Consumer World

Here is our final installment of the year of short takes on ads and products that are real head scratchers. Hope you have a chuckle. That is our Mouse Print* story this week.

Consumer World Original

2020 Return Policies: COVID Triggers Changes

According to Consumer World's 17th annual return policy survey, some major retailers have modified their return policies to give shoppers more time to return unwanted goods. These changes came about because of COVID-19 and an earlier start to this year's holiday shopping season. Here is the full report hightlighting the changes along with links to retailers' policies and their return deadlines.

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Bargains Disappear Because of Price Fixing -- And It's Legal!

price tag Did you ever wonder why certain items are the same price wherever you shop? It is called "minimum advertised prices" (MAP) or "resale price maintenance" (RPM). This lets manufacturers like Samsung announce a price for, say, a particular TV on Black Friday and retailers "voluntarily" won't advertise it below that price. Even the Supreme Court has upheld this concept of legal price fixing. See how this and other techniques result in higher prices.

Consumer Humor

World's Largest Christmas Tree of Sardines

A Philippines food company set a new Guinness world record by building a Christmas tree out of over 70,000 cans of sardines.

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Bargain of the Week

Get Free Food at McDonald's Until Christmas Eve

With a minimum $1 purchase, McDonald's is giving away a different food item everyday until Christmas. You must place your order via their app. For example, on Tuesday, December 15th, the free item is a Big Mac! In the app, some things you can get for about a $1 include many beverages, two orders of apple slices, and in some areas their apple pie meal (2 pieces).

Samsung 1-TB Solid State Drive - $99.99

At most stores that sell electronics (Amazon, BB, Newegg, etc.), you will find the Samsung 860 EVO 1-terrabyte solid state drive for $99.99. [A similar model with half the capacity - 500 gigs -- is $56.99.) This is a top-rated and reliable replacement for an old, slow, mechanical hard drive inside your desktop or laptop. Form factor is 2.5 inches and it is a SATA III drive. It will breathe new life into your old computer, significantly speeding up processing. MrConsumer's six-year Dell desktop used to take over six minutes to boot. Now, with a similar SSD, it takes one and half minutes. You will need to copy your old drive onto this one, and that will require a special cable.