Nisondia Tv

The federal government has f ined Fiat Chrysler $105 million for its failure to address vehicle defects and active recalls , and perhaps they’ve concluded that customers will respond to a cash incentive , not a cash punishment. Taking a break from desperately hugging General Motors, today the automaker announced an offer: car owners get $100 if they bring their vehicle in for repair, and an extra $1,000 or $2,000 trade-in incentive to buy a new car instead. The company hopes that offering money or trade-in incentives encourages people who own affected cars to bring their vehicles in for replacement. If the owners traded in recalled Jeep Grand Cherokees from the ’90s or Jeep Libertys from the ’00s for brand-new vehicles, the company certainly wouldn’t complain. Part of the company’s punishment from NHTSA was for not making needed parts for the repairs available: if they’re bribing people to come in and get their cars fixed, the parts must be available now. To find out whether your vehi...

(Eatsa) Would you eat in a restaurant where you don’t interact with the employees at all? There’s a new restaurant that’s either the next frontier in segregating our society by wealth, or an efficient way to grab a quick bowl of quinoa. Diners order and pay for their meals using tablet computers, then pick them up from glass cubbies, like a neo-automat. Time for a brief consumer history class: automats, are restaurants that consist solely of vending machines; they’ve existed in different forms in different countries, but the most familiar to Americans would be the Horn & Hardart chain in major cities . The automated cafeterias had high-quality meals and desserts in little cubbies behind glass doors, and customers bought them using coins for each individual item. Eatsa, a new restaurant in San Francisco, is the latest restaurant to revive the idea, using tablets to take orders, then serving the meals in cubbies with translucent screens on the front, where the customer’s name pops up...

( Chris Goldberg ) Last week, Tyson Foods and McDonald’s said they were cutting ties with a poultry farm in Tennessee that was accused by an animal rights group of mistreating and abusing chickens . Authorities in that state now confirm they’re looking into the allegations of criminal animal cruelty by operators of the farm. Tyson sourced the meat it sold to McDonald’s for chicken McNuggets from the farm in question. Last week the company announced it would no longer get its chickens from the Tennessee Farm, after Mercy for Animals published undercover video footage that reportedly showed chickens being beaten and stabbed with a pole that has a spike on it, as well as sick and deformed chickens mixed in with healthy birds in a huge, over-crowded holding area. Mercy for Animals had asked Tennessee authorities to prosecute the owners of T&S Farm for violation of state laws prohibiting animal cruelty. “The case is currently under investigation,” said Colin Johnson, assistant district ...

( frankieleon ) Current lottery winners in Illinois might have to delay their joyful reactions for a little while. The state hasn’t passed a new budget, which means that they’re unable to pay lottery winners whose prizes are $25,000 or more. That’s a total of 29 lottery winners still waiting for their money since the current fiscal year started on July 1st. Without a state budget in place, lottery officials can’t legally pay out big prizes. Prizes under $25,000 can be paid at a person’s local lottery claim center, and prizes under $600 can be cashed in at a store that sells lottery tickets. It’s not the most serious consequence of the state budget crisis by any means, but frustrating for winners who have been handed a great big ceremonial cardboard IOU. The state comptroller’s office cuts checks for $25,000 or above, and lottery winners aren’t happy. “I bought the ticket, I should get the money when it’s due to me,” a man who won $250,000 on a scratchoff game told TV station WLS . “I s...

( Payton Chung ) If you shopped at Jewel-Osco recently and used your credit or debit card to pay, you might want to check your accounts and make sure you weren’t charged multiple times for one transaction: the grocery chain confirmed on Monday that its payment system suffered a glitch that could’ve caused some customers to be overcharged for their purchases. Though Jewel isn’t saying how many customers may have been affected, it confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that “some” customers could’ve had issues. “Late last week, our third-party payment processor notified us that there was a payment system outage which resulted in some customers’ debit and credit cards inadvertently being charged twice or more for one transaction,” a Jewel spokeswoman told the Tribune. “We are investigating this issue with the processor, and we deeply regret any issues that customers may have experienced as a result of this.” One woman was frustrated to find that she ended up getting hit with additional charges...

Between Prime Pantry , Amazon Fresh and Seattle’s new Prime Now alcohol delivery , you never have to leave your house to restock the pantry. That is unless you want fresh produce grown by local farmers. Well, it appears that Amazon has that covered for you now, too. The Los Angeles Times reports that the e-commerce giant is testing what it calls Farmers Market Direct in certain areas of Southern California. The program – which is a partnership with Fresh Nation, a company that connects farmers and vendors with consumers – is advertised as delivering baskets of fresh produce to consumers just hours after its been harvested. Customers can choose either small or large deliveries of fresh vegetables, fruits, or a combination through the Farmers Market Direct page. However, there isn’t someone with Amazon simply walking the fields of local farms to complete deliveries. Instead, the produce is chosen by “providers who attend local farmers markets in neighborhoods each day of the w...

( Ryan Dearth ) As the first states moved toward the legalization of marijuana, some in the booze business were concerned that having easier, legal access to pot would somehow encroach on alcohol sales. But in Colorado, where marijuana has been legal since the beginning of 2014, consumers are not giving up their wine and beer in favor of weed. The Guardian points to the fact that Colorado’s tax revenue from alcohol has continued to grow in the year and a half since legalization. For the fiscal year 2015, alcohol excise taxes were up a total of 2.1% (the same increase as FY 2014), led by a 2.9% increase in tax revenue from distilled spirits. At the same time, Colorado brought in more than $102 million in taxes and fees from marijuana for the year ending in May 2015 , nearly triple the $34.85 million it raked in during the first fiscal year in which pot was legalized in the state. Some alcohol companies have expressed concerns that consumers would choose marijuana over their alcohol of ...

( Eva A. ) If you seek pumpkin-flavored food items in as many venues as possible, we have some bad news: only 38% of McDonald’s outlets plan to offer the chain’s pumpkin spiced latte (not to be confused with the pumpkin spice latte served elsewhere) this fall and winter, as part of a plan of rotating regional offerings and limited-time offerings. It might sound strange that a fast-food restaurant that built its empire by being the same everywhere hopes to save itself from falling sales by changing what it offers in different places. Their goal seems to be to create buzz for their products by offering them for limited periods and rotating them through different regions. Even the McRib didn’t appear on every menu nationwide the last time it was available. Some areas also get their very own products that aren’t offered in other places: New England had the McLobster this summer , for example. While you might think that New England can keep the McLobster, knowing that it’s a limited-time o...

( Tobyotter ) When’s the last time you went to a Frisch’s Big Boy? Can’t remember, or maybe you don’t have one nearby? The chain’s new boss wants to change that, and is pushing to expand to more franchise locations in the U.S., as well as retool the restaurants to bring in the younger set. You know the word, starts with an “m” and rhymes with “shmillennials.” NRD Capital took over Frisch’s Big Boy restaurants last week after shareholders approved a $175 million acquisition , marking the first time in the chain’s history that it won’t be under family ownership. NRD’s head honcho and interim Frische’s CEO Aziz Hashim says that while the brand has been profitable, it can benefit from a few changes. Our primary goal is to make sure our existing customer is totally taken care of,” Hashim told the Associated Press . “So, no plan to alienate our current customer base; we want to actually make it better for them. At the same time, we want to make an effort to drive some new customers.” Some of...

( Mandy Jansen ) Even before the public face of Subway became embroiled in a child pornography scandal, the nation’s largest fast food chain was facing sagging sales and concerns from franchisees about management. The company is now hoping a new look and refreshed menu can help put Subway back on track. Citing people close to the matter, The New York Post reports that Subway plans to reveal a rebranding effort in 2016. The 50-year-old Connecticut-based chain is reportedly considering redesigning the look of not only its stores and employee uniforms but its ever-changing menu. While a spokesperson for the company says it is taking a “multifaceted” approach to improving operations, they offered few details other than to note Subway would offer staff training and new products. The rebranding comes as the company has faced several setbacks in recent years. According to the most recent QSR 50 report , which compares growth and sales at the nation’s largest fast-food companies, Subway has s...

( DCvision2006 ) Under federal law, a city can regulate cable TV rates for its residents if there is not “effective competition” in that market — that is, if one cable operator dominated the TV landscape in that area. But the Federal Communications Commission recently revised its way of looking at things so that it now presumes that satellite providers offer effective competition for the cable industry. This change hasn’t gone over well with broadcasters, who have petitioned a federal appeals court to challenge the FCC. Let’s go back to 1992, when Congress passed the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act. The law allows for cities — or any other body that authorizes local pay-TV franchises — to regulate cable TV rates if they can show that there is a lack of competition. In the decades since, the FCC had granted rate regulation authority to various governments and agencies around the country who had been able to demonstrate that the local cable TV company was the onl...

( funny strange or funny ha ha ) While running off to Sin City to get married by an Elvis impersonator used to evoke a certain spontaneous glamor and excitement, Las Vegas wedding chapels are more likely to be lonesome tonight than they have in the past, as those in the industry say quickie wedding customers just aren’t crowding their doors anymore. The number of Vegas weddings has been dropping over the last decade: In 2014 there were 128,000 Vegas weddings, while this year there were only 81,000, reports the AFP . This, despite the fact that Clark County’s marriage license office is open until midnight every day, even on holidays. “The wedding business here in Las Vegas has fallen off since 2004. We haven’t had ups and downs, and ups and downs — it’s just been a consistent drop every year,” says the pastor at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. “You know, people don’t have as much money anymore because the economy here isn’t that good.” Kitschy and quick used to be the height ...

( Brady O’Brien ) Over the weekend, a number of Consumerist readers wrote to us with the bad news that, like a growing number of companies, Dish Network is updating its terms of use to strip customers of their right to dispute legal claims in a court of law. There is a way for Dish subscribers to opt out of this restriction — but only if they do it right away. The updated Dish “Residential Customer Agreement” [ PDF ] includes a new provision that requires that all customers settle their disputes through either mandatory binding arbitration or in small claims court. Both situations put severe limits on the damages that can be awarded. Additionally, Dish customers are barred from joining other wronged customers in any sort of class action. So even if the company were to do something that negatively affected millions of customers, each individual subscriber would need to file his or her own dispute with the satellite service… and then have it heard by a third-party arbitrator, or in a sm...

Kim Kardashian issued a corrected endorsement for morning sickness pill after the FDA took issue with a first post’s lack of acknowledgement of associated safety risks. Weeks after federal regulators took issue with drug company Duchesnay for allowing mom-to-be Kim Kardashian to tout the benefits of its morning sickness pill on social media without properly disclosing the drug’s associated risk and limitations, the reality star posted updated endorsements, complete with acknowledgement of the pill’s side effects. The new “#CorrectiveAd” posts – which were quickly pushed down the page thanks to Kardashian’s posts about the MTV Video Music Awards – were mandated by the FDA after the agency issued a warning letter to Duchesnay in early August saying the lack of safety information included in Kardashian’s original July posts put consumers at risk. “I guess you saw the attention my last #morningsickness post received,” an Instagram post from the celebrity states. “The FDA has told Duchesn...

( Lisa Brewster ) Here’s yet another story that’ll make you want to go out and buy a lottery ticket, even though let’s face it, this kind of thing will likely never happen to us: A guy who found $20 on the street and used it to buy a lottery ticket has won $1 million as a result of his lucky break. The California Lottery says a San Francisco Bay Area man spotted a $20 bill on the street outside the airport last week, and decided to buy two scratch-off tickets with it. One of them yielded the top prize of $1 million. “I scratched the ticket outside of the store,” he said, saying he was in shock when he won. “I told my friend who I was with that I didn’t know if it was real but, ‘I think I just won a million dollars.’ ” The man works as a bartender, and says he’s planning on saving the money for now. The store where he purchased the ticket will also receive $5,000 from the lottery for selling the winning ticket. Keep your eyes peeled for free money, as well: the winner joked that he mig...

As technology advances and our cars become more and more autonomous, they are also opened up more and more to a new danger that didn’t used to exist on the roads — hack attacks. To protect that new technology and reassure future customers that riding in self-driving cars can be safe, Uber has hired the same two vehicle security researchers who managed to remotely hack a Jeep earlier this summer . Uber Technologies announced that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek would be joining the company as of this week, reports Reuters . Miller had been employed at Twitter and Valasek was working at security firm IOActive. They’ll be joining other autonomous vehicle experts hired away from Carnegie Mellon University at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, a research center the company opened in Pittsburg in February. A spokeswoman said the duo will work with the company’s top security officers “to continue building out a world-class safety and security program at Uber.” It’s likely that their jobs w...

If you only live in your condo part-time, you can imagine that the roommate who is there the rest of the time might get up to some hijinks while you’re away. But you probably didn’t think he would list your room on Airbnb without mentioning it. This is what happened to a man who splits his time between California and Chicago, and who recently came back from the West Coast to find that two random people sleeping in his bed and drinking his booze. “Your imagination goes crazy. What’s been going on?” The man, who owns the two-bedroom condo and sublets a room to another guy, tells CBS Chicago . “It could be everything from orgies to to drugs.” Suspecting that his roommate had listed the room online, the homeowner looked on the Airbnb site and found his condo was indeed available for rent. The roommate had even used some of the owner’s personal photos of the condo for the listing. Not surprisingly, that roommate has been given the heave-ho, while the homeowner looks for answers from Airbnb ...

( Patrick ) Heads up, mobile data hogs: T-Mobile is on to your tethering shenanigans and your testing the limits of what “unlimited data” means. In a blog post, CEO John Legere says that the company plans to go after its biggest “network abusers,” and it will begin today. What’s “abuse,” according to Legere? Using as much as two terabytes of data per month. It’s hard to use that much data in a month with just a phone, but this all goes back to the users violating the terms and conditions of their accounts, which T-Mobile coincidentally declared war on about a year ago . They didn’t end up carrying out the plan last year, but this year the warnings and account downgrades are happening. Smartphones can be used as mobile wifi hotspots, which is useful, say, when you’re trying to put up a blog post in the waiting room at the dentist. While T-Mobile only lets its users with unlimited accounts use about 7 gigabytes of data on their phones as mobile hotspots every month, there are ways around...

( slgckgc ) After saying that “forced labor has no place in [their] supply chain” for Fancy Feast cat food , Swiss conglomerate Nestle SA is now addressing another supply chain area, saying KitKat will be the first global chocolate brand to make all its products with sustainably sourced cocoa. This, as the chocolate industry has come under fire for allegations of child labor. All KitKat candy bars will contain cocoa made by independent third parties by the first quarter of 2016, the company said in a statement Monday . Nestle already uses only sustainably sourced cocoa in certain markets, but this move extends the practice worldwide, including in the U.S., where Hershey Co. holds the license to make KitKat bars. “We’re delighted to be a flag bearer for the industry, as the first global chocolate brand to announce such a move,” said Sandra Martinez, Head of Confectionery for Nestlé. “Sustainable cocoa sourcing helps safeguard the livelihoods of farming communities and delivers higher qu...

We can understand why people continued to shop at retailers that have been hit by data breaches. You still need to buy groceries, clothing, housewares, etc. But what about a website whose main selling point is privacy? Even though AshleyMadison.com — the dating website for cheaters — has been publicly embarrassed by the posting of millions of users’ personal data, it claims that people are still signing up… and that they’re not all just dudes. A statement from Avid Life Media, the Canadian parent company of Ashley Madison, claims that “hundreds of thousands of new users signed up” with the site in the last week, including 87,596 women. The company is making a point of this last figure after a Gizmodo analysis of the stolen Ashley Madison data concluded that not only was there an extraordinarily high ratio of male to female users on the site (even though it’s free for women to sign up), but that virtually none of the female accounts had communicated in any way with the men on the site ....

( БРАТСТВО ) When you’re a multibillion-dollar company that’s been under heavy scrutiny from federal regulators and you’ve been turned down by several potential suitors in the last year, you don’t simply give up on a possible merger. Or at least that seems to be the case for Fiat Chrysler when it comes to the automaker’s unrequited love for General Motors. Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne once again expressed his desire to see the two car manufacturing heavyweights join forces in an interview published over the weekend on  Automotive News. Although Fiat Chrysler [FCA] was shot down by rival GM previously, Marchionne says he’s not backing away from a potentially lucrative deal, not without a fight, anyway. After crunching the numbers, he tells Automotive News, that his board feels there really is no choice in the matter; they must put pressure on GM to begin talks. “Look, the combined entity can make $30 billion a year in cash. Thirty. Just think about that [expletive] number,” ...

Google provided this example of what its new services ad function will look like. Less than a year after Amazon took on the likes of Angie’s List, Yelp and other companies that can connect consumers to professional service providers like plumbers, locksmiths, electricians and others, Google announced it would join the fray by adding prescreened service providers to its sponsored search results. The new service – which launched in the San Francisco Bay area on Friday – is part of Google’s paid app for small businesses called AdWords Express in which professional service providers pay to be within the top search results for a given word, like “plumber” or “clogged toilet.” Service providers are screened and qualified by Google. They must be licensed, insured and complete a background check and mystery shopping review, a spokesperson for the company tells the Wall Street Journal. After the qualifying process, Google says it will organize the information provided by the company into a bu...

You have until the end of September to see Katniss on Netflix. While there’s always plenty of streaming content to watch on the Internet these days, if you’re a fan of Hunger Games or Transformers flicks, better watch them on Netflix now, while you still can: the subscription streaming service says it won’t be renewing its deal with Epix, the cable provider with domestic streaming rights to those movies in the U.S. Hunger Games: Catching Fire , World War Z and Transformers: Age of Extinction will all expire at the end of September, Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix announced in a blog post on Sunday . Netflix says that it’s working on its own original movies so that members can have access to newer content, because studio licensing practices often mean a long wait to see theatrically released movies at home. In the meantime, the company says it won’t be renewing its deal in the U.S. with Netflix. “While many of these movies are popular, they are also widely available on ...

( @marc_weiner ) People traveling through Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday were in for a bit of a wait, as authorities locked down Terminal C for more than two hours after a man breached security. CBS New York reports that shortly before 7 p.m. , a man illegally entered the terminal through a door in a secure hallway. A passenger waiting in the terminal tells the Associated Press that he heard yelling and then saw several TSA agents chasing a man. Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained the man and turned him over the Port Authority police. The AP reports that the man had a ticket for a flight at the airport, but it was unclear why he entered the secure hallway. Immediately after the man was detained, CBS New York reports, that per security protocol, the terminal was evacuated, put on lockdown and swept by authorities and K9 units. It reopened around 9:30 p.m. Travelers at the airport took to Twitter during the lockdown, showing long lines of people wai...

( frankieleon ) In recent months, Walmart increased pay for entry-level employees so that all workers were making at least $9/hour . At the same time, the retailer’s earnings have come up short of expectations, leading Walmart to instruct managers to curb spending by cutting hours for some workers. Bloomberg News reports that Walmart HQ recently explained to store managers that if they have over-scheduled their staff — that is, if the store’s sales projections aren’t in line with its labor spending — they may need to do things like send people home early or direct them to take a longer, unpaid lunch break. Bloomberg says dozens of employees have confirmed these types of hour reductions in their stores have already begun to take place. Walmart claims this won’t affect efforts to provide better customer service, cleaner stores, or properly stock shelves. However, one Texas Walmart staffer says her store has cut 200 hours of worker pay per week from its ledger. In a single day, eight wor...

( eren {sea+prairie} ) After American consumers learned about horrible working conditions and trafficked workers on some fishing vessels out of Thailand, class action lawsuits began, accusing American, European, and Thai companies of benefiting from deplorable working conditions farther up their supply chain . One of the companies accused, the Swiss conglomerate Nestle, says that “forced labor has no place in [their] supply chain” for Fancy Feast cat food. In an e-mail to the Associated Press , the company didn’t deny the allegations, but did explain that its suppliers are supposed to respect human rights, and the company has worked to eliminate all forced labor from its global supply chain. The initial class action complaint points out that while cans of Fancy Feast do say that the fish comes from Thailand, it does not specify “Made in Thailand out of fish that may have been caught by men and boys trafficked from poorer neighboring countries and forced to work punishing hours while mo...