Gas

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For a friend, we aren't being price gouged says at least one consumer group:

In a past life we were asked to prove that local gas stations were price gouging New York City residents. We knew this to be false, and found the proof we needed in a meticulously researched report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

And more importantly:

Despite popular misconceptions, price gouging almost never occurs as prices rise. Instead, price gouging occurs when dealers keep prices artificially high in order to gain a little extra profit or recoup costs, even though the DTW price has declined.

Which means that a fairly good sign that you're not being gouged is when the prices are going up.

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Some of the consumer groups have published a new report documenting some of the marketing practices aimed at kids. Like this one:

KFC used a high-pitched tone as a promotional "buzz" device for a recent "interactive advertising campaign." The MosquitoTone™ was embedded in TV commercials to launch KFC’s new "Boneless Variety Bucket™." In its press release, the company explained that the popular cell phone ring tone "is too highpitched for most adults to hear because most people begin to lose the ability to hear high frequency tones starting at age 20. This is a fact not lost on young Americans who seek the sound for clandestine ring tones that don’t turn the heads of nearby adults."

A former payday scum manager comes clean in a video released by The Center for Responsible Lending.

In this 4 minute video, Rebecca tells how payday loans are rarely two-week loans. Most of her customers came in payday after payday to renew the loan—after the first time, they couldn't afford to pay it off. Rebecca tells how she and her co-workers explained away the 400% interest rate, and how tough their collection tactics were. And she tells how she came to understand that rather than help her customers, these loans were "keeping them poor."

Now if Virginia would just kick out the whole industry like West Virginia did.

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If you aren't watching your rates or if you don't understand what you're paying, you could end up with a huge cell phone bill by handing a teen a cell phone with text message capability.

It turns out that West Virginia has kicked out these sleazebag lendors. Now if every other state would follow their example, we'd have something.

George W. Bush

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According to recent testimony, Bush's crony, Gonzales, tried to go over the head of acting Attorney General James Comey and coerce John Ashcroft who was deathly sick and in the hospital to re-authorize the spying program in 2004.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program. “I was angry, ? Mr. Comey told the committee. “ I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper. ?

Debt is the pitts

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In clever application of the law, debt collectors have started to garnish wages from debtors. To stop the garnishment, you have to pay to file the case in district court.

Microsoft dirty trick: installing stuff you don't need or want

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The Windows Updater is supposed to patch your system against critical flaws and exploits. To make things easier for normal users, there's an "Express Install" button where you don't have to review each update one at a time and can just trust Microsoft to install only the most security critical patches.

Enter the Windows Genuine Advantage notification tool. It tool doesn't protect you or do anything at all to help your system, it collects data about your computer and declares your copy of Windows legal or not. In millions of cases, it wrongly identifies systems as being "pirated" and nags users repeatedly about having an illegal copy and how to contact Microsoft for a legitimate one. Even worse, it locks you out of further security updates until you do.

To make sure that you don't miss WGA, they slipped it into IE7, Windows Defender, and Windows Media Player 11. But the worst of all was issuing it as a "critical update" on Windows updater. This way, anyone who clicked the "Express Install" button would get it by default without knowing better.

It's because of practices like this that geeks don't like Microsoft. They slipped a tool onto your machine that spies on your system and disables functionality. Sounds like a virus to me.

So why am I posting such old news now? First, I haven't talked about this before and it really ticks me off. Second, the WGA made PC World's 20 all time most annoying tech products (at number 9).

Sleazy Sales

Here's a sheet they use for upselling people on what many consider to be worthless insurance.

(Image copyright Jeremy Duffy)

Maybe not beating, but at least not falling for it. The Consumerist hosted a fantastic expose on how dealers use a four square piece of paper to rip people off right in front of their eyes. I have actually seen this before and don't remember what the result was, but I'm pretty sure we walked away thinking we had "won" when we got a lower monthly payment.