear of losing their jobs. In addition, employers can do the following to minimize productivity losses due to illness:

• Encourage telecommuting. This will keep people off of public transportation and out of the office.

• Limit meetings. If there is no need to gather large groups of workers in a confined space, then do not do it. Meetings can be conducted via conference calls or video conferencing, Challenger says.

• Institute flexible leave policies. This will allow parents to care for an ill child or one who is home due to school closures.

• Provide no-touch trash cans and hand sanitizer. This will ensure that workers are not spreading germs in the office space.

• Encourage employees to wash their hands frequently. Additionally, employers can tell workers to avoid handshakes and take other hygienic precautions, such as wearing a mask in heavily populated work areas.

• Increase the number of shifts. This will reduce the amount of people working in the office at one time.

In a press release issued yesterday, Amazon reported details of an exceedingly strong fourth quarter. The company announced that its 12-month cash flow increased seven points to $18.4 billion, up more than a billion from the same period a year ago.

While that -- and the fact that Amazon shares have surged more than 20 percent this year -- seems like a home run, there are financial strategists who are looking at the company with a different point of view.

"It's very similar to what you'd seen back in early 2013, also in early 2016. When you got this far extended usually there was some sort of setback and a healthy correction that took place," Craig Johnson, Piper Jaffray’s senior technical strategist, told CNBC on Thursday.

Amazon is no stranger to value resets. At the beginning of 2013, its stock was trading at 160 times forward earning. But the company took a 5 percent hit in April 2013, followed by an additional 7 percent one in August. Similar dips and peaks happened again in 2014 and 2016, but there was always recovery.

Only time will tell what 2018 holds for Amazon, but its investment in outside-its-box initiatives like healthcare will no doubt be watched with a careful eye by the financial world.

Has Prime hit its ceiling?

There’s also some concern that, despite a strong holiday sales season, Amazon’s Prime membership program is showing signs of a slowdown in growth, according to a survey by Morgan Stanley.

While Prime membership has captured 40% of U.S. households, there’s been no forward movement in that metric for a year, partly because its higher income customers are maxed out and penetrating lower-income households and the seniors market may be a difficult task.

One hurdle Amazon will have to overcome with its untapped Prime market is the price of membership. In January 2018, the company increased the monthly price of Prime from $10.99 to $12.99, but kept the annual fee at $99 if a customer pays it up front.

The emergence of Alexa

Also on Thursday came the news that Amazon plans on hiring 10,000 new employees in 2018 on top of the 566,000 it already has on its payroll.

Some of that surge in Amazon’s workforce will no doubt ride on the back of their Echo devices with Alexa, its speech recognition system.

Tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices sold worldwide between Black Friday and the end of the 2018 holiday season, giving that product category its best holiday segment ever.

Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote hit the top of Amazon’s charts, both in the the company’s own device category and the list of top-selling items from any manufacturer in any category across all of Amazon.

Alexa’s skill set has elevated the virtual assistant game, with the Alexa Skills store now offering more than 30,000 skills. In what has the makings of a personal broadcaster, Alexa users can create playlists of news stories, ConsumerAffairs alerts, podcasts, and music, not to mention interactive games like The Match Game and the History Channel’s Ultimate History Quiz.

“We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO. “There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.”

Starbucks has launched a branded Visa card that will be integrated directly into its Starbucks Rewards loyalty program.

Customers using the card, issued by JPMorgan Chase, can earn "Stars" with every purchase and redeem them for food and beverages at more than 8,000 participating Starbucks locations.

If not already a member of the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program, cardholders will be automatically enrolled.

“It’s important to us to make earning rewards as easy for our customers as possible, and the Starbucks Rewards Visa Card is a powerful tool for us to do that because of how easily it fits into their daily lives,” said Matt Ryan, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Starbucks.

Approved applicants will receive a physical card within seven to 10 days, but a digital card will be immediately loaded into the Starbucks mobile app so customers can start using it right away.

Annual fee

Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet's credit card expert, notes the new rewards card carries a $49 annual fee, potentially cutting into rewards.

"The catch is that Stars can only be redeemed at Starbucks, which is far more limiting than rewards cards that offer cash back or travel rewards," Palmer told ConsumerAffairs. "The Starbucks card will likely appeal only to the most die-hard Starbucks fans who would get enough value out of their Stars to justify the annual fee."

Starbucks says new cardmembers will get 2,500 Stars after spending $500 on purchases in the first three months the account is open. That's equal to 20 food or beverage items.

They will also receive 250 bonus Stars if they use their new Starbucks credit card to load their registered Starbucks Card within the Starbucks mobile app.

For every $4 spent outside of Starbucks, cardholders will receive an additional Star, along with a Star for every dollar digitally loaded to their registered Starbucks Card in the Starbucks mobile app.

And just for signing up for the Starbucks credit card, customers will be upgraded to Gold Status within the loyalty program.

Dwindling resources may cause the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to dramatically reduce its efforts to prevent and respond to infectious disease epidemics in dozens of foreign countries.

Funding for the CDC programs that aim to stop future outbreaks at their source comes primarily from a five-year emergency package that Congress approved to respond to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

But that funding (about $600 million) is expected to be gone by September 2019 and additional resources aren’t likely to roll in, officials say.

Priority countries

The CDC has been working with more than 30 countries to help keep infectious-disease outbreaks at bay, but the organization may have to scale back its work to prevent global disease outbreak, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

A copy of a recent email sent by the CDC to global health center leaders and obtained by the Journal said that if funding remains at current levels, efforts to prevent infectious-disease epidemics may have to be limited.

The agency would have to focus on 10 “priority countries” (India, Thailand, Vietnam, Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Jordan, and Guatemala) starting in the fall of 2019, the official said.

The CDC is planning to pull back its disease prevention efforts in many countries where outbreaks are likely, including China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda, and Congo. Programs to combat other health issues, such as HIV, influenza, and vaccine-preventable diseases, would continue.

If additional resources become available in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, the CDC could continue its work in China and Congo, as well as Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone, another official said.

In her last meeting as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen announced a key interest rate would remain unchanged for now, but warned of building inflation in the economy.

Both rates and inflation will likely have an impact on consumers in the coming months.

During the final two years of Yellen's tenure, the Fed has slowly raised the federal funds rate, the interest rate at which the Fed loans money to banks. The rate had been slashed to near zero percent during the Great Recession, but now it hovers between 1.25 and 1.50 percent -- still very low on a historical basis.

Under Yellen's successor, Jerome Powell, the federal funds rate is expected to drift higher during the remainder of 2018. Most market economists predict three to four more rate hikes this year, meaning the rate could end 2018 at 2.00 to 2.25 percent.

Rising inflation

In addition to "normalizing" interest rates, the Fed also keeps an eye on inflation. In her final news conference as Fed chairman, Yellen said policymakers see signs that prices are steadily rising.

For consumers, this is not good news, since inflation makes the costs of goods and services more expensive. When the price of things consumers purchase regularly go up -- things like food and gasoline -- it will cut into either consumption or savings unless wages rise by a similar amount.

That said, the Fed would like to see some inflation in the economy, since modestly rising prices can help promote economic growth. The Fed has set a target of two percent inflation for this year.

The problem for consumers is when some items go up in price much faster than the average. For example, home prices rose more than five percent last year. The cost of healthcare and college tuition are rising much faster than the average inflation rate.

The Fed uses interest rate hikes as a way to keep inflation under control since higher interest rates make credit more expensive. Here again, consumers bear some of those higher costs since certain consumer loans tend to follow the federal funds rate.

Higher rates on auto loans and credit cards

Auto loans can be expected to rise with the federal funds rate in some, but not all, instances. Auto loans are largely determined by risk factors, so a consumer with excellent credit might see no rise in interest rates. However, someone with less-than-perfect credit might feel the impact more.

The federal funds rate has the most impact on credit card interest rates, so consumers carrying large balances should prepare for higher interest costs in the future.

"If you're carrying any credit card debt, your interest rate is likely going up with each Fed rate increase,” John Ganotis, founder of CreditCardInsider.com, told us last month. "Almost all credit cards have variable APRs, which means they're tied to the Fed rate."

The average credit card rate is already above 16 percent, so it is possible that four Fed rate hikes in 2018 could raise that average by a point or more, meaning more of a consumer's monthly payment would go to interest and less to paying down the balance.

The Fed's Open Market Committee meets again next month, at which time it could resume the process of raising its key interest rate.

The booming legal cannabis industry is still forced to do business in cash thanks to federal anti-drug laws and cautious banks, but that may change eventually in California. State Treasurer John Chiang announced this week that he is considering creating a state-operated bank that would accept accounts from legal marijuana businesses.

With recreational marijuana now legal in California under Proposition 64, dispensaries and other marijuana retailers who want to operate out of the shadows must pay taxes. But an estimated 70 percent of marijuana business in the state does not have access to bank accounts. That means that dispensary owners and others in the industry have been paying their taxes in cash.

Reporters have spotted drivers of sedans and SUVs unloading huge piles of cash in front of local tax offices.

"I am in favor of anything that promotes discussion about banking challenges that cannabis businesses face,” San Diego-based cannabis attorney Jessica McElfresh tells ConsumerAffairs.

However, she doesn’t predict a state-sanctioned marijuana bank to open anytime in the near feature. “Realistically, it would take a long time for them to go down that road.”

Banks fear federal backlash

Among the issues they would have to resolve, she predicts, are whether the bank would have a “master account” that is connected to the federal reserve; otherwise, the bank would more closely resemble a Gold Rush-era financial institution that accepts money but cannot wire it to other banks.

An easier, more immediate option would be for existing federal banks to simply accept accounts from marijuana retailers. “I think banks are just inherently afraid of having their heads smacked upside by the federal government,” McElfresh adds.

The treasury proposal isn’t the only one local officials are floating. California State  Sen. Robert Hertzberg recently introduced a bill that would allow marijuana businesses to access checking and savings accounts at state-run banks.

The United States Treasury Department under Obama gave cautious approval to the estimated 368 banks or credit unions across the country that agreed to serve marijuana retailers, provided that the banks agreed to monitor those accounts extra closely.  

But with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ apparent interest in cracking down on marijuana, even in states where voters have made it legal, going into business with marijuana retailers remains an unattractive option for banks that are weary of the feds.

Despite risks, marijuana industry remains profitable

The marijuana industry in California remains highly profitable, despite numerous financial risks that business owners face. Growers of the crop have had difficulty obtaining insurance, an issue that came to a head when cannabis farmers saw their crops go up in flames during the Northern California wildfires.

"It's hard to quantify what the risk is when you have this disconnect between the federal government and the state government," Mark Sektnan of the Property Casualty Insurers Association told ConsumerAffairs at the time. "The current administration has come out to be much more aggressive on marijuana enforcement."

Business that initially appeared to operate legally under state laws have also been subject to local police raids. In 2016, San Diego police seized  $324,000 in cash from Med-West Distribution, a popular distributor that sold cannabis products to legal dispensaries. The San Diego County District Attorney alleged that Med-West was also manufacturing and selling hash oil, which is illegal under both state and federal laws.

But in December 2017, over a year after the raid, authorities and Med-West reached a settlement in which the District Attorney agreed to return the $324,000 to the distributor. In exchange, business owner James Slatic agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors.

Slatic had been represented by McElfresh, and in a highly unusual scenario, the District Attorney’s office has also accused her of “conspiring” with her client. McElfresh currently faces seven felony charges over the matter.

In a move that lawyers say sent chills through the industry, the DA’s office unsuccessfully argued in one court hearing that they should have access to the files on all of McElfresh’s clients. Prosecutors had tried to argue in court that  her clients should not be protected by attorney-client privilege due to cannabis remaining illegal under federal law.

"I found that to be very disturbing,” McElfresh says. “I think a lot of lawyers did, I think a lot of people in the cannabis industry did.”

In the middle of content changes and its crackdown on clickbait, Facebook is focusing its ire on cryptocurrency.

The social media giant’s new advertising policy takes a direct shot at binary options, initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency, and the scammers who are trying to profit from the crypto money rage. Effective immediately, come-ons like “Start binary options trading now and receive a 10-risk free trades bonus!” will be gone from Facebook’s ad delivery.

“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith,” said Rob Leathern, product management director for Facebook Business.

Is Facebook just pressing the pause button?

Earlier this year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg showed cautious interest in cryptocurrency and its potential role in decentralization.

In a post focused on Facebook’s challenges for 2018, he commented that counter-trends like encryption and cryptocurrency may give power back to the people, but “they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.”

Leathern echoed that view and left the door open for the cryptocurrency promoters. “This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network, and Instagram. We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve,” he said.

Not everyone will be pleased by these changes

Recode's Kurt Wagner raises a concern that some of the power players in the Facebook camp might not be too happy with this change. Both Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, high-profile crypto backers, sit on Facebook’s board, and Facebook Messenger’s chief David Marcus is on the board of directors at Coinbase, a popular crypto exchange platform.

Andreesen has been on Bitcoin’s bandwagon since 2014, and according to CBS News, Thiel’s Founders Fund invested as much as $20 million in Bitcoin in mid-2017, and turned that into a tenfold investment.

Bitcoin’s rollercoaster ride

Cryptocurrency pioneer Bitcoin has gone from oblivion to curiosity to investment darling and was on a tear at the end of 2017. From its birth in 2009 and through the first two years of its infancy, Bitcoin’s value bounced around from worthless to 14 cents to $1.06 before settling in at 87 cents in February 2011.

After Gawker.com did a story on the currency’s embrace by online drug dealers, Bitcoin’s price soared to $27 and the fascination continued. Its value zoomed past $19,000 in December 2017 before taking a tumble back to under $10,000 by the end of January 2018.

But, naturally, in the midst of the euphoria, other cryptocurrencies jumped on the gravy train. And, in their zeal, some pulled out all the stops in trying to tap new customers. Facebook felt that it needed to throttle any potential “misleading and deceptive promotional practices” as decisively and quickly as possible.

Within the next year, coffee sellers in California could be required to post a cancer warning in their stores.

A state list of chemicals with the potential to cause cancer includes acrylamide -- a chemical created when coffee beans are roasted, according to CNN.

Under California’s Proposition 65, businesses are required to warn customers if their products contain any of the 65 chemicals associated with obesity, birth defects, or other reproductive issues.

A lawsuit filed in 2010 by the nonprofit Council for Education and Research on Toxics alleged that in failing to give customers a “clear and reasonable warning” about the presence of a possible carcinogen, California coffee sellers are in breach of the law.

Reducing cancer burden

The suit aimed to get companies like Starbucks and 7-Eleven to post warnings about the chemical acrylamide and its potential to cause cancer. The group’s main goal was to get companies to reduce levels of acrylamide in coffee.

"We have a huge cancer epidemic in this country, and about a third of cancers are linked to diet,” said Raphael Metzger, the attorney representing the nonprofit. "To the extent that we can get carcinogens out of the food supply, logically, we can reduce the cancer burden in this country. That's what this is all about."

Around 13 companies have agreed to post warning labels on walls or store counters, including 7-Eleven. The nine remaining retailers will try to come to an agreement in a trial set for February 8.

Cancer risk

The defendants argue that the small amount of acrylamide present in coffee isn’t high enough to increase the risk of cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, acrylamide causes cancer in rats, but only when the rodents were exposed to doses 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the average human might be exposed to in foods such as potatoes, baked goods, cereal, prune juice, or canned black olives.

According to the National Cancer Institute, people are exposed to "substantially more” acrylamide from cigarette smoke than from food.

So far, human studies have found “no consistent evidence that dietary acrylamide exposure is associated with the risk of any type of cancer.” However, more studies are needed to help determine the chemical’s relationship with human cancer risk.

Telecom giant AT&T is moving ahead with plans to develop its 5G wireless network, but company CEO Randall Stephenson says the first device to connect to the super high-speed network won't be a smartphone.

In a conference call following Wednesday's AT&T earnings report, Stephenson said smartphone manufacturers are still on the drawing board when it comes to making a 5G phone. So Stephenson says AT&T will produce a device, called a "puck," that will act like a mobile hotspot, allowing consumers to connect their existing devices to the 5G network.

AT&T has not said when the puck would be available or how much it would cost. However, Stephenson says the device will be a way for customers to sample the 5G service before purchasing a 5G smartphone.

"We're getting the equipment manufacturing moving, we're getting the supply chains moving, we're doing the sell-side acquisition, we're doing all the build type work, but getting the handsets at scale penetrated into the market will slow things down," Stephenson told investors and analysts.

"So, that's why we're going to be offering pucks in the first part of our deployment in these 12 markets, so it is a mobile solution."

Will work like a modem

Stephenson says consumers will be able to use the pucks like a modem. Once connected, they will be able to access the internet using AT&T's 5G network with a full gigabit throughput.

But Stephenson said he thinks one of the biggest advantages 5G will offer is a huge reduction in latency, the time between an online command is entered and when it is executed. Reducing latency will make 5G more efficient for certain uses, such as virtual reality and self-driving vehicles.

"People say 5G and you're thinking about speed," Stephenson said. "And speed and throughput are important. But the most important element is latency and having low latency 5G is the first technological innovation that truly gets us to low latency."

Twelve markets this year

A month ago AT&T announced that it would deploy 5G wireless service in at least a dozen markets by late 2018, as the first step in a nationwide build out. In December, Verizon also announced it planned to offer 5G wireless service in up to five U.S. markets in 2018.

Telecom experts say the transition from 4G to 5G will be a fundamental, not incremental, change. Instead of being limited to connecting hundreds of millions of cell phones and tablets used by people, 5G networks will support billions of connected things.

Stephenson told analysts that once a nationwide wireless 5G network is up and running, it could replace most fiber optic networks.

Sysco Corp. and US Foods have filed lawsuits accusing 17 different poultry producers of conspiring with one another to reduce the supply of chicken and boost wholesale prices over the span of years.

In two separate lawsuits filed Wednesday, the food distributors alleged that Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. and other major poultry suppliers worked together to artificially inflate wholesale chicken prices, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Named in the lawsuits along with Pilgrim’s Pride are Tyson Foods Inc., Sanderson Farms Inc., and Perdue Farms Inc.

This isn’t the first lawsuit alleging chicken processors colluded with one another to fix prices. In 2016, food distributor Maplevale Farms filed a suit alleging that Tyson and its competitors had colluded since 2008 to curb chicken supply in order to drive up prices. Earlier this year, grocery store chains Bi-Lo Holdings and Winn-Dixie Stores also filed a suit.

The latest complaints are by two of the nation’s largest distributors that account for about a quarter of U.S. food distribution.

Chicken companies deny allegations

In response, Tyson Foods claimed that the allegations are meritless and that it will act accordingly to defend itself.

“Follow-on complaints like these are common in antitrust litigation,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “Such complaints do not change our position that the claims are unfounded. We will continue to vigorously defend our company.”

Pilgrim's Pride also said the case is completely without merit. "We look forward to defending our interests through the appropriate legal process," a spokesman said.

Sysco says that a small producer in Georgia, Fieldale Farms has already agreed to pay $2.25 million dollars in an out-of-court settlement.

Consumers are likely to pay considerably more for gasoline when spring arrives, as slowing world oil production and rising demand will likely put upward pressure on prices.

Since late 2015, consumers have caught a break at the gas pump as Saudi Arabia opened the spigots in an effort to hurt U.S. shale producers, who have consistently cut into OPEC market share.

The resulting huge increase in supply drove down the price of oil to between $30 and $40 a barrel, making many U.S. shale operations unprofitable. But the result for consumers was a huge drop in prices at the pump.

By mid-December 2015, more than two-thirds of U.S. gas stations were selling regular gas under $2 per gallon, the first time that had happened since 2009.

Days of low prices may be over

Those days may be over. Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at Gasbuddy, says OPEC has now cut production and those cuts are beginning to have an impact.

"OPEC's production cuts have removed over five hundred million barrels -- 1.8 million per day -- of supply since they were enacted to start 2017," DeHaan told ConsumerAffairs.

And while U.S. oil production has ramped back up to the highest levels since 1970, DeHaan says U.S. oil exports are at record levels. Refiners are having to pay more for oil and those rising costs get reflected at the pump.

"U.S. production is nearing record levels, but the rise in U.S. production can't come close to offsetting OPEC's cuts, which have seen amazing compliance," DeHaan said. "Also, the economic collapse in Venezuela sent 2017 oil exports to their lowest level since 1989."

Gas prices on the rise

As a result, retail gasoline prices are headed up. The AAA Fuel Gauge Survey shows the national average price of regular is up three cents a gallon in the last week; in the last month, they’re up 11 cents overall. DeHaan says it's probably headed higher.

"Gas prices nationally may rise to an average that's 10 to 25 cents a gallon short of $3 a gallon by our peak in spring, with more areas hitting $3 than we previously anticipated just a month ago," DeHaan said.

And in California, which recently enacted a 12 cents a gallon increase in the gasoline tax, DeHaan predicts the statewide average could hit $4 a gallon by Memorial Day, a level not seen in a decade.

On top of everything else, demand for oil and gasoline is rising, thanks to a new burst of economic growth, not just in the U.S. but around the world.

Consumers can expect price increases to gather momentum toward the end of this month as oil refineries begin annual maintenance and the switch-over to producing more expensive summer grade fuel blends.

Vornado Air of Andover, Kan., is recalling about 5,100 Vornado Sunny CS nursery heaters sold in the U.S. and Canada.

A broken motor mount can allow the electric heating element to come in contact with the interior plastic materials and ignite, posing fire and burn hazards.

The company has received five reports of the electric heaters catching on fire. No injuries or property damage have been reported.

This recall involves Vornado Sunny CS (cribside) model EH1-0090 electric space heaters sold in white with an accent of melon and gray colors.

The heaters measure approximately 12 inches high, 8 inches deep and 11 inches at the base. The controls are mounted in a soft touch panel on the top of the unit with a multi-color display in the center of the control panel. “Vornadobaby” is printed on the side of the heater.

The Vornado logo is printed on the front center of the unit. The model/type “SUNNY CS EH1-0090” and serial number are printed on a silver decal on the bottom of the unit under the elastic cord wrap.

The recalled heaters have the numbers 1 and 7 as the fourth and fifth digits of the serial number (XXX17-XXXXXX).

The heaters, manufactured in China, were sold at Bed Bath & Beyond, buybuy Baby and other stores nationwide and online at Amazon.com, Target.com, Vornado.com and other websites from October 2017, through December 2017, for about $100.

What to do

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled space heaters, unplug them and contact Vornado for instructions on how to receive a free replacement unit, including free shipping.

Consumers may contact Vornado toll-free at 844-202-7978 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (CT) Monday through Friday or online at www.vornado.com and click on Recalls in the lower right corner of the homepage for more information.