For 10 years—including the boom times banks enjoyed in the first half of this decade—the FDIC was prevented from collecting fees from 95% of financial institutions, which it would have used to further build up its safety net in the event it would someday have to bail out a bunch of stupi...

Self-identified rational people take pride in the fact that they can't be easily manipulated, but of course that's the pride part of their dumb monkey brains talking. Here's an interesting study that measured whether hard-to-pronounce words were perceived as riskier than words that were easier to pr...

Erica, who writes Philadelphia Weekly's Style blog, went to Target this past Saturday to purchase some new tank tops. She and her boyfriend filled their cart with a lot of other stuff too—"Ready to stimulate the economy?" she joked to him on their way to the register—and they agreed to s...

In 2006, Jennifer—the co-founder of popular parenting/consumer advocacy site Z Recommends—took her two-and-a-half-year-old to the bathroom at the local Toys R Us store. What she didn't know was that this particular store featured the awesome striking power of the Action Toilet Stall with...

Time Warner Cable is running a pilot program in Texas where they're metering your bandwidth usage and charging extra if you exceed your monthly allotment. This also gives them the opportunity to create a tiered system where you pay more for more bandwidth. Richard is a TWC Texas customer, and his st...

Someone wrote to us this week that a person in his family is terminally ill, and that he was told "that the cost of the casket, funeral, viewing, and burial would possibly exceed 12,000 dollars." He thinks that's an "exorbitant amount of money," and so do we. There is no reason to pay that much mone...

Ryan's wife is currently traveling alone with their 3-month-old son on the way to an unexpected funeral near Salt Lake, Utah. Despite the fact that she paid for the rental up front as part of an Orbitz package, the local Hertz jerks are refusing to give her the car unless she goes to an ATM and brin...

Utah, that's which state! Or so says Harvard researcher Ben Edelman, who "analyzed subscriber data from an unnamed 'top 10 seller of online adult entertainment.'" When comparing broadband subscribers, Utah comes in first with an average of 5.47 per 1000. In second place is Alaska with just over 5.03...

We all know that just because a rep on the phone promises you something, that doesn't mean it's necessarily true. But in Alan's case, two different United reps both confirmed, repeatedly—he asked several times before completing the purchase and again before canceling—that he could cancel...

Ace Hardware marketing meeting Marketer: I've got a great idea for a sales gimmick! You can get a discount on whatever you fit in this bag! Finance type: Unless that bag is glued shut, no way. We can't afford it. Marketer: [gleam in her eye] ...oh, I know how we can afford it. [cue evil laughter] Or...