Any music fan eager to bulk up their collection in the ’90s knew where to go to grab a ton of music on the cheap: Columbia House. Started in 1955 as a way for the record label Columbia to sell vinyl records via mail order, the club had continually adapted to and changed with the times, as new formats such as 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs emerged and influenced how consumers listened to music.

Three years ago I walked out of my house and put a .32 pistol to my head.” Jared Allen, a property manager from Idaho, chokes up as he tells this story, a tear running down his weathered face. Jared didn’t kill himself that day. He fell to the ground and begged the Lord for help, and soon, his brother-in-law arrived from Canada with a dietary supplement he had designed, EMPowerplus Q96.

Rip-off on aisle four. The city has launched a probe of Whole Foods Markets after investigators nabbed the upscale food purveyor for routinely overcharging customers on groceries during dozens of inspections dating back to at least 2010, the Daily News has learned. The most recent spate of violations came during a sting operation the Department of Consumer Affairs conducted in the fall that specifically checked the accuracy of the weight marked on pre-packaged products.

Two managers of the taxi-ordering app Uber have been arrested in France. A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor said they were in custody for questioning over "illicit activity". Uber, which puts vetted drivers in touch with passengers, is unpopular with registered drivers in many cities because they tend to undercut prices. A recent French taxi-drivers' strike turned violent. The US company is banned in some places, but it says it will keep operating in France.

A week after a New York City investigation found that Whole Foods Market Inc. stores were overcharging for pre-packaged products, the company's co-chief executives admitted pricing mistakes were made. The statement comes a year after the Austin, Texas, grocer agreed to pay nearly $800,000 in penalties for overcharging in California stores.

The disingenuous ways Uber hides behind its algorithm.

Lenovo has again been caught playing fast and loose with customers’ privacy and security. First, it was Superfish. Now, it’s vulnerable crapware that won’t go away, even if you reformat or replace your hard drive. Read on for the full story…

After searching through the Ashley Madison database and private email last week, I reported that there might be roughly 12,000 real women active on Ashley Madison. Now, after looking at the company’s source code, it’s clear that I arrived at that low number based in part on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Equally clear is new evidence that Ashley Madison created more than 70,000 female bots to send male users millions of...

Uber warned on its website that New Year’s Eve customers should not be surprised by “surge pricing” due to the high holiday demand. And, yet, many were. Actually, “surprised” is probably not the word. Maybe “shocked” is more like it, for customers who ended up paying nearly 10 times the normal rate for a ride. Uber defends surge pricing this year, just as it has in the past, noting that it’s the simple economics of supply and demand driving the rates.

Travis Kalanick, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Uber, really didn't want to deal with a lawsuit brought against him by one angry former customer: for the past three months, his lawyers have been trying to get the judge to drop the case, which claims that Uber's pricing algorithm violates antitrust laws. But yesterday, Manhattan judge Jed Rakoff ruled that he won't dismiss the suit, which is seeking class-action status on behalf...

Microsoft ‘Upgradegate’ irks Windows users. Microsoft has some explaining to do. It’s not “just” Chinese consumers who are up in arms about what some are calling forced updates to Windows 10, but a noisy group of U.S. users are also steamed about a change to the update process that they say tried to dupe them into upgrading their older version of Windows. The issue? Microsoft quietly changed how the upgrade process worked, according to reports on Reddit, PC World, software support forums, and elsewhere.

It's no secret that Apple makes a ton of money by charging 'astronomical' fee for replacing and fixing display and other components of iPhone and iPad (as well as Mac line). For instance, the company charges $599 for replacing the display on the iPad Pro tablet. Which sounds insane when you realize that you can almost certainly purchase a new iPad Pro under $700. And this is what most people do. A Huffington Post article notes that this behavior has contributed significantly in "generating heaps of e-waste."

There is no denying that the real estate market in Vancouver is red hot – prices have been rising with no end in sight. But one market analyst thinks we will see the bubble burst. Marc Cohodes used to run one of the largest hedge funds on Wall Street. Now, he’s eyeing the Canadian housing market.

After nearly a year of radio silence, the infidelity hookup site Ashley Madison has finally released a statement about what's next for the company. Among other things, the company's new executive team admits that it used fembots to lure men into paying to join the site, which promised the men discreet affairs with willing women. In fall 2015, Ashley Madison made headlines when a hacker or hackers known as Impact Team released massive data dumps from the company's source code, member databases, and then-CEO Noel Biderman's e-mail. The member database contained the names of...

Turns out there might not be ethics in gaming journalism, after all. A new order by the Federal Trade Commission might give GamerGate reason to pick up pitchforks again. Warner Bros. has just settled with the FTC over charges that it “deceived consumers” during the marketing campaign for 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Per the FTC, Warner Bros. failed to disclose it paid online influencers, like YouTube phenom PewDiePie, to positively promote one of its games in content presented as “reviews.” As a result, the FTC has proposed Warner Bros. must be upfront about paid marketing in the future...

Its members call it, with an almost religious conviction, “the Olympic Movement,” or “the Movement” for short, always capitalized. At the very top of “the Movement” sits the International Olympic Committee, a nonprofit run by a “volunteer” president who gets an annual “allowance” of $251,000 and lives rent-free in a five-star hotel and spa in Switzerland. At the very bottom of “the Movement” — beneath the IOC members who travel first-class and get paid thousands of dollars just to attend the Olympics, beneath the executives who make hundreds of thousands to organize the Games...

Anyone requesting an Uber ride in a 12-sq mile area in the center of Pittsburgh might now be randomly allocated a self-driving Ford Fusion rather than a human-operated vehicle. But passengers riding in Uber’s computer-controlled cars today might be surprised at just how experimental the technology is. According to documents obtained by the Guardian under public records laws, until as recently as June anyone not employed by Uber riding in one of its autonomous vehicles (AVs) had to sign a legal document waiving the company of any liability for their injury or death.

When you're among the worst ranked companies for customer service in America, you consistently need to find new ways to ramp up your game if you want to take malicious incompetence to the next level. Enter Comcast, which despite constant promises that it's getting better, routinely keeps finding itself in the headlines for immeasurably shady business practices. Earlier this year, for example, the company was sued by Washington's Attorney General for charging users a $5 per month "Service Protection Plan," then routinely and intentionally charging users for repairs that should have been covered under it.

The hamburger chain Burger King has been buying animal feed produced in soy plantations carved out by the burning of tropical forests in Brazil and Bolivia, according to a new report. Jaguars, giant anteaters and sloths have all been affected by the disappearance of around 700,000 hectares (1,729,738 acres) of forest land between 2011 and 2015. The campaign group Mighty Earth says that evidence gathered from aerial drones, satellite imaging, supply-chain mapping and field research shows a systematic pattern of forest-burning.

If you’re test-driving a car at a dealership pay attention to the check engine light when you turn the key: it should temporarily flicker then go away. If it doesn’t, the dash has been tampered with to mask a potential issue. Also, if a dealership car is parked over a puddle they do not want you looking underneath it.