Reports by Consumers

At this point a full product recall, including dry food should be in order. I don't know about you, but as a pet owner I was highly disturbed by news that animals were dying from rat poison laced wet products. Why take the chance!

2. Reduce your debt. Generally speaking, lenders look for a total debt load of no more than 36 percent of income. Since this figure includes your mortgage, which typically ranges between 25 percent and 28 percent of income, you need to get the rest of installment debt—car loans, student loans, revolving balances on credit cards—down to between 8 percent and 10 percent of your total income.

Mass Transit ridership is at a 50 year high. This is no surprise, as the costs of owning an automobile are getting very high. The costs of buying a car are getting higher; cars come with more standard features, which increases price. Insurance isn’t getting any cheaper despite the flood of new entrants in the field. Finally, gas is getting more expensive. Not only is the price per gallon going up, but average commute times are getting longer. We are filling up with more expensive gas and filling up more often, on cars that aren’t getting better mileage but cost more to purchase and insure.

And of course, our potable water will be heated by tankless water heaters. Instead of having a big tank that is keeping many gallons of water hot constantly for when you might need it, tankless heaters turn on automatically and start heating the water when water flow begins. We will be using several small models at the point-of-use to minimize the loss of water due to travel time across the house. Every time you turn on the shower and wait for the hot water to kick in, you are wasting water. Point-of-use heaters will allow us to avoid that, plus have the added convenience of almost immediate hot water. It does cost a little more initially, but the multi-year long term benefits are quite worthwhile.

At the risk of becoming a clone of ThisIsBroken, here’s another fun e-mail I got today. This one is from Citibank’s ThankYou network - a point reward system for using their financial products.

The incentives they offer to customers in good standing, as well as their helpfulness over the phone, make them one of the less painful bureaucracies I’ve had to deal with in the process of paying for this godawful expensive education of mine. So I was annoyed a month or so ago to get a letter informing me that one of my loans was one of the first batch sold off to Sallie Mae. The explanation at the time seemed good (to fund new scholarship programs), but this Trib investigation casts some doubt on it.

The U.S. media are rapidly being monopolized by a dwindling number of parent corporations, all of whom have conservative economic agendas. The media are also critically dependent upon corporations for advertising. As a result, the news almost completely ignores corporate crime, as well as pro-labor and pro-consumer issues. Surveys of journalists show that the majority were personally liberal in the 1980s, but today they are centrists, with more conservatives than liberals on economic issues.

St. John’s members interested in energy-efficiency improvements to their homes should know that federal tax credits of 10-30% of the cost of such improvements are available through the end of 2007 for most of the best such improvements (insulation, efficient doors and windows, furnaces, hot water heaters, etc.).

Amazon.com has a promotion which allows you save 15% off your order and free shipping when you sign up for a subscription ordering service. This is for certain grocery and personal products. The idea is that products that you use very often like laundry detergent, coffee, or baby care will automatically be ordered and shipped to you for your convenience and at a discounted price.

5. Dishwashers use just as much water washing a few cups as a full load. Make sure that the dishwasher is full before you put a load on. This once again will save you water, energy and money. It’s a win / win situation.