Aeropostale Wants To Reorganize, Main Lender Thinks That’s Adorable

In recent months, we’ve shared with you the bankruptcy saga of Sports Authority, a sporting goods chain that was deep in debt, filed for bankruptcy protection, and planned to re-emerge as a smaller and reorganized retailer, but couldn’t make it work, ultimately selling its remaining stores to liquidators. Teen clothing retailer Aeropostale seems to be headed down a similar path, with its biggest lender pressuring the chain to get ready to auction its stores instead of reorganizing.

You may remember Aeropostale’s battle against Sycamore Partners, a lender that happens to own one of the company’s biggest suppliers. The retailer says that Sycamore intentionally pushed it into bankruptcy by demanding up front payment for merchandise.

Aeropostale is preparing plans for liquidating the company, which would involve selling stores either to another company that would keep them alive, or (more likely) liquidators that would sell off inventory and fixtures, then close the chain. Aeropostale claims that its factory-store (outlet) sales are great and that reorganization is a realistic course.

This is all time-sensitive, since from lender Sycamore’s point of view, it would be best to either hand stores off to a new owner as the back-to-school season begins. From the point of view of Aeropostale’s leadership, it’s the other way around: back-to-school season will bring in piles of cash that the chain can use to reorganize.

The retailer and the lender will have a nice chat about tthis during a hearing over bankruptcy funding in court tomorrow. Aeropostale’s plans for reorganization and for liquidation are due in July.

Aéropostale Battles Sycamore for Shot at Turnaround [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Tide’s Answer To Slumping Sales? Use More Detergent Pods!

While shiny, candy-colored detergent pods have poisoned many thousands of kids who mistake them for toys or treats, they’ve been success for detergent brand Tide and its parent company Procter & Gamble. So is it a coincidence that Tide’s new recommendation that customers use as many as three pods per load comes amid an overall sales slump in the detergent category?

The Wall Street Journal reports that sales of liquid detergent are down nearly 9% since pods first hit the market in 2012, and powdered detergent has dropped by nearly a third. Those decreases have both been offset to some degree by the 140% growth in pod sales, but pods still only make up about 15% of the market. Thus, overall detergent sales are down around 5% during the pod era.

So how is a company like P&G going to make up for the lost sales? Apparently by convincing people that they need to use more detergent to get their clothes clean.

Recent Tide ads feature users holding two pods at a time, and the company is now recommending that pod users deploy three pods for their largest load, making Tide the only company to do so (for now).

P&G tells the Journal that this is just a response to customer feedback; that customers are using larger machines and cramming more into them.

However, some competitors disagree.

“It’s clearly a way to boost sales,” said John Replogle, says the CEO of Seventh Generation, which is launching its own pods later this year.

When pods were introduced, they were advertised as a way to avoid the waste of liquid and powdered detergents, with their imprecise measurements. The idea was that a single load would require a single pod, but most brands now recommend up to two at a time for large loads.

One big problem — aside from all the various safety concerns — is that these pods already cost significantly more per “dose” than their counterparts.

Say a Tide pod costs you $.25 on average. The equivalent in liquid detergent will only run you $.19. Yes, that’s only six cents, but when you start doubling or tripling up — and then multiplying by all the loads you’ll wash over the course of a year — that’s a significant price difference.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Store Fitting Rooms Are Terrible And Make Everyone Feel Terrible

Do you like to take an armful of clothing items, bring them three at a time into the fitting room, put them on, look at yourself in the mirror under harsh fluorescent lights, and make a quick judgement in the store? Most people don’t appreciate this experience, which is one of the reasons why people are shopping online as much as they can. However, the return rate for clothes purchases is the same in stores and online. Why is that?

Yes, that’s actually true: we learned from Marketwatch that data from Body Labs, a company that studies how human bodies move and are shaped, shows that people return 22% of clothes purchased in stores, but 23% of clothes purchased online. That shouldn’t be the case, since stores that sell clothes generally have fitting rooms: people might change their minds later on, but things getting returned because they don’t fit shouldn’t happen. In theory.

The problem is that people aren’t actually using fitting rooms: the same data shows that 46% of shoppers surveyed said that they “hate” trying on clothes in a fitting room. That leaves stores with a big incentive to make the experience better. Returns are expensive, since they often don’t just end up back on the store shelf.

People might buy multiple clothing items, try them on in a leisurely fashion at home, and then return them because they don’t want to fuss with the fitting room. Another possibility is that people try things on, then try to apply the same sizing information to other items in the same store, or even other brands. That doesn’t work.

What does work? A retail strategist at Kurt Salmon suggests something very simple to Marketwatch: if a store can’t spare the staff to have someone sitting in the fitting room full-time, at least make a button available so customers can page for help when they need it.

Customers hate fitting rooms — and clothing retailers are paying the price [Marketwatch]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Adidas Misspells “Colombia” In Soccer Ads, Gets Sent Back To 3rd Grade Geography

Someone at Adidas must have been snoozing during the South American geography lesson in elementary school, because how else could you explain the company splashing “Columbia” all over ads featuring the Colombian soccer team?

See, Colombia is a country in South America, while Columbia is a university, a district, a city in Missouri, and a sportswear company (among other things).

Adidas, headquartered in Germany, found itself in the crosshairs for mixing the two words up for a recent campaign for the Copa Americana soccer (or football, if you’re the rest of the world) tournament. The ads showed Colombian soccer players in their new home team Adidas jerseys, all ready to kick the ball around, with the word “COLUMBIA” plastered on the bottom.

Many fans were ready to kick the ball into Adidas’ face instead, as many expressed outrage over the spelling mistake on Twitter:

Dear @adidas it is Colombia not Columbia… Thank you http://pic.twitter.com/6XfACSWk9e

— astrid rivera (@astriddrivera) June 7, 2016

Someone please tell @Adidas that they misspelled Colombia in their entire campaign. https://t.co/5qL1IL76uY #ItsColombiaNotColumbia

— Andy Checo (@andycheco) June 7, 2016

COLUMBIA…?😳 que alguien nos explique … 😂😂😂 lol! @adidas Es COLOMBIA🇨🇴😍 Que opinan? http://pic.twitter.com/CBPahnNTtF

— Jessica Cediel (@jessicacediel) June 7, 2016

Including one Twitter user who posted a full-page open letter to Adidas, reading in part:

“In a world where ignorance is infamous when it comes to the acknowledgement of third world countries, it is unbeknownst to me why the correct spelling of COLOMBIA is so difficult to comprehend for the general public,” she wrote. “However, it is even more infuriating to see a MULTI-BILLION dollar company, as Adidas, misspell the national campaign of the country’s team they are trying to promote and drive revenue from their name.”

According to Remezcla, the company also made the mistake on its website, which has since been corrected.

The company apologized in a statement, saying it’s in the process of fixing the ads. Adidas has made the team’s uniforms since 2011.

“We value our partnership with the Colombian Football Federation and apologize for our mistake,” the statement reads. “We removed these graphics and are quickly installing new versions today.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

What Happened? Amazon Removes Half Of The Streaming Video I Bought

By now, most of us are aware that videos come and go from Amazon’s streaming offerings; that a movie available on Prime this month may be gone the next. There are even caveats in the Amazon terms of service that videos you purchase from Amazon may vanish from your online library — and there’s nothing you can do about it. What you don’t expect is for half of a video you buy to suddenly disappear without explanation.

For months, Consumerist reader Rick and his 3-year-old enjoyed the digital double feature of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who!. When watched online, the two classic animated Dr. Seuss tales were part of the same single stream; Grinch comes first, immediately followed by Horton, and some bonus features for a total running time of about 80 minutes.

Then last week, they went to watch the video only to have it end abruptly after the Grinch credits rolled:

Additionally, as you might notice in the looped GIF above, the Amazon screen that shows up after the video ends is only for the Grinch, not for the double feature that had actually been purchased.

Rick likened it to buying a full CD off iTunes only to have Apple decide at some later date to remove half the songs, “Or if you bought a short story collection on Amazon Kindle, and half of the stories were removed.”

His attempts to get a solution from Amazon were frustrating. On Twitter, the company’s response bots told him to call customer service, where no one could explain what was going on.

“He says that it could be a ‘technicality’ or that it’s possible that the content may have changed, but that it should not have changed for me since I already purchased it,” writes Rick.

Customer service first promised to have someone call him back within a few hours. That subsequently changed to “within a couple of days.”

We were finally able to get someone at Amazon HQ to look into Rick’s case, and we’re happy to report that his video has been restored and Rick got a $10 credit from the site.

“Horton and the bonus features are back, and the video is back to the 1 hour, 18 minutes that it should be,” he tells Consumerist. “The toddler will be thrilled.”

So What Happened?

This is the big mystery. In emails to Consumerist, a rep for Amazon would only say that the problem “was something that needed to be corrected on our end for that specific title.” We’ve asked if it was a technical issue or a licensing mix-up of some sort, but have yet to hear a response.

A technical glitch is possible but seems unlikely, given that the title of the video also reverted to just the Grinch.

As for the possibility of a licensing issue, there is some confusion at Amazon. The company rep tells Consumerist that once a video is purchased, it will remain forever in that user’s digital library, but that’s not what the fine print says.

The Amazon video terms of service says that while purchased video content “will generally continue to be available to you,” there is the potential it might become unavailable for “content provider licensing restrictions.” In such a case, “Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming.”

Amazon does allow users to download purchased videos, but not onto computers — only onto compatible phones and tablets. Downloading onto your phone may result in just getting the standard definition version of the video, so if you later want to watch it on your TV, be prepared for blurry ugliness. Additionally, that downloaded content is still protected by Amazon’s rights management software, meaning the only way to watch it would be through the Amazon apps on those devices.

So downloading is a way to make sure you always have access to the video you purchase, but it’s also incredibly limited.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

NHTSA: Self-Driving Cars Need To Be Twice As Safe In Order To Reduce Traffic Deaths

Proponents of self-driving vehicles claim the new technology will decrease the number of crashes occurring on the roadways, thereby reducing the number of driver and pedestrian deaths. But for that to happen, regulators say the new industry must take significant steps to improve autonomous vehicle safety. 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration head Mark Rosekind announced at a conference on Wednesday that in order for automakers to reduce the 38,000 deaths on roadways each year they would need to increase safety of their autonomous vehicles, Bloomberg reports.

“I’d actually like to throw the gauntlet down,” Rosekind said. “We need to start with two times better. We need to set a higher bar if we expect safety to actually be a benefit here.”

While NHTSA, which is expected to release a framework for regulations for self-driving vehicles next month, believes that automated driving will eventually become a lifesaver, it’s not there yet. However, Rosekind didn’t offer any specifics on how the agency could improve safety.

“It’s a 747 crashing every week for a year, that’s what the losses are on our highways,” he said of the 38,300 deaths in 2015 (up from 32,675 in 2014). “And that is unacceptable.”

Rosekind said that the upcoming rules aim to provide “new tools and authorities to really help advance if not accelerate getting these new technologies on the road safely.”

While he didn’t specify what the rule framework would include, he did say that the agency won’t bar states from crafting their own rules for regulating self-driving cars, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“What the states actually implement is their call,” he said “We will have no say in what that states want to do.”

U.S. Auto Regulator Says Self-Driving Cars Must Be Twice as Safe [Bloomberg]
NHTSA Won’t Block States from Setting Their Own Rules on Self-Driving Cars [The Wall Street Journal]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

NY Attorney General: TWC “Has Earned The Miserable Reputation It Enjoys Among Consumers”

Last fall, the New York Attorney General launched an investigation to find out the answer to one big question: are New Yorkers actually getting anything like the internet speeds their providers claim, and that they pay for? The investigation is still underway, but early results say that from one provider at least, the answer is a big fat “no.”

Preliminary results say that there’s a reason that Time Warner Cable is still so widely hated by its New York customers: their service does actually stink. But of course, the company was recently acquired, and is now well on its way to becoming Charter Spectrum service, and not TWC at all.

So that’s why Attorney General Eric Scnheiderman’s office today issued a letter to Charter all about Time Warner Cable’s crappy service, and the hope that it will improve pronto.

The letter, penned by long-time internet advocate Tim Wu, now serving as a special advisor for the AG’s office, spares no words before taking TWC to task.

“We write now to underscore our hope and expectation that [the takeover] announcement reflects more than mere rebranding,” the letter begins, “and signals your intent to substantially improve the reliability, performance, and speed of the Internet delivered to customers.”

Wu then calls the initial results of the investigation “troubling,” saying that it appears TWC has “been failing to take adequate or necessary steps to keep pace with the demand of [their] consumers.”

Customers are experiencing degraded performance when streaming video-on-demand through services like Netflix or losing connections to online gaming as a result, the letter continues.

But it’s not just that the advertised speeds are dropping out — it’s that consumers aren’t physically able to get them at all. “It appears that TWC has been advertising its WiFi in ways that defy the technology’s technical capabilities,” Wu writes, “and has been provisioning some of its customers with equipment that simply cannot achieve the higher bandwidths the company has sold to them.”

The letter also calls TWC’s performance in its crowdsourced speed-tests of NYC residents “abysmal,” saying that not only did they not meet their marketing, but they also performed worse than the city’s other broadband providers.

“In short,” Wu concludes, “what we have seen in our investigation so far suggests that Time Warner Cable has earned the miserable reputation it enjoys among consumers.”

Still, it’s not all gloom and doom: the missive ends with hope. “You promised to ‘redefine what a cable company can be,'” Wu writes. “We hope your company will take the opportunity to work with NYAG to clean up Time Warner Cable’s act and deliver the quality Internet service New Yorkers deserve and have long been promised.”

[via the Wall Street Journal]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist