| Volume 101 Number 7 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
You probably carefully review your credit card bill each month for fraudulent charges, but do you review your phone bill? If you don't you could be paying for something you never requested and don't want. Many phone-related companies place charges on a phone bill for a service you didn't request and don't want. You must catch it and complain. Most phone service providers promptly remove the charge once you make it clear you never authorized it.
For more general information about the law, check out my website.
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Sprint Set to Announce Much Lower Prices
Next week, Sprint will announce a new pricing structure. Early indications are that Sprint will offer pricing options so far below competitors that it'll easily become the best value for data-intensive consumers.
Sprint wants "every customer in America thinks twice about signing up to a competitor." To attract customers, Sprint plans to not only meet or beat competitors' pricing options, but also double the high-speed data offering.
For example, a new family plan includes up to ten lines of unlimited talk and text with 20 GB of shared data for $100 per month. As part of the promotion, Sprint will throw in an additional 2 GB of data per month for each line (up to ten lines) through 2015.
Will Sprint's new pricing be enough to make you switch?
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Certain Target Stores to Stay Open Later
To increase sales and better compete with Walmart, Target will extend hours of operation for about half of its stores. Instead of closing at 10 p.m., select Target stores will close at 11 p.m. or midnight.
Is a Target near you staying open late? To find out, visit Target.com and enter your zip code.
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GM Introduces Car Monitoring System
Do you ever worry what the valet does with your car when you hand over your keys?
Tackling joyriding is a relatively new task for automakers. In large part, the technology simply hasn't existed to monitor a vehicle without great expense. As a result, many car owners note the car's mileage or fuel level when they stop at the valet or think their kids are secretly going for a drive.
Hyundai and Mercedes took the first step, offering vehicle geofencing. With geofencing, when a car moves out of user-defined parameters, the car's owner will get an alert on his or her mobile device. However, the protection ends there. Who is driving the car? How fast are they going? Where are they going?
With the introduction of the 2015 Corvette, General Motors will unveil a new monitoring system that will allow the owner to watch live video of the driver from a camera mounted above the dash while also seeing how fast and where the car is going.
Check out the new option that allows you to keep an eye on your car when the keys are in someone else's hands.
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Your Money
Compare taxable vs. tax-free investment return!
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For the Lawyers
There is a presumption of reliance in FTC civil contempt actions.
The Second Circuit held that in an action by the FTC to enforce contempt relating to defendants' violation of a Consent Order, the FTC is entitled to a presumption that consumers relied, when deciding to purchase defendants' products, on defendants' omissions and misrepresentations. The court also held that the appropriate baseline for calculating damages, i.e. the actual loss to the consumers as a result of the defendant’s conduct, is the defendant’s gross receipts.
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