Computers

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Free Wi-Fi Users Ignore Terms and Conditions and Get Pranked

An Internet company in Manchester, England called Purple decided recently to prove that consumers access free wi-fi services carelessly by not spending the time to click and read the terms and conditions of its use.

Purple terms

The company pranked users for a period of two weeks by tucking a “Community Service Clause” into their public wi-fi terms.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The user may be be required, at Purple’s discretion, to carry out 1,000 hours of community service. This may include the following:

• Cleansing local parks of animal waste
• Providing hugs to stray cats and dogs
• Manually relieving sewer blockages
• Cleaning portable lavatories at local festivals and events
• Painting snail shells to brighten up their existence
• Scraping chewing gum off the streets

So how many consumers using their free wi-fi services clicked the “accept” button despite being potentially being required shovel poop out of blocked pipes? A staggering 22,000 people! And how many people caught the catch? Exactly one!

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Staples.com Keeps Warranties Secret and That Could be Costly to You

Two years ago, Consumer World conducted a spot-check of 20 major Internet retailers to see if they were properly disclosing the manufacturer’s warranty on their websites for the products they sell.

Two-thirds of the sellers surveyed posted no warranties whatsoever for any of the items checked. Federal Trade Commission rules require online sellers, on or near the product description of items over $15, to either post the actual warranty or tell customers how to obtain a free copy from the seller.

At the time, for the five items checked at Staples.com, none had the actual warranty language disclosed nor a statement of how to obtain it, and the length of the warranty was only sometimes disclosed.

From a practical standpoint, how might this affect a shopper? Case in point: Last year, MrConsumer assisted two friends who were in need of a new desktop computer. He wound up recommending a Dell that was on sale at the time at Staples for between $400 and $500. Current version of product listing:

Dell 3650 Dell specs

Fast forward 10 months later, and one of the computers needed to be repaired. Upon calling Dell, my friend was informed there would be a charge equivalent to approximately half the cost of the computer because in-home service was not covered in the warranty. What? A desktop computer weighing nearly 20 pounds has to be disconnected and mailed to Dell to be repaired? You bet.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Dell Mail-in

Sure enough, on the Dell website, the warranty that came with this desktop computer was mail-in only. Who would ever expect anything but in-home service for a desktop computer under warranty?

So we asked several Staples’ PR folks to explain why they were not complying with federal law and disclosing product warranties right on their website, and why they were not at a minimum even clearly disclosing that in the case of this computer that the warranty was mail-in. We also asked now that Staples was sensitized to this issue, what steps they would take to comply with federal law and be more explicit about the type of warranty that comes with their products.

Their response: [this space intentionally blank since Staples did not reply to three requests for this information.]

The lesson, of course, is to never assume anything about a product’s warranty and to demand to see it before you make a significant purchase.

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Fake News Fakes Out Bing’s News Search

MrConsumer searches through thousands of news stories each week to find the two or three dozen best ones to feature in Consumer World. To do this, he uses targeted searches of Google news and Bing news everyday. Unlike the regular searches of Google and Bing, the news section only is supposed to list news stories from a core list of news and information sites.

Of late, however, Bing’s news search results have surprisingly been infected with listings for websites pitching fake news about, or the outright sale of illegal or counterfeit prescription drugs and other questionable potions or pills.

In a search for the keywords “consumer” or “scam” recently, Bing news presented about 20 results, half of which were not legitimate news stories (which we highlighted in green).

*MOUSE PRINT: (Use scrollbar below on the right to view.)

Bing news search


Note: Bing news results do NOT include paid advertisements or “sponsored results” as you might find elsewhere. The “stories” with green borders somehow tricked Bing’s algorithm into thinking these were legitimate news stories from legitimate news websites.

We alerted Microsoft’s technical support folks at Bing of the problem, including providing a screen capture. What ensued was an insane and inane series of nearly a dozen emails over a two week period. First they claimed they could not duplicate the problem. Then they asked for the search terms used (already provided) and a screen capture of the bad results (already provided). Then they wanted screen captures of each website that was listed improperly. (Do you own f*ing site screen captures I muttered to myself.) Then they wanted a list of all offending URLs. Oh, yes, I will find all the bad websites online that could come up in searches and send them to Microsoft. Nonetheless, we provided a list of about three dozen websites that kept offending. Their official response: they removed ONE URL.

I repeatedly suggested that something was wrong with their algorithm that was failing to filter out obvious scam sites that had nothing to do with legitimate news stories.

In desperation, we finally wrote to Microsoft’s PR firm, asking why Bing’s technical folks were seemingly doing little to weed out these fraudulent sites despite repeated complaints, and what the company was going to do to protect readers. Their response — silence. Nothing. Zilch.

In the past week, however, most of the bad listings have mysteriously been removed, but the problem may not be fully resolved yet.