Everyone by now has heard that keeping your tires properly inflated to the correct pressure saves gas. Why? Because tires on your car operate under extreme conditions and stress. From the intense summer heat to the frigged cold weather, your tires are under constant stress. To help you tires perform at maximum efficiency they need to operate at their recommended inflated pressure. Keeping them properly inflated helps their “rolling resistance” or how easily the tire rolls on the road, the better inflated the better the rolling resistance. Just a 3% decrease in tire pressure lowers your gas mileage by 1 percent.

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Mark writes:

I recently was forced to move for work. Considering the home market, it won't be a shock that I haven't been able to sell my own home. I'm still paying utilities since I need them on for showing the house. The city where I used to live recently raised the rates of the minimum water bill by about $35, making my new bill for zero gallons used a whopping $92.65 (this is New Mexico remember). This is not my issue though.

Among the "improvements" that have come with the rate increase has been new and improved water bills with return envelopes. I'm attaching a picture of the bill and the envelope. Look at it closely and think of what would happen if I put the bill in the return envelope, stamp it and send it off. I'll give you a hint, I'd waste a stamp and it'd come right back to me!

I sent an email about it last month to the "Deputy Village Manager" who assured me it would be fixed. It wasn't.

Sincerely,
Mark
Albuquerque, NM

We hope they aren't planning another rate increase to compensate for the sudden spike in delinquent accounts.

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Ever wanted to park in the handicapped spots but didn't because of pesky laws and social norms? Well, if you place your online Circuit City order for pickup at the Cantonsville, Maryland store, you can! Reader Andy discovered that the store is flagrantly violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by using the handicapped spots as the special web order pickup zone. Andy then went inside and discovered that Circuit City ignores all kinds of policies, including their own price match guarantee.

I went by my local Circuit City in Catonsville, MD today trying to get a birthday gift for my dad and noticed something interesting in the parking lot. They had the sign telling people to park for online pickup in front of the row of handicap spots. They have the deal of your order being ready in 24 minutes or you get a $24 gift card. I guess that $24 gift card would come in handy after you pay the $98 fine posted for illegally parking in the handicap spot itself. I looked around, this was the only sign they had for online pickup. Anyway, thought you might find this interesting. By the way, along with this disregard of the ADA, I also had a nice experience of Circuit City failing to follow their own 110% price match "guarantee". They were selling an external hard drive for $70 more than I had seen 15 minutes earlier, less than a mile away, but they would only offer to match the price and not give the extra 10% because 1) the price difference was "too much" (170 vs. 100) and 2) I had "seen the other price first". According to the manager, if I had bought the drive at CC first, then seen the other price, he'd give me the 10%. Unfortunately he refused to even look at the CC price match policy even though I had pulled it up for him on one of their laptops 2 feet away from him. For the record, their policy is "Find a lower advertised price from another local store with the same item in stock, and we'll gladly beat their price by 10% of the difference." Well, they didn't "gladly" do that at all. And in fact, if I had purchased it at CC first, I would have been ineligible for the extra 10% because "Plus, if you see a lower advertised price within 30 days of your purchase with us, we'll refund 100% of the difference." It became a matter of principle and it would have been a measly $7 that could have kept a customer. It also would have earned them over $200, because not only did they lose one sale on the hard drive (since I decided to give my business to the other store), but they lost a second sale on my father's gift too. Who is training these managers? Keep up the good work. -Andy p.s. For the record, I'm not leaving my dad hanging. I got his gift somewhere else. :)

Don't hesitate to call the corporate office when a store refuses to honor its price match policy. In this case, you could have also threatened to call the police to report the asinine web order pickup zones if they didn't honor the price match policy, only to call anyway because it's the right thing to do.

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Your nipple piercings are still a threat to national security, but the TSA will let you fly if you "allow a visual inspection of [your] piercings." The announcement came after TSA officials in Texas forced Mandi Hamlin to remove her nipple piercings with a pair of pliers before allowing her to board her flight. The TSA stopped short of apologizing to Ms. Hamlin, instead saying: "TSA acknowledges that our procedures caused difficulty for the passenger involved and regrets the situation in which she found herself."

TSA Responds to Nipple Ring Complaint [AP] (Thanks to Louis!)
PREVIOUSLY: TSA Forces Woman To Remove Nipple Piercings

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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to consolidate the nation's financial regulators into a tripartite gang that can save the economy from distress and doom. The plan to give the Federal Reserve broad new regulatory powers and streamline the regulatory community has been in the works since last March, before the start of the subprime meltdown. Paulson is worried that the U.S. markets are no longer competitive with maturing world markets, some of which aren't hampered by nuisances like regulation. After the jump we'll explain the consumer impact of the plan and introduce you to your three new regulators.

This plan would consolidate a large number of regulators into roughly three big new agencies.

Bank supervision, now divided among five federal agencies, would be led by a Prudential Financial Regulator, which could send examiners into any bank or depository institution that is protected by either federal deposit insurance or other federal backstops. It would eliminate the distinction between "banks" and "thrift institutions," which are already indistinguishable to most consumers, and shut down the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Any effort to merge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the S.E.C. is likely to provoke battles.

Yet another proposal would, for the first time, create a national regulator for insurance companies, an industry that state governments now oversee.

Administration officials argue that a national system would eliminate the inefficiencies of having 50 different state regulators, who have jealously guarded their powers and are likely to fight any federal encroachment.

The media is tripping over themselves to report the expansion of the Fed's role, but consumers should care about other parts of the plan.

The federal insurance proposal is a huge giveaway for the insurance industry. Insurers would be able to evade strong consumer protections at the state level by opting-in to what would be comparably lax regulation from the Treasury Department. If approved, it is not unreasonable to expect higher rates and fewer protections.

The new Prudential Financial Regulator, which would gobble up the five regulators that currently oversee banks and creditors, could severely harm consumers. We don't yet know who would steer the massive new regulator, or whether they would emulate the destructive model of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which preempts state authority and then sits idly by as consumers are financially raped.

So what is the media focusing on?

Paulson couldn't just ignore the subprime meltdown, so he is proposing a Mortgage Origination Commission, which would set baseline qualifications for mortgage brokers and chastise states for failing to adequately regulate the industry.

The plan also calls for broad new authorities for the Fed to oversee the market, "in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system." The proposal would standardize emergency borrowing from the Fed's discount window. In exchange for allowing non-bank failures to sally up to the window and beg for cash, the Fed will claim the ability to thumb through their books and balance sheets "in order to protect the Federal Reserve (and thereby the taxpayer)."

It is doubtful the plan will become law this year, but is an important vehicle for framing the coming debate over regulatory authority. Congress is going to put its prints all over the plan before it passes. The devil is in the details and Congress must ensure that any new regulatory environment isn't hostile to strong consumer protections.

After all, even the Treasury Secretary acknowledges that his proposal may not be enough to prevent the next subprime meltdown: "At a fundamental level, the root causes of market instability are difficult to predict, and past history may be a poor predictor of future episodes of instability."

Treasury Dept. Plan Would Give Fed Wide New Power [NYT]
Treasury's Summary of Regulatory Proposal [NYT]

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Ralph Nader will be on Lou Dobbs tonight and tomorrow night at 7pm Eastern, talking about, "corporate globalization, its dire affects on the American people and the Nader/Gonzalez recipe to fix the problem."

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Georgetown law professor and Credit Slips blogger Adam Levitin is having trouble disputing an erroneous $176.96 charge on his Citibank Amex card from PACER, the federal court's online docket system, which he accesses for free. The professor is a consumer credit expert and should have no problem understanding and fixing the error, right? Fat chance.

Let's first check out the professor's relevant credentials:

Professor Levitin's research focuses on financial institutions and their role in the consumer and business credit economy, including credit card regulatory and competition issues, mortgage lending, identity theft, DIP financing, and bankruptcy claims trading.

So he's a damn-smart expert on credit thingies. Let's see how he handled Citibank.

I called Citi and disputed the charge. The charge is a billing error under 15 CFR part 226.113(a)(1). Unfortunately my dispute did not compute in the Citi system. Because I was contesting an unliquidated amount of the charges, however, my case didn't fit into one of their eight dispute check boxes. (Note that Reg Z does not require that I know the amount of the error. See 15 C.F.R. Part 226.113(b)(3).) Finally, after speaking to a supervisor, I just decided to dispute the entire amount because that was the only way I could go forward with a dispute given the unbending parameters of Citi's computer system. I also contacted PACER to make sure that they had processed all my fee exemptions.

Fast forward to earlier this week. I still hadn't heard anything from Citi or PACER about the dispute's resolution. But, to my great surprise this month's Citi statement arrived. It says that I owe the full PACER balance and there's a finance charge tacked on for the disputed amount.

When I called Citi to inquire, I was told that I hadn't disputed the charge the previous month. This was in spite of fact that there were numerous notes about the nature of the dispute in my file. In other words, Citi had taken down all sorts of details about my dispute, but never actually processed that I was disputing the charge. Citi entered the dispute a month late, and only after I called to check up on it.

Well, Citi has now (supposedly) removed the finance charge and recorded the charge as contested. But Citi tells me that I need to submit documentation about the dispute or the charge will be reinstated. That means I have to send some 50 pages of court orders to Citi at my own time and expense for a merchant's mistake. The duty to investigate a billing error is Citi's. Nothing in Reg Z requires that the cardholder submit written documentation to the card issuer at my own expense. So why am I footing the bill? (Maybe there's language to that extent buried in my cardholder agreement...)

The professor sees five problems with the situation:

1. His credit report may take a ding from the late payment, something he has no control over and Citibank's CSRs are too incompetent to fix.
2. The surprise rate on the finance charge was 101.211%
3. After futzing with a compound interest calculator for half an hour, the professor couldn't figure out how Citibank was calculating the finance charge.
4. The late payment could trigger universal default provisions with his other creditors, causing a world of financial pain from Citi's mistake.
5. He can't close the account without losing his rewards or further dinging his credit score.

We take away one very simple lesson that every policymaker should appreciate: a renowned expert on credit cards is being harmed by his creditor and is practically powerless to fight back. Does this seem fair or reasonable to anyone?

My Very Own Risk-Based Repricing Experience [Credit Slips]

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BoltBus offers service between Washington D.C. and New York with fares starting at $1. Each ride comes not just with WiFi, but with power outlets at every seat—a luxury usually confined to Amtrak. The downside? (There are several.)

Only a handful of seats cost $1. Fares are capped at $20, which is still competitive with Greyhound and the Chinatown bus companies. From BoltBus' FAQ:

Our fares will start @ $1 (plus a transaction or booking fee), with a minimum of one $1 fare available on every schedule we operate every day. The fares we charge will vary by day of week, overall passenger demand and how many days until the travel will take place. Typically someone who purchases a week or two out will receive the cheapest fares so it will save you money to plan ahead. Even our higher walkup fares will be reasonable and will allow for inexpensive spur of the moment travel.

Bus-based WiFi is nothing to cheer about. All passengers share a single measly mobile connection. We once tried posting while traveling with BoltBus rival DC2NY. It did not go well.

Finally, BoltBus is the bastard spawn of Greyhound and Peter Pan, two of the most universally reviled transportation companies. They do, however, have a loyalty program: four round-trips earns you a free one-way ticket, a $1 value!

Frequently Asked Questions [BoltBus]

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Before you get seduced by the promise of an "all-inclusive" getaway, be sure you know exactly what you're getting for your money. TODAY travel editor Peter Greenberg reports.

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A former camera store manager came forward to defend retail renting as a common tactic that helps drive sales. Retail renting is when a customer buys a pricey item like a prom dress with the intention of returning it later. Our completely unscientific poll shows that 70% of you disapprove of retail renting, but our tipster insists that it is a victimless crime and a valuable sales tool. Our enlightening chat with the former manager, inside.

(What appears below was formatted from an IM conversation)

I saw just about any kind of retail renting you can think of. The biggest thing that I wanted to convey is that we, in the business, all did it. Managers, employee's and even the district managers got in the action too.

Sometimes, it was legitimate product testing. I never liked telling a mom that this camera would take great pictures of her children until I tried it out on my own. Other times, I "tested" the portable DVD player for a week while on vacation. But the rule was always that you paid for the item and then returned it when you were done with it. Nothing under the table.

Customers did it to. The occasional rental didn't really bother me all that much. What I found was that customers would on occasion buy a camera from me later on once they learned how lax we were about returns.

In fact, last week I "rented" a $1900 lens from [the store.] Now, normally I actually "rent" lenses from a company that's equipped to do so. However, I needed the lens the next day and [the store] was my only option. As far as I'm concerned, its a victimless crime.

The lens had already been opened and used by someone else. My thought was that if I beat up or damage the lens, I own it. If not, I return it and nobody loses anything. I know that for a fact as a former manager. The only time it would bother me would be when somebody got to return something well beyond the time limit. I sold a digital camera to a woman once who obviously had used her camera on her vacation. However, she had gone almost 15 days over the 10 day return window. Corporate allowed her to return the camera and I had a huge chunk of my check taken away. Had it been during the same window as when I received the comission, I wouldn't have minded so much.

I think that people need to understand that its really a victimless crime. In the world of cameras, unless the box has a factory seal you have to assume that its been opened and played with at some point. Some stores even go the extra step of breaking all the seals on all the boxes to remove that bias.

We sort of saw the idea of renting as another way to get people into the store to buy something. Even if they didn't buy a camera, they would on occasion become printing customers. This isn't something that we encouraged people to do mind you. Its not like you could walk up to me and say, "Hi, I'd like to buy a camera for the weekend and take it back," and I'd say SURE SIR HERE YOU GO.

What normally happens is the customer would come in and within 5 minutes would make a $500 camera purchase. Before leaving they'd take the camera out and have me spot check it to make sure it wasn't broken or anything. it was at this point that I realized they were renting. I wished them a nice day and started a pool within the store as to when they'd bring it back.

Some stores would try to "scare" the customer by warning them of return refusal policies or restocking fee's that don't exist. My guess is that they were banking on the fact that the customer would be too guilt stricken to question company policy. Some of them were right. But I always found it was hypocritical to stop customers from doing what we ourselves did on a regular basis

My first store manager bought and returned her home printer every month. When she quit, she returned it for good.

I guess what I'm trying to argue is that if its done correctly, its a victimless crime. The insiders do it in much worse fashion anyways. I would argue that if your willing to rent something, you might be willing to buy it (eventually). Allowing you to rent with me increases my chances of a sale. And that's what I really want.

Do retail renters ever go the extra dishonest mile and try to return damaged equipment?

Oh yes, but that's why you check out the equipment before you allow the return. That's where I put my foot down. If I couldn't sell the camera at full price to the person behind you, we have a problem.

The best is since [the store] has a warranty that covers customer damage, people assumed that if they broke it they could return it and the warranty would cover the repairs. Meaning we'd return their broken camera and fix it under our warranty and somehow not lose money on it.

You needed every plastic cover, every piece of wrapping to bring it back into my store and most of my customers knew that.

These would-be scammers didn't react well when confronted.

Most of them threw a fit. I would assume because they got caught. But that's what you get for disregarding how serious I take returns. Some people would rent without regard for the fact that I would still have to sell the product.

Sometimes we'd turn it into a sale. Well, I can't return this camera but I'll let you exchange it. Then i'd write "NO RETURN/EXCHANGE" on their receipt and the camera box. But yeah, they'd get pretty pissed. Especially when I found all the little things. I've denied returns because that little cover that comes with the batter (that everyone loses right away) was missing. Or a tiny scratch on the bottom of the camera.

My store was very thorough with returns.

So our former manager has no problem with renting. Would she herself rent from another store?

Hmm....
Well, there aren't many stores where you can these days. I did "rent" a heater from Costco once. I needed to warm my house for a party. I rented a $200 space heater, though I did end up buying a $30 a few weeks later from them. So I don't think it was a loss. I even repacked the rented heater the exact same way it was.

I suppose renting out of simple need is ok. Habitual renting to me would feel like stealing, and in truth, I did consider keeping the heater.

Does this change your opinion of retail renting? Take to the comments with your moral indignation.

(Photo: *** Fanch The System !!! ***)
PREVIOUSLY: Is Retail Renting Ethical?

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Want a free ebook copy of a Kurt Vonnegut novel? Free ebook site Wowio has five of them, along with lots of other copyrighted fiction, literature, comics, and other works. The site offers the wares through sponsorships, and only limits your downloads to three books per