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Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Sep 04, 2011 As Sports Medicine Surges, Hope and Hype Outpace Proven Treatments

QUOTE: growing problems in sports medicine, a medical subspecialty that has been experiencing explosive growth. Part of the field’s popularity, among patients and doctors alike, stems from the fact that celebrity athletes, desperate to get back to playing after an injury, have been trying unproven treatments, giving the procedures a sort of star appeal. But now researchers are questioning many of the procedures, including new ones that often have no rigorous studies to back them up.

 New York Times
May 13, 2011 Google Is Said to Have Broken Internal Rules on Drug Ads

QUOTE: Google allowed rogue online pharmacies to advertise on its site in violation of its own advertising policies, according to one of the companies subpoenaed in the federal investigation of Google’s drug ad sales.

 New York Times
Mar 12, 2011 ‘Complaint Resolved’? Well, Not Exactly

QUOTE: The Austin area’s Better Business Bureau charges consumers $70 a mediation... At minimum, the bureau ought to disclose some of these facts in its online report about PC Drivers Headquarters, right?... The lack of disclosure about the fee only adds to the sense that the bureau is more interested in protecting dues-paying members than in helping consumers, does it not?

 New York Times
Apr 02, 2010 Health System Bears Cost of Implants With No Warranties

QUOTE: The million or so artificial hips and knees implanted each year in the United States, they say, are normally not guaranteed. Instead, the costs of replacing implants that fail early because of design or mechanical problems — devices that sell for as much as $15,000 each — are largely paid by Medicare, insurance companies and patients.

 New York Times
Dec 12, 2008 Visa to the rescue: Caught in the MPC Chapter 11 mess (or any warranty mess, for that matter)? Maybe your credit card can help.

QUOTE: According to the Visa site, "Warranty Manager Service offers you a number of valuable features, including warranty registration and Extended Warranty Protection."

 InfoWorld
Jan 30, 2008 Questioning the Allure of Putting Cells in the Bank

QUOTE: ...some experts say consumers should think twice before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on [banking stem sells]...because it is not clear how useful such cells will be. “In the stem cell area, we have a problem with truth in advertising,” said [one expert]. “Some of these companies are skirting right on the edge of what’s truthful and what’s vaporware.”

 New York Times
Dec 18, 2007 Shrink-Wrap Software vs. Hosted Services

QUOTE: Free services cannot be trusted. If you are not paying for something and know for a fact that the service actually has a customer service department that actually answers the phone to resolve these situations, then bad things can happen and often do.

 PC Magazine
Sep 24, 2007 Did Apple Violate Magnuson-Moss over iPhone Unlocks?

QUOTE: The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act appears to reason that Apple cannot void a warranty for a product with third-party enhancements or modifications to their product. The only exception to this rule is if Apple can determine that the modification or enhancement is responsible damaging the product in question.

 PhoneNews.com
Jul 25, 2007 Agency Erred in Canceling Loans to 8,000 Along Gulf, Audit Finds

QUOTE: The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government’s largest program to help disaster victims rebuild their houses, improperly canceled thousands of loans it had promised homeowners along the Gulf Coast after the 2005 hurricanes...

 New York Times
Jan 03, 2007 Amazon's Secret Price Guarantee: The online retailer's Zen customer benefit.

QUOTE: Amazon's 30-day price guarantee is a sort of Zen customer benefit. If a retailer offers a price guarantee but doesn't tell customers about it, does the price guarantee exist? Only for the few who hear about it somewhere else.

 Slate
Nov 27, 2006 Guaranteed to Go Up: When you hear about a portfolio that goes up along with the stock market but can't go down, your first question should be: Where's the catch?

QUOTE: How about a note that pays a return pegged to Standard & Poor's 500 Index but guarantees your original investment back no matter what? Or, better yet, one that pays double or triple the index?....In mathematically complicated ways, market interest rates are built into the pricing of derivatives like puts and calls, and with higher rates the terms of a structured note can be made more appealing to the naive investor.

 Forbes
Oct 01, 2006 Unwarranted: In Most Cases, Extended Product Service Plans Don't Benefit Consumers

QUOTE: the cashier asks if you'd like to put another two years on the manufacturer's warranty....While consumer groups and common sense would urge you to resoundingly reject the offer, an entire industry has been built on the likelihood that you will act on impulse and say, "Yes."

 Washington Post
Aug 04, 2006 More air passengers getting bumped

QUOTE: Airline passengers in the USA are getting bumped off flights more frequently than at any time in the last six years...

 USA TODAY
Jun 14, 2006 Why Apple snubs its open source geeks: What obscure sort of person wants the freedom to compile the OS X kernel? I know this guy named Steve …

QUOTE: ...Apple thought it would be OK, that nobody would notice or care, if it back-burnered its commitment to keep its open source Darwin OS in lockstep and binary compatibility with OS X.

 InfoWorld
Jun 01, 2006 Vonage May Seek Payment From Balking Share Buyers

QUOTE: Vonage...customers were given the chance to buy as much as 15 percent of the shares. Some 9,000 customers took the company up on the offer but after the share price plummeted, a portion of the investors have now balked at paying for shares they committed to buy.

 New York Times
May 07, 2006 Same Old Scam, Every Month: Credit Card Charges for Purchases You Don't Remember

QUOTE: The sales technique is called a "negative-option plan," one of those shady but legal deals in which consumers are automatically charged for services or products until they take action to say they don't want them. The most common consumer complaint -- aside from alleged unauthorized automatic billing -- is the way, critics say, that the marketing companies play loose with the truth to enroll unsuspecting consumers.

 Washington Post
Apr 16, 2006 Office Politics

QUOTE: My young sons' toys often break right after the receipt is chucked and the 30-day guarantee expires. When a toy breaks because of its low quality, we buy a new one, put the broken one in its box and return it using the new receipt... Ethical?

 New York Times
Mar 01, 2006 The Big Freeze: As companies end their traditional pensions, workers are left out in the cold.

QUOTE: ...Verizon announced it was freezing its pension plan. As part of a move expected to save the company $3 billion over 10 years, the telecommunications giant announced that managerial workers would no longer earn pension benefits after June 30 this year. Because of the way such traditional defined benefit pensions are calculated—generally as a percentage of the salary earned during the last several years of service—the freeze will take a big bite out of Bryerton's anticipated pension.

 AARP Bulletin
Jan 23, 2006 Office Depot's Total Exclusion Service Plan

QUOTE: Reading the fine print of an extended service plan can make you wonder if it actually extends any service at all.

 InfoWorld
Dec 06, 2005 An Unwarranted Microsoft Mouse

QUOTE: Here we've called about a broken product that Microsoft claims has a three-year warranty, that they won't support, and that nobody can provide an RMA number for. After several hours wasted on fixing a $39.00 product that should have been easy, all we've got is a frustrated customer.

 InfoWorld
Dec 06, 2005 Honey, they shrunk the warranty

QUOTE: On many expensive consumer electronic items and personal computers, warranties are shrinking. Instead of getting a standard one-year warranty for parts and labor, consumers are getting less and are often being pushed by manufacturers and retailers to shell out money for extended warranties that critics say are basically worthless.

 Bankrate.com
Oct 16, 2005 Hear the Complaints: Customers Say Aids Don't Work, Cost Too Much and Aren't Rated

QUOTE: ...hearing aids did allow them to live normal lives again. But more of them had complaints about steep prices, models that didn't work right, too-short money-back guarantee periods and general confusion about which hearing aid they needed. A common theme: They were sick and tired of hearing -- when they could hear -- that their hearing aids needed yet another adjustment.

 Washington Post
Oct 01, 2005 The Whole Truth About Disclosure: In Md., Sellers Now Have Greater Obligation to Tell Buyers About Defects

QUOTE: Sellers often list houses "as is," meaning they won't make repairs if problems are found. In the recent past, they have gotten so many multiple bids that they have been able to turn down contracts with contingencies for home inspections. As a result, say regulators, buyers frequently contend they didn't get a chance to investigate and were misled into a bad deal.

 Washington Post
Sep 28, 2005 Do you have surge protection?

QUOTE: Our homes now overflow with expensive electronic gadgets and gizmos, all of which can benefit from surge protection....All surge protectors and uninterruptible power supplies, or UPS, are not created equal.

 Bankrate.com
Mar 01, 2005 Second-Class Retirees: AARP goes to court to block policy that would shrink benefits at age 65

QUOTE: Responding to a lawsuit filed by AARP and six retirees, a federal judge in Philadelphia has entered an order that temporarily blocks a Bush administration policy under which millions of older retirees could lose some or all of their employer-sponsored health benefits.

 AARP Bulletin
Sep 23, 2004 Microsoft security controversy: Broken promise or a bullet that had to be bitten?

QUOTE: [Ed.--Microsoft] has acknowledged that, going forward, critical Internet Explorer security updates will only be available for Internet Explorer (IE) running on Windows XP.

 eWeek
Jun 27, 2004 The Golden Rule Is Taking a Beating

QUOTE: It's called gazumping in England, the process by which someone selling a piece of property accepts an offer from one buyer, maybe even going so far as to shake hands on it, then quickly — and often surreptitiously — accepts another, higher, offer from a second buyer...

 New York Times
Feb 03, 2004 Companies Limit Health Coverage of Many Retirees

QUOTE: Mr. McArdle of Hewitt said that the roster of companies offering retiree health benefits had dwindled as medical costs soared and employers encountered new competitors, both overseas and at home, that rarely covered retirees.

 New York Times
Feb 22, 2003 The Pitch to Get Rich Quick: As Realty Seminars Hawk Investment Techniques, Caution Is Advised

QUOTE: A lot of the no-money-down dealmaking seems to depend on finding distressed properties, distressed sellers or desperate buyers who cannot get credit and who might agree to pay more than the investor did for a property; doing so may require more work than people expect.

 Washington Post
Jan 23, 2003 A $55,000 Net scam warning

QUOTE: Lachot was the victim of a fake escrow site, a sophisticated scam that actually turns victims’ skepticism against them.

 MSNBC
Oct 17, 2002 eBay offers warranties for electronics

QUOTE: People worried about buying electronics products on the popular eBay auction Web site can now buy a warranty to cover their purchases--but it won't protect them from fraud.

 CNET
Oct 01, 2002 Is AltaVista searching for top dollar?

QUOTE: ...offering his clients better placement on the search engine for a price--an offer that contradicts how the service is promoted to the public.

 CNET
Jul 25, 2002 The Fearless Consumer- One Born Every...

QUOTE: ...a warning against agencies that charge a fee (legitimate agencies ask only for a picture, never a fee....Another warning: be wary of agencies that "charge you for their classes before you are eligible for modeling work."

 Hook
Jun 08, 2002 Harvard Considers Whether to Enroll Students Who Pledged to Go Elsewhere

QUOTE: ...Harvard said yesterday that it was considering amending its admissions policy to allow it to enroll applicants whom competing institutions have accepted under binding "early decision" programs.

 New York Times
Jan 05, 2002 When is a Mortgage Rate Lock Not a Lock?

QUOTE: Consumers who clamored to snap up low rates flooded brokers, leaving lenders overworked and swamped with applications... Now, as lock deadlines approach, borrowers are fretting that they may get stuck with a sour deal.

 Washington Post
Oct 01, 2001 Should You Buy a Service Contract?

QUOTE: ...don't buy a service contract on the spur of the moment. Only buy one if you have found out exactly what is and isn't covered under the contract, and how reliable the company is that backs the contract.

Maryland Attorney General's Office
Nov 17, 2000 Online Retailers Warned On Shipping Promises: Federal Trade Commission Wants to Avoid a Repeat of Last Year's E-tailer Shipping Snafus.

QUOTE: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning more than 100 online retailers that they'd better not make holiday shipping promises they can't keep.

 PC World
May 01, 1997 Auto Service Contracts

QUOTE: Buying a car? You also may be encouraged to buy an auto service contract to help protect against unexpected, costly repairs. While it may sound like a good idea, don't buy in until you understand both the terms of the contract and who is responsible for providing the coverage.

 Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Jan 01, 1111 A Software User's Bill of Rights

QUOTE: Each year we click 'I agree' to countless End User License Agreements (EULA) filled with pages of legal jargon in which software companies explain the myriad ways in which they have no responsibility for their own product.

 Rick Curtis (Personal Website)
Jan 01, 1111 Are Extended Warranties Warranted?

QUOTE: Extended warranties (also known as service contracts) are often better deals for the dealer than they are for the consumer.

 Smart Money