Yesterday, I noted that now that Rand Paul has gone from a primary race to the general election that:  “Paul is now facing a very different kind of campaign” because he is now going to be scrutinized in new ways and will have to explain himself to a different kind of electorate if he is [...]

Earlier today, James offered the following advice:  “Do not broadcast news of your rectal exams, your misdeeds, or negative opinions about your boss on social media sites!” Thankfully, no rectal exam information, but more or less on the boss front, the AP provides so corroborating evidence:  Waitress fired for griping about tip on Facebook. A [...]

Radley Balko writes about “a minor irritation” we both share. Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed more and more retail outlets who instruct cashiers to ask me for donations to various causes when I’m making a purchase. I was hit up a couple of times two donate a dollar or two to breast cancer [...]

WSJ’s Scott McCartney explains “Why a Six-Hour Flight Now Takes Seven.” our airline seat may not have much padding, but the airline’s schedule sure does. Delta Air Lines Flight 715 from New York to Los Angeles now takes more than seven hours to fly across the country, according to the airline’s March schedule. That’s an [...]

In a rather bizarre case, the District of Columbia is suing AT&T for the value of unused money on calling cards owned by someone else. The attorney general for Washington D.C. has filed a lawsuit against an AT&T Inc (T.N) unit, seeking to recover consumers’ unused balances on prepaid calling cards.  The suit claims that [...]

Faced with new regulations limiting some especially unpopular practices, many banks will introduce different practices, also sure to be unpopular but not yet illegal, to replace them. The nation’s banks will be bombarding customers with new fees and products in 2010 as they try to replace more than $50 billion in revenue wiped out by [...]

The federal government is placing limits on the ability of airlines to mistreat customers. They don’t go nearly far enough. U.S. airlines could face stiff fines for stranding passengers aboard grounded planes for more than three hours, according to a regulation that officials said on Monday was aimed at upholding passenger rights. The Transportation Department [...]

Tyler Cowen dubs the paradox of choice — the idea that people become unhappy when given too many choices — “one of the most overrated and incorrectly cited results in the social sciences.”  He cites Tim Harford‘s recent piece in FT describing research on the subject: Is more choice better? Ten years ago the answer [...]

With regulation threatening their current business model, credit card companies are responding with new fees, Sandra Block reports for USA Today. Starting next year, Bank of America will charge a small number of customers an annual fee, ranging from $29 to $99. The bank has characterized the fee as experimental. But card holders who have [...]

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Daniel Indiviglio argues that “We like bad customer service.” Actually, though, while he states it, he doesn’t really argue that at all.  Rather, he argues that we’re not willing to pay more for good customer service and thus provide no incentive to companies to provide it. Let’s say you [...]