why god hates me

Do you think that a human being can dive 35 feet and 6 inches into a 12-inch deep kiddie pool?

Well, Darren Taylor - the self-proclaimed “Professor Splash” - attempted to break his own Guinness World Record doing just that on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

You gotta see it to believe it!

How badly did he injure himself??? Did he do it??? Was it pretty or pretty ugly????

CLICK HERE to watch and find out!

For thrift stores, business is both better, and worse, than ever. Sales are high, but donations are running low. Customer behavior is changing in the new economic climate:

Mr. Brickson, of Minnesota, said a longtime donor to his store had recently showed up in tears. “She had given so much to the Salvation Army over the years,” he said. “She never thought she was going to be a recipient of the services.”

Thrift Shops Thriving, but Running Low on Stock [NYT] (Thanks to c-side!) (Photo: Scurzuzu)

So….

Is it Brandon or is it Dylan?????

CLICK HERE to find out!!!!!

And if you already know the identity of Sammy’s dad, let us know your thoughts!

[Image via Mavrix Online.]

It’s Dylan!!!!!!!!

Thoughts???????

[Image via WENN.]

Rick has been trying for months to get his his credit union, Opportunities Credit Union of Vermont, to pay up for a $125 home inspection, and now, a week after sending his EECB, he prevailed. As we wrote last week, his credit union was supposed to pay for a home inspection but said they didn’t have to because the bill was never sent. However, the home inspector uses an electronic billing system and it showed that the credit union rep had in fact read the sent bill. Emails and phone calls between Rick and his credit union rep led to a stalemate. Then Jim sent off an executive email carpet bomb and got the following back from the credit union president:

Hello Rick,
I just left you a message on your phone but will also confirm in writing.

There was a misunderstanding on our part when one of the staff looked at the monies disbursed and saw $125 had been paid out, she assumed it was to Jim Breer which in fact it was for the inspection instead. As this money was to have been paid from the seller’s escrow, we will attempt to have it paid from there, if not, we will pay it ourselves. I do apologize for the time it has taken to get this resolved and assure you that our staff were well intended and generally get high marks from our members for the work they do.

I am available should you need to chat further and thank you for your
business!

Cheryl

Go back to Jim’s letter in the original post and use it as a guideline in the future. It’s polite, to the point, focuses on facts, explicitly states the desired outcome. Best of all, it worked. He himself used the complaint letter template in this post as an outline, it, too, should be inspiration for your next letter of complaint.

PREVIOUSLY: Man Feels Opportunities Credit Union Screwed Him Over For $125

(Photo: Getty)

Having trouble getting a car loan? You’re not alone. “Gas at $4 a gallon changed the type of vehicles people buy. The credit crunch, however, has changed their ability to buy,” says a car dealer. Higher interest rates, higher down payments, fewer loans, and high aversion to dings on your credit report, this Kicking Tires post has more from the front lines about banks’ new level of pickiness when it comes to putting you in your next jalopy.

How Wall Street’s Woes Affect Car Shoppers [Kicking Tires] (Photo: Tengaport)

Looking to get started with Consumerist comments? Here’s a great guide that teaches you the basics, plus tips and tricks to do secret things like embed pictures and YouTube videos. Then check out our Consumerist Comments Code for the guidelines about what’s appropriate to leave in the comments, and what might get you banned or “disemvowelled.”

The Power User’s Guide to This Web Site [Lifehacker]
The Consumerist Comments Code (Photo: Getty)

“Lisa” writes, “I recently found out that I was a victim of identity theft.” What shocked her, and us as well, is that after Capital One notified her that they’d approved the card with another address, they followed up by sending their fraud claim to the criminal’s address instead of Lisa’s.

Lil ole me. A twenty-seven year old female, simply a poor writer in LA.

Capital One Bank— while I appreciate them sending me a letter telling me they sent a credit card to someone with my SS# yet a different spelling of my name AND address than what is on my records at all three Credit Bureaus— why ON EARTH would they still send out a card?

I called Capital One immediately and successfully prevented the criminal from getting that MasterCard card approved. They went ahead and froze the account. After reporting this to Capital One, they send a fraud claim not to me, the victim, but idiotically to the CRIMINAL who stole my identity. This, in turn, alerted the thief (thieves) to take quicker actions with fraudulently using my identity.

This was an act of negligence as well as an unsavory business practice on Capital One’s behalf. Capital One Bank has obstructed the law by aiding these identity thieves who are involved with a federal offense.

I mean, wouldn’t it make sense for Capital One (and ALL creditors) to make it a company-wide, mandatory practice to alert the customer BEFORE processing ANY requests with mismatched information from the credit bureaus?

So, I called the Social Security and the Credit Bureaus to put a Fraud Alert on all accounts. Then, the LAPD. Capital One was “gracious” enough to give me the address that the criminal used— [redacted]. And courtesy of the White Pages, the residence of one Magdalena C.

What do I do now? Wait until the LAPD finds her? Call the cops on her? I mean, have they thought of looking this woman up on www.whitepages.com? The internet make identity theft so easy, and perhaps catching the criminals easier too.

I hope this Magdelena C. gets locked up for a LONG time.

Sincerely,
A Victim of Identity Theft

We agree that Capital One showed some extra special incompetence there with the fraud claim form. Maybe you should report what happened to the FBI too—that’s a link to their local office locator.

(Photo: Getty)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York will lend AIG $85 billion. Explaining the breathtaking move the Fed said, “a disorderly failure of A.I.G. could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance.” They’re not just dumping out the public purse on the counter, though. FBNY will take a 79.9% stake in the company, the collateralized loan is for two years, and is expected to be paid off by selling off assets. NYT writes, “the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions does business with.” You can say that again.

Fed to Loan A.I.G. $85 Billion in Rescue [NYT] (Photo: Getty)

R. Preston McAfee, a Cal Tech economics professor, is annoyed at how overpriced textbooks are. “‘The person who pays for the book, the parent or the student, doesn’t choose it,’ he said. ‘There is this sort of creep. It’s always O.K. to add $5.’” To fight back, he’s foregone the potential six-figure advance traditional publishing would have granted, and published his textbook online for free.

You can also buy print versions through Lulu and Flat World Knowledge for anywhere from $11 to $60, but it’s free to download in Word and PDF formats. (Note: unless you plan on downloading it, you may want to skip the link to avoid wasting the professor’s bandwidth—here’s a screencap of the otherwise unremarkable page for the curious.) The New York Time says that it’s not a widely used text yet, but Harvard is among the colleges using it.

The article also takes a look at Connexions, an open source textbook project that allows users to mix and match existing content according to CC licenses and sees 850,000 unique users a month.

And then there’s CourseSmart, an online service backed by five dead tree publishers that sells limited access to printed textbooks for a discount of up to 50% over the print version. We haven’t tried CourseSmart ourselves, but the Times’ description of it makes it sound like a deliberately constrained “service” dreamed up by companies that don’t want to hurt their $200-a-copy golden goose, but want to take advantage of the market they created in the first place when they priced their books so high. Which, okay, sounds like good business, but we still think they suck.

“Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free “ [New York Times]

Got a picky eater? Want to avoid getting one in the future? The NYT has 6 mistakes that you may be making when it comes to feeding your kids. [NYT]