Price-Matching Scam Had $400 Sony PS4 Selling for $90 at Walmart

Scammers have been trying to take advantage of Walmart's price-matching policy by using fraudulent web pages to get Wii U bundles and Sony PS4 consoles for a fraction of their actual prices.

 

Well, it didn’t take long for opportunists to try—and, in some cases, succeed—to take advantage of price matching from Walmart and other stores. Earlier this week, Kotaku reported that a pricing glitch over the weekend on the Sears website showed Wii U bundles listed at $60 when they normally sell for upwards of $300. Sears fixed the mistake, and it appears as if no one was actually able to buy the console bundle for that price at the retailer’s site. But that didn’t stop many shoppers from trying to get the same deal from Sears’ competitors such as Walmart, Toys R Us, and Best Buy by way of their price matching policies. It’s unclear how many consumers were able to get the price honored, but several showed off their receipts at Reddit—one Toys R Us receipt notes the customer “Saved $240″ on the purchase—and surely many more succeeded and kept things quiet.

Then scammers took things a step further by creating fake Amazon.com pages that appeared to list Sony PS4 game consoles, which normally run $400, for under $100. As Consumerist.comexplained, anyone with a registered account for selling things on Amazon can list an item at whatever price they choose. Amazon tries to root out obviously fraudulent or misleading price listings—such as a new Sony PS4 for $90—but it can take some time to catch up with the fraudsters. Before that happens, someone can take a screen shot and bring what appears to be a perfectly legitimate image into a store and ask that the price be matched.

That’s what happened at Walmart this week. By Wednesday, Walmart caught up with the scam, and some stores posted signs stating that the “PS4 Amazon.com Ad will not be Ad matched Due to Fraud.” The world’s largest retailer alerted CNBC and others that its price-matching policy has been updated to clarify that stores will not honor “Prices from marketplace and third-party sellers” such as those Amazon pages that were manipulated by users. “We can’t tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers,” a statement from Walmart explained. “This kind of activity is unfair to the millions of customers who count on us every day for honest value.”

So the scam appears to be dead, but not before an unknown number of consumers were able to take advantage of it and snag ultra-cheap PS4 consoles and, in some cases, cut-rate Xbox Ones and video games. If you think that the only ones hurt by this kind of behavior are Walmart and other major retailers, consider how much more difficult and time-consuming it’s going to be for perfectly honest customers to get genuine prices matched. Now that retailers are on the lookout for scams, be prepared to get the third degree when seeking a price match, even if you’re completely on the up and up

The 5 Biggest Salad Mistakes You’re Making

The best ways to build a balanced bowl

 

 

I eat some type of salad nearly every day. It’s a go-to staple I really look forward to, and I love mixing it up. Some days I toss greens with pico de gallo, black beans, and guacamole, others involve grilled veggies, quinoa, and almonds, or roasted chickpeas and olive tapenade.

 

      

Too little or too much protein

In my clients’ food journals I’ve seen plenty of salads with lots of veggies but no protein, and others with protein overload, like chicken plus cheese and hardboiled eggs. Protein is an essential salad component for several reasons—it boosts satiety, revs metabolism, and provides the raw materials for maintaining or building lean tissue, including both muscle as well as hormones, healthy hair, skin, and immune cells. But excess protein, beyond what your body needs, can prevent weight loss or lead to weight gain. In short, your body requires a certain amount of protein for maintenance and healing. When too little is delivered those jobs don’t get done. But when your body has more than it needs, it has no choice but to send the surplus straight to your fat cells. For balance, choose a half cup of a plant-based protein, like lentils or beans, or 3 ounces of lean meat or seafood (that’s about the size of a smartphone). If you choose dairy, stick with ½ cup of organic cottage cheese, or one whole hardboiled organic egg and three whites. If you like to include more than one type, reduce the portions of each.

HEALTH.COM: 11 Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Belly Fat

Not enough veggie variety

Greens and veggies are the typical salad base, but if you’re keeping your selections narrow (e.g. just spinach or romaine) you’re missing out on important veggie benefits. One Colorado State University also found that over a two-week period, volunteers who downed a broader array of the exact same amount of produce (18 botanical families instead of 5) experienced significantly less oxidation, a marker for premature aging and disease. Another study, which evaluated more than 450,000 people and looked at their consumption of commonly eaten veggies found that regardless of quantity, the risk of lung cancer decreased when a wider variety of veggies were consumed. This may be because each plant contains unique types of antioxidants, nutrients, and natural cancer fighters, so a wider variety exposes your body to a broader spectrum of protection. To reap the benefits aim for at least two cups of veggies total, with lots of different colors, such as field greens, red tomatoes, purple cabbage, orange bell peppers, white onion… and keep changing up the variety.

HEALTH.COM: 13 Ways to Make Veggies Delicious

Too little or too much fat

Like protein, fat serves as one of the body’s building blocks. Fat is a major structural component of your cell membranes, brain, hormones, and skin. Healthy fats also reduce inflammation, boost satiety (so you feel fuller longer), and significantly up the absorption of fat soluble vitamins and antioxidants, which hitch a ride with fat to get transported from your digestive system into your bloodstream. A few years back, researchers at Iowa State looked at the absorption of key antioxidants when men and women ate salads with fat-free, low-fat, and full fat salad dressings. They found that those who ate the fat-free dressing absorbed almost no antioxidants at all. The reduced-fat version upped the absorption, but not as much as the full fat dressing. Important info! But in your salad, dressing isn’t the only healthy way to include fat. Sometimes I crave a simple vinaigrette made with extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, and dried Italian herbs. But I’ll often skip the oil to make room for sliced avocado or chopped nuts. Or I’ll toss my greens and veggies with olive tapenade, or add oven roasted, grilled, or sauteed veggies that already have olive oil in the mix. Include some fat for sure—just choose wisely, and be mindful of your portions to prevent going overboard.

HEALTH.COM: Good Fats, Bad Fats: How to Choose

Skipping starch

Without any starch in a salad, you may wind up burning the protein you’ve added for fuel, which prevents the protein from being used for key maintenance and repair work. To strike a healthy balance, include a small portion—even just a third or half cup of a nutrient-rich whole food carb source, such as cooked chilled quinoa, roasted organic corn, or a cubed roasted red potato. I find that for my clients, this starch addition boosts satiety and energy in the hours after eating, but it’s still a small enough portion to allow for weight loss. In fact, when I’ve had clients resist adding carbs and skip this step, they typically seek out more snacks and wind up stalling weight loss. If you’re hesitant, try it and see how your body responds.

HEALTH.COM: 12 Foods That Control Your Appetite

Not enough seasoning

When I’ve heard people complain about disliking salads it’s typically because they’ve been eating very plain pairings, like romaine with just oil, vinegar, and bland grilled chicken. Fortunately there are plenty of ways to spruce salads up, and adding natural seasonings has been shown to further boost satiety and increase metabolism. Easy ways to add flavor include: toss fresh herbs into the mix like basil, cilantro or mint; whisk herbs, spices and raw or roasted garlic into oil and vinegar, and add pre-seasoned ingredients, like herbed quinoa, pesto-slathered grilled veggies, or spicy guacamole. A healthy salad should be a feast for your senses, and a dish you savor. And guess what? It’s entirely possible to achieve just that and shed pounds enjoying it!

HEALTH.COM: 16 No-Calorie, No-Salt Ways to Add Flavor to Food

Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, is Health’s contributing nutrition editor, and privately counsels clients in New York, Los Angeles, and long distance. Cynthia is currently the sports nutrition consultant to the New York Rangers NHL team and the Tampa Bay Rays MLB team, and is board certified as a specialist in sports dietetics.

Thief who 'attacked pensioner' is stripped naked and wrapped in cling film by mob of vigilantes

Valentino Abeyta Barrera was set upon by Chilean crowd after reportedly attempting to rob OAP by holding a knife to his throat

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/thief-who-attacked-pensioner-stripped-4711798?ICID=FB_mirror_main

A would-be thief who was allegedly spotted trying to rob an OAP by holding a knife to his throat was disarmed, stripped naked and tied to a lamppost with cling film by a mob of vigilantes.

Crowds gathered round 32-year-old Valentino Abeyta Barrera as he was stripped, had his underpants pulled down, and was then wrapped in plastic cellophane in the incident in the Chilean capital Santiago.

Photographs of the incident were posted online where they quickly went viral, and sparked heated debate over vigilante justice.

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Vigilantes: The thief is stripped, wrapped in cling film and strapped to a pole

Many said that it made those giving the crook a beating as bad as the crook himself, while others said it showed the lack of faith in the police and the justice system.

Daniela Montoya Pazo said: "They just had to arrest him, not beat him. This kind of things put us at the same level as the criminals."

But another, Daichi Yuka, said: "I would like to do the same thing to the thief who threatened me with a weapon this morning."

Police arrived after 20 minutes and asked the man tied to the lamppost what was going on and he declined to comment, asking only that he be freed.

After he was released and taken to the police station he refused to file a complaint, and police said they had been forced to let him go because the alleged victim of the man's attack had also not made a complaint.

A police spokesman said: "Unless the man who was tied to the lamppost or his alleged victim want to file a complaint, there is not much we can do."

Fairlife’s new milk adverts are unoriginal and tediously sexist

Featuring naked pin-up girls cavorting in milk, these ads are just another example of the sexualisation of women for commercial gain

‘Gratuitous’ … Coca-Cola’s new Fairlife milk adverts.

You know something’s up when images of the type associated with the sexism of past decades resurface in a thoroughly modern advertising campaign. So it was with a sigh that I read the news about Fairlife,Coca-Cola’s new “premium milk brand” (nope, me neither), illustrated with images of naked women covered in flowing milk. The pictures – from period-styled hair to looks of arousal and “naughty surprise” – are clearly designed to evoke retro “pin-up girl” images. One loosely mimics the infamous Marilyn Monroe up-skirt moment. As if the implications of the slender, long-legged images weren’t clear enough, another features a woman perched atop a set of scales (in high heels, obviously – isn’t that how everybody weighs themselves?)

The ads, seemingly based on an existing set of photographs by London-based photographer Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz, raise more questions than they answer. Is this milk for drinking, or are you just expected to pour it lavishly over your head as you sit at the breakfast table, pouting sexily at your dry cereal? Why don’t men seem to be invited to partake in this new gastronomic experience? And given the enormous levels of dairy wastage likely to ensue, can you really justify charging double the price for it compared to normal milk?

Joking aside, seeing these images of women’s bodies being used, once again, to advertise an unrelated consumer product (“Drink what she’s wearing”) is a tedious reminder that when it comes to the objectification of women in advertising, we seem to be slipping backward instead of moving forward. Yes, there’s a tenuous argument to be made that the link is valid if the milk is being promoted as healthy and good for your body, but that doesn’t explain the sexualisation of the women, nor the lack of any male counterparts.

This is just the latest in a never-ending stream of examples of women’s bodies used as advertising fodder with scant regard for relevance or originality. Examples are tweeted to the Everyday Sexism Twitteraccount with depressing regularity. Want to promote a new games console? Why not use a headless woman’s body with two pairs of breasts? Advertising a restaurant? What you need is a picture of anaked woman covered in spaghetti! Trying to spread the word about green electricity? Go for a picture of a sexy woman with a lightbulb in her mouth. Decorating a van to spread the word about your curtain and blind business? Don’t forget to pop a lingerie-clad model on there! And everyone knows nothing says “LED technology” like an enormous picture of a woman’s naked arse.

Some particularly egregious examples combine racism and sexism, as in the case of the recent tweet from Magnum South Africa (swiftly deleted), used to advertise its new “pink and black” ice creams. The tweet featured a picture of a white woman’s heavily made up face next to a black woman posing in a corset, with the ice creams displayed beneath them. It read: “A sultry espresso ripple covered in dark chocolate or creamy pomegranate indulgence?” The company later explained the withdrawal of the ad, but it didn’t stop others following suit with similar imagery.

These images often seem to involve very little thought, and clearly come from the old “sex sells” school of marketing. They create a daily wallpaper of objectification that sends a powerful message about the function, availability and disposability of women’s bodies. This isn’t about a prudish desire to censor nudity, but an impassioned plea to give authority and control over women’s bodies back to women themselves, instead of seeing pieces of them plastered across billboards as lifeless and cynical props to draw attention to a parade of products.

And in some cases, this tactic can have a wider impact. During a recent period of renovation, Manchester’s Malmaison hotel chose to cover its hoardings with images of women in heavy makeup, emergency tape wrapped around their breasts, gazing suggestively at power tools. As Jeanette Winterson rightly pointed out, far from “harmlessly” spicing up the building area, such images actively sent the message that women are unlikely to be competent builders or engineers – their job is simply to please the eye.

Laudably, Malmaison took action to cover the hoardings after receiving complaints, a step that suggested we are moving forward when it comes to challenging the gratuitous exploitation of women’s bodies for impact and sales. That progress makese the new Fairlife adverts, in their tedious predictability, yet more frustrating. The fact that they even use retro-style images feels like a mocking reminder that, several decades on, we have not made much progress away from the concept that women’s bodies are objects for commercial consumption (a frustration tempered only slightly by the perceptive wag on Twitter who pointed out that one of the images looks suspiciously as if the model is actually farting milk).

Isn’t advertising supposed to be original? Isn’t a new campaign supposed to be all about surprising consumers and capturing their attention with new and innovative ideas? If so, then surely semi-naked women, the single most over-used advertising gimmick on the planet, is no longer the way to go.

And yes, the first person to mention the Diet Coke advert in the comments section gets a gold star. Ready … Set … Go!

Top 10 Motorcycles of the Future

More and more people change a car to a motorcycle.  And as the technology evolves, motorcycle manufacturers are trying to please every “biker”. Manufacturers have focused their attention on the creation of the so-called “Motorcycle of the Future”. These models remind unusual copies from a science fiction movie. Below is the top 10 of these innovative inventions of the future, though they can be used today
1. Honda V4

Honda V4, a motorcycle, which was presented in 2008 at a bike show in Germany, is a stylish futuristic sport bike which is a bit against the generally accepted ideas about bikes. It offers a completely new design direction for the brand Honda.
2. Suzuki G-Strider

Suzuki G-Strider was first seen in 2003 at the Tokyo Motor Show. This concept motorbike is best described as half road bike, half-scooter.
3. I.Care

This bike is the best example of modern technology where design helps to develop the speed. It was designed in France to develop high-speed on the roads.

4. Victory Vision 800

This bike is one of the most powerful. It is suitable for city races and riding on the track. By the way, it is already popular among fans for its durability and reliability.

5. Yamaha Tesseract

Yamaha Tesseract is a motorcycle that was presented at the Yamaha 2008 Tokyo Motor Show. Yamaha has made this model with V-shaped electric motor.

6. Peraves Monotracer

Peraves Monotracer is extremely unusual closed motorcycle. Thanks to sports, aerodynamic appearance and low fuel consumption, it is very comfortable on long distances.

7. Bombardier Embrio

“Embrio” is a kind of one-wheeled motorcycle presented by Bombardier in 2003, now it is only conceptual design. If the producers will still produce this model, it will not be available until 2025.

Despite the apparent singularity, a motorcycle can reach enormous speeds.

8. Batpod

This monster works by using water cooling technology, single-cylinder engine is focused on the rapid acceleration. It looks a little heavyweight, but it is only at first glance, it has only to accelerate, and it will leave behind any “light” model.

9. Dodge Tomahawk

Dodge Tomahawk is a kind of moto mobil from Dodge. For his mad look and potential Widowmaker Dodge was later called “Tomahawk”. The bike was first seen in 2003 in one of the Detroit auto salons.

10. Confederate Renovatio

Motorcycle Renovatio is a radical bike, designed by top designers of America.

This is one of the very minimalist motorcycles, however, none of the functions of the bike was not lost.

Moreover, despite the appearance, it is quite convenient.

WATCH: 2-year-old gets into heated debate over Cowboys-Eagles game

We all know the Cowboys-Eagles rivalry can get a little heated, even among family members. 

This 2-year-old Philadelphia girl decided to square off with her grandfather over which team is better.

"Go Cowboys. Go Eagles. Go Cowboys! I'm saying Eagles! I say Cowboys," you hear in the exchange.

Little Ava Marie is cute and smart. Grandfather Jim doesn't know what he's talking about.

The Cowboys and Eagles meet on Thanksgiving day with nothing more than first place and possible post-season implications on the line

Why women like me fall in love with men who belittle them, writes AMANDA PLATELL

The room was dimly lit, but even in the gloom I spotted him immediately, languidly propped up against the bar in his black tie, more handsome than any man has a right to be, surrounded by beautiful girls.

They parted like the Red Sea as I walked up to him, my darling gorgeous boyfriend. I’d spent hours getting ready: big hair perfectly tousled, red lipstick slicked on; short gold frock I’d broken the bank to buy.

He smiled, took my hand and said: ‘Look at you.’ Pause. ‘Your hair’s all over the place, your mouth is too wide and your nose is too big. But I love you.’

Scroll down for video 

 

Despite having made a lot of effort, Amanda says she was flattered when a boyfriend told her he loved her despite her appearance

Was I hurt, or angry? No. I was flattered. And much as I’m ashamed to say it, I was grateful too. After all, it seemed scarcely believable that someone as fabulous as him could love someone as insignificant as me.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2851108/Why-women-like-fall-love-men-belittle-writes-AMANDA-PLATELL.html#ixzz3KLwZxGJv
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