Paypal xclick

After the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a complaint against PayPal today, the company quickly agreed to refund $15 million to customers it ripped off over the past few years. PayPal will also pay an extra $10 million in fines to the CFPB, so the total settlement is $25 million. The CFPB accused PayPal of all sorts of schemes, so many that it kinda sounds like PayPal is run by my Grandpa Hirtz in his 1980s casino-boat drinking days rather than business professionals. Advertisement The almost impressively illegal scams that PayPal’s now paying for include: Advertising deferred-interest promotions, but then flat-out giving customers the wrong information when they asked about them, or just never answering the customer service line Charging customers with the interest they were unable to defer due to receiving the wrong information and/or never being able to speak to a representative about the deferred-interest promotion Automatically signing people up for credit … [Read more...] about PayPal Has to Pay $25 Million for Being Sketchy as Hell

Back when Kotaku wrote about a troll that targeted women, there was one critical word that kept popping up in responses: camwhore. Advertisement Also curious: the women in the videos streamed themselves casually playing video games, and they took donations. It was as if some folks were saying, no, the harassment these women face is actually warranted: look at them. Look! They're "using" their womanly wiles to "force" men to give them money. They're not even gamers. They're camwhores. Let it be. They deserve it. As I explained this ludicrous situation to a close friend, he didn't seem surprised at all. He told me of a relationship with a girl he went out with once. Apparently, she'd go online, drunk, and then put herself on camera for the amusement of other men. Advertisement He attributed it to low self-esteem; the ability to broadcast herself while playing games in front of an audience meant that she was granted a temporary, albeit unhealthy, confidence boost. Unable to deal … [Read more...] about They’re Attractive, They’re Women, And They Play Games Live On The Internet. But They’re Not ‘Camwhores.’

As The A.V. Club has done every year since 2006, we present a bewilderingly thorough list of funny, bad, funny-bad, or otherwise notable band names we encountered over the past year. As usual, it’s a glorious patchwork of genres and intentions, from deadly serious metal bands plumbing medical dictionaries for inspiration to anonymous local groups just trying to entertain themselves. Some bands are clearly trying very, very hard to make it in some way, and others don’t seem terribly concerned. As usual, our standard caveat precedes the list: These aren’t bands that necessarily formed in the past year, or even the past couple years. These are simply groups whose names we encountered for the first time this year (or at least don’t remember seeing and haven’t put on any list). Advertisement Stay tuned next week for a 10th-anniversary special edition of the Year In Band Names, looking back at the best of all that we’ve seen. Whither Here Comes Old … [Read more...] about Panting at the threshold of your worst imaginings: The year in band names, 2016

Back in October, I wrote about the “Holy Grail of Jeep Grand Cherokees,” an extremely rare, first-generation manual transmission Grand Cherokee left to rot on a Wisconsin dairy farm. After reading that story, a reader miraculously discovered a second grail for sale for $800 in the Middle of Nowhere, Colorado. Unfortunately, it was 1,500 miles away and plagued by a bad clutch, a worn-out steering system, and 260,000 miles of wear. Naturally, I bought it. Sight unseen. Because I’m a fool. On Thanksgiving day, a reader named Carter sent me an email with the title “Manual 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee - cars & trucks - by owner - vehicle automotive sale.” Clearly, he was forwarding a Craigslist posting, and as someone infatuated by manual “ZJ”-generation Grand Cherokees, I clicked it immediately. Advertisement This took me to a listing with some oddly-framed photographs of a black (and clearly rattle-canned) 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee for sale … [Read more...] about I Just Bought The Holy Grail Of Jeep Grand Cherokees But It Has 260,000 Miles And Is Broken In The Middle Of Nowhere

When PayPal announced last month that it would acquire Honey, the browser extension and app that helps you find coupon codes and deals when you shop online, my ears perked up. It wasn’t the news of the acquisition that piqued my interest: it was the fact that PayPal would pay $4 billion, mostly in cash, for the company. What could PayPal possibly want with Honey’s 17 million users? But the answer is obvious: data. The reality of every program you use that finds you deals, discounts, coupons, or cash-back rebates is that the service needs to collect information about your shopping habits in order to find those deals and discounts for you. Advertisement But is it worth trading your personal data about your shopping habits for a coupon code? Unfortunately, it’s not easy to give a definitive answer across the board. It depends on the service, what data they collect, and how they share it—and by share, I mean sell. How online shopping browser extensions make … [Read more...] about Should You Trust Online Shopping Apps Like Honey?