Consumer News & Alerts

January 8, 2007

BLUEHIPPO: THE EXTREME LAYAWAY PLAN
On its lively animated commercials, BlueHippo Funding purports to be the friend to those in need -- to those who otherwise could not afford a new computer or new TV. But a four-month ConsumerAffairs.com investigation casts doubt on those claims.

We found growing stacks of complaints on the shelves of almost every federal and state bureau, commission, department and consumer publication, mounting lawsuits and a refusal by the company to provide even the slightest response to our most basic questions. One has to wonder if, instead of a cerulean blue, the company's CEO and his hippo friend should be painted a greedy green.

Investigative correspondent Joseph S. Enoch's six-part report covers such topics as:

• The Pitch BlueHippo's advertising is appealing. It seems to offer credit-starved consumers an affordable way to get a new computer or TV. But the reality is quite different.

• A Short History What BlueHippo is and how it came to be.

• The BlueHippo Foundation The company goes on at great length about its supposed charitable foundation. We examine what the foundation has really done.

• Trouble Follows BlueHippo's Founder He's a man with a mission: to make money on the backs of the poor.

• BlueHippo Sounds Tempting? Read This First We offer some alternative advice on how to buy an affordable computer.

• BlueHippo's Response They say that every story has two sides. Not always.

UNSAFE AT ANY AGE
A new Consumer Reports study finds that infant car seats do a poor job of protecting infants, especially in side-impact collisions. Although European seats made by the same manufacturers are built to a tougher standard, seats sold in the U.S. can fail disastrously, the magazine's tests found.

Sadly, evidence in our files confirms this sorry assessment. Christine of Zaphyrhills, Fla. bought a Cosco car seat for her daughter and was pleased with it until the day her car was hit broadside while on the way to the zoo.

"The carseat held up but did not have enough padding to protect my little girl -- 14 months of age ... She died 3 days later in a coma of brain injuries because the padding in the headrest wasn't to standard," Christine told us, just one of several incidents illustrating the shoddy safety standards of U.S. infant seats. Saddest of all, the seats meet the standards established by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

NHTSA's Dirty Little Secrets Automakers -- and infant car seat manufacturers -- have a lot of influence with NHTSA, so much influence that the agency wants to hide even more public information from the public. Specifically, a new rule proposes that the accident and defect reports that consumers file with the agency be kept secret from the very taxpayers who support the agency and its employees. Why? Good question. A lawyers association is the latest to object.

THE WII WINS POINTS
Perfect it's not, but Nintendo's Wii is winning plaudits for its novel design that encourages video game players to move around, simulating the actions the games imitate. Confirming that a little movement is better than none at all, a new Mayo Clinic study endorses the concept behind the Wii. The study is the first to scientifically measure the energy spent playing video games.

CONGRESS PROMISES ACTION
There was much ado this week as Democrats took control of Congress, promising amidst the hoopla to jam a lot of action in the first 100 hours that the Congress is in session. Among the measures on the high-priority list -- lower student loan rates.

IT'S THE WEATHER
The unusually warm weather blanketing much of the nation is good for some, bad for others. Ski resorts aren't thrilled and neither are cruise lines, which are cutting fares to fill empty berths. The high temperatures are keeping oil prices low, as less oil is being used for heating. That translates into stable -- though not declining -- gas prices, about eight cents above last year. Some analysts are predicting gas prices will start to fall soon while others note that gas prices usually fall in January because of declining demand then start back up around Valentine's Day and rise through the summer. In other words, it's sort of like the weather -- highly variable.

Hybrid Sales Drop Hybrid fever ebbs and flows with the price of gas. Sales are off at the moment, but auto executives are convinced that we've entered the Age of the Hybrid. Toyota expects U.S. hybrid sales to climb by 50 percent in 2007 to nearly 300,000. General Motors is running flat out to bring its Saturn Vue Green Line hybrid to market.

JACKSON HEWITT GETS TAXED
The tax prep firm will pay $5 million, including $4 million in consumer restitution, to settle a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The suit alleged that the nation's second-largest tax preparation firm violated state and federal laws in marketing high-cost refund anticipation loans (RALs) mainly to low-income customers.

Subprime Lender Implodes Mortgage Lenders Network abruptly shuttered its offices, the latest "creative" lender to collapse. It's being seen as a bad omen for the housing market and may foretell troubles yet to come as interest-only loans and other high-risk mortgages go sour.

DOGS GET A LEG UP
Dogs have a lot of the same problems their owners do, including excessive girth. In an odd juxtaposition, the feds slapped promoters of human weight-loss remedies while giving the green light to a new Pfizer drug that's supposed to decrease your hound's appetite. The marketers of Xenadrine EFX, CortiSlim, TrimSpa, and One-A-Day WeightSmart will pay $25 million to settle federal charges that their advertising claims were not supported by scientific evidence.

"You won't find weight loss in a bottle of pills," said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. But over at the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine Stephen Sundlof was singing the praises of Pfizer's Slentrol. "This is a welcome addition to animal therapies because dog obesity appears to be increasing," he said. Go figure.

Worst Diets of 2006 Ear staples and "detoxification" programs were among the winners in an annual compilation of the most useless weight-loss schemes for humans. We don't know of a similar program for doggie diets ... at least not yet.

TOYOTA SWEATS OUT DRUNKS
Automakers are developing all kinds of new ways to keep drunken drivers off the road. Toyota has developed a system that uses the sweat from a driver's hand to analyze blood alcohol content. All you have to do is get a good grip on the wheel, and Toyota takes it from there.

Binge Drinking Even worse than having a few too many is having a lot too many, which unfortunately is something teens are increasingly prone to do. A new survey finds that 64 percent of teens who drink engage in binge drinking, defined as having five or more alcoholic drinks in a row. How to keep teens in line? Researchers say parents are the key element, and they offer some tips for parents.

Moderate Drinking On the other hand, yet another study finds that moderate drinking -- meaning one to two drinks a day -- may actually be beneficial for men with high blood pressure.

More health notes ...

• Plain Soap and Water Still Best for Washing Hands Antibacterial soaps don't do a markedly better job and add to risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

• Starbucks Cuts Trans Fats It took Starbucks long enough to get the picture, but it's moving quickly to enforce its new policy, which becomes effectively immediately in about half the chain's stores.

HI-DEF DVD BATTLE SUBSIDES
Many of us slept right through the raging battle over which format high-definition DVD players would adopt. This cliff-hanger was right up there with the epic VHS-Betamax cataclysm of the gone but still dimly remembered 20th Century. But thankfully, an armistice of sorts has been reached, with a settlement worthy of the most tenuous Middle East peace pact: Hardware makers have agreed to produce machines that will play DVD movies in both formats, HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Sony BMG Settles Root-Kit Suits Sony will pay $4.25 million to wrap up lawsuits filed by 39 states over the "root-kit" programs contained on many of its music CDs. The software was supposed to keep those evil music lovers from copying their CDs but also placed secret and potentially harmful programs on their computers.

Alpha Mail President Bush has given himself the authority to read your mail. In a "signing statement" added to a mundane bill, Bush awarded himself unprecedented new powers to search private mail without a warrant.

SCAMS & OUTRAGES

• Debt Collector Leading Edge Recovery used illegal tactics, state charges.

• New Years Greeting Be careful -- that greeting in your email inbox may be the Dref-V virus.

• Government Grant Promoters Company lured Vermonters into seminars that claimed to provide insider info on government hand-outs.

PASSPORT D DAY
January 23 is the latest drop-dead date for international travel. On that date -- and this time the feds insist they really meant it -- all international travelers, including U.S. citizens, arriving at U.S. airports will need a passport. Most travel agents are recommending that all their clients get passports, even if they don't travel internationally, anticipating that subjects in Big Brotherland will soon need a passport to travel internally. It's the backdoor route to a universal ID.

There's not much uproar about this. Your editor can remember when travelers were incensed by the border entry points in Arizona, where inquisitive agents stuck their heads in your car and inquired whether you were transporting any grapefruit.

RECALLS

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