Google Launching Actual Ride-Sharing Pilot To Compete With Uber, Lyft

When Uber was new, it may have claimed to be a ride-sharing service, but these days it’s a high-tech, glorified, unlicensed taxi app. So Google’s planning to start competing against it in San Francisco, with… an actual ride-sharing service.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Google’s going to use Waze, which it acquired in 2013, to match commuters with carpools headed their way.

The Waze pilot program charges riders a maximum of $0.54 per mile (the current IRS mileage reimbursement rate, so a pretty common rate to see mileage reimbursement set to) to be matched to drivers headed their way.

That’s lower than Uber’s rate, which is an incentive for passengers to try it. And for now at least, Google’s not taking a slice of the money — which may be incentive for drivers to pick up as many folks as they can cram into their cars.

That said, it’s still a very limited pilot. While any Waze user in San Francisco can sign up to be a driver, riders for now have to be one of roughly 25,000 area employees of several pre-selected large businesses including Google, Walmart, and Adobe among others. Riders are also limited to two rides per day: carpools into and out of the office.

Your standard “person familiar with the situation” told the Wall Street Journal that Google’s future plans would let anyone using the Waze app sign up to be a passenger or a driver, Uber-style, and that Google is likely to take a slice of fares in the future — tlhough what percentage, exactly, still hasn’t been determined.

Google, like Uber, is also not planning to consider its drivers to be employees — meaning it has it’s work cut out to avoid the same kind of driver lawsuits that have been a high-profile thorn in Uber’s side. One way Google is making sure not to treat drivers like employees? Not subjecting them to background checks, instead relying only on user reviews to “weed out problems.”

Rumors have been swirling since early 2015 that Google was planning to enter the ride-sharing space, so in one sense, the company took its sweet time. Meanwhile, Waze has been integrated into the Lyft app since January, meaning in one sense, Google’s just gone into competition with itself.

Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service [Wall Street Journal]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Shoppers Use Sledgehammer To Rescue Infant From Hot Car In Parking Lot

When there’s a baby locked in a hot car, there’s only one option: get that kid out of there, no matter what it takes. In the case of a four-month-old who had been left in a hot vehicle in a shopping center parking lot, that meant two passers-by using a sledgehammer to break the car’s windows.

A 53-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman were both in the parking lot of a New Jersey Kohl’s store when the man said he heard a baby cry out just before 1 p.m., and saw an infant strapped into the seat inside a car, reports the Asbury Park Press. According to police, the windows were closed, the car was off, and the outside temperature was in the upper 80s. Temperatures in the car were likely much higher than that.

“It was a little baby wrapped up in a woolen blanket — crying, sweating, eyes rolling in the back of her head,” said the man, who is a retired police officer.

He and the other woman asked other passers-by if they had a tire iron or something to break the windows, when he suddenly remembered he had a sledgehammer in his car from pounding tent stakes into the ground over the weekend. He smashed the window, pulled the baby out, took off her sweaty clothes, and brought her into the air conditioning in the store.

“The baby appeared to be in a great deal of distress — screaming, crying, bright red and sweating profusely,” a police sergeant told the Park Press. “The baby was fully clothed with a blanket partially covering her.”

Police arrived on the scene, and the baby was turned over to her father. The child’s mother came out of the store with two other children about 20 minutes later, asking where her baby was. She was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, after police said she left the baby in her car for almost 40 minutes.

“That baby would have been dead,” the retired police officer said. “If we didn’t do what we did, that mom would have driven home not knowing if the baby was sleeping or dead.”

Jackson man rescues baby locked in hot car [Asbury Park Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Uber “Local Rewards” Program Offers Free Rides For Shopping, Dining Out

Two months ago, Uber launched a rewards program that offered free rides to users who used a Capital One credit card. Today, the company unveiled a separate reward program with Visa, providing free rides based on how much customers spend at local businesses. 

Uber announced today that it would launch a new feature called Local Rewards that will see the company providing riders with one “Uber point” for each dollar spent at a business using the Visa card saved to their Uber account.

For every 100 points accumulated, users will receive a free ride valued up to $10. The program is being rolled out in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with other cities expected to be added in the future.

Unlike the Capital One rewards program, which currently has an end date of March 2017, the Visa partnership appears to be a more permanent offer to Uber customers.

Users can enroll in the program and view a list of participating local businesses above the “Promotions” section of the app menu. Uber points will appear in the app immediately after the card has been swiped at an eligible merchant.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Petsitter Loses $1 Million Lawsuit Over Negative Yelp Review

The six-month saga of the Texas petsitter who sued a customer for up to $1 million in damages over a negative Yelp review appears to have come to an end, with a judge agreeing to dismiss the case that made national headlines.

Just to backtrack, in case you’ve somehow had more important things to read about than petsitter-related litigation in the Lone Star State.

A couple in Plano, TX, hired a local petsitting company to look after their dogs and fish while they were on vacation. The customers weren’t terribly thrilled about the quality of service they received and shared their feedback publicly on Yelp in Oct. 2015.

The petsitting company not only responded to that write-up, but followed it with a cease-and-desist notice directing the customers to remove their review. When they did not take their Yelp post down, the petsitter filed a lawsuit in justice of the peace court for around $6,700, accusing the couple of violating a non-disparagement clause in the petsitter’s customer agreement.

Non-disparagement clauses are questionably legal conditions inserted into contracts and agreements that try to prohibit consumers from freely expressing their opinion on a transaction. California recently outlawed such clauses and a bipartisan bill that would make them illegal nationwide is waiting for Congress to return for a vote.

After the initial lawsuit made national headlines, the petsitter dropped that complaint and re-filed their case in a state district court, expanding on the allegations to include defamation and upping the damage request to as much as $1 million.

By this point, the case had attracted the attention of advocates for consumers and free expression. Attorney Paul Alan Levy from Public Citizen took on the task of asking the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the petsitter’s complaint is a frivolous SLAPP. That’s a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”; in other words, a lawsuit filed in the hopes of getting the defendant to shut up.

The Texas Citizens Participation Act is an example of a so-called “anti-SLAPP” statute, allowing the defendants in cases involving issues of speech to seek a dismissal if the plaintiff can’t “establish by clear and specific evidence a prima facie case for each essential element of the claim in question.”

READ MORE ABOUT SLAPPs & ANTI-SLAPP STATUTES

The judge heard from all parties involved in this mess in late July and today issued an order [PDF] dismissing the petsitter’s lawsuit.

In accordance with the Texas anti-SLAPP law, the defendants are also now entitled to recover court costs and reasonable and necessary attorney fees from the petsitter.

Levy says that by “seeking to silence negative criticism,” the petsitters may have ended up risking the future of their entire company.

“Not only did the company lose business when customers were disgusted over the non-disparagement lawsuit, it now is responsible to pay attorney fees and sanctions,” he explains.

In a statement, the couple expressed their relief and gratitude regarding today’s ruling.

“We should all have the opportunity to express our opinions without the fear of a lawsuit,” reads the statement. “We are so grateful for the attorneys who have supported us through the case. It took lots of hours and many smart minds spending too much time talking about Gordy the betta fish. Thank goodness they did not lose sight of the real issue: the threats posed by non-disparagement clauses to our right to free speech.”

In response to the petsitter story and other dubious lawsuits filed against Yelp users, the reviews site recently began publicly flagging certain companies that were believed to be making “questionable legal threats” over online reviews.

“Consumers don’t necessarily know that these threats are sometimes empty or meritless (and often both!), so the threat of legal action is enough to scare them into silence,” wrote Yelp Sr. VP Vince Sollitto earlier this summer. “We don’t think that’s right.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Twitter Wants Your Videos So Much, It Will Let You Keep Most Of The Ad Money

Hey, have you heard about video? You might have missed it, what with literally every social media platform all but begging you to post more and watch more at all times, but video is the new hotness. And to get individuals to post more video to their platform, Twitter’s willing to split the ad take.

In a blog post today, Twitter announced that Twitter Amplify, its revenue-generating (read as: advertising) program for video creators, will now be available to individuals in the US.

Amplify currently has certain large-scale VIP partners like the NFL, but has not been available to the would-be internet stars of the next generation — the burgeoning YouTube, Instagram, and Vine celebrities of the world — until now.

It’s a fairly sweet deal, Recode reports: Twitter Amplify users will be able to keep 70% of the ad revenue their content generates for the social network, the same split that existing contributors get. YouTube, on the other hand, requires a 55% / 45% split.

That said, you can’t just roll up a new Twitter account today and hope to start making bank for video content. The program will a one-click ticky-box option for “approved creators.” If that process is anything like becoming a verified user, it’s likely to strike as very hit-and-miss for a whole lot of users.

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

IKEA Taking Its Time Providing Records Related To Massive Dresser Recall

Two months after IKEA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission took the unprecedented step in recalling $29 million top-heavy Malm and other models of dressers and chests linked to the deaths of six children, the retailer has missed a deadline to hand over documents related to the recall.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that IKEA missed an Aug. 19 deadline to provide the internal records to lawyers representing the family of a two-year-old boy who died after being crushed by a dresser in 2014.

The family’s lawsuit against IKEA accuses the company of continuing to sell the dressers despite knowing of the tip-over risk and potential injury to children.

A lawyer representing the family says the documents, which include photos and video of IKEA dresser tests and emails, will shed light on the true nature of the the dangers posed by the furniture, including information related to global Malm tip-over incidents.

The 75 requested documents relate to IKEA’s two year-long discussion with regulators that resulted in a July 2015 repair program that included sending replacement wall anchoring kits to owners instead of simply recalling the furniture.

“It is hard to think of anything more relevant [to our case] than Ikea’s discussions with the CPSC about whether or not this product should be recalled,” lawyer Alan Feldman, representing the family, tells the Inquirer, noting that the family has now asked a judge to fine IKEA $1,000 for each day it fails to provided the documents.

If agreed to, those funds would go to Kids in Danger, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that played a part in getting the dressers recalled and off the market.

The lawyer representing IKEA didn’t return comment to the Inquirer, but has said in court filings that the documents should stay confidential.

He argued that if companies knew such documents related to negotiations would be handed over it could cause others to be less willing to seek recall compromises.

Ikea balks at releasing records tied to deadly dresser recall [Philadelphia Inquirer]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Jack In The Box Is Testing “Brunchfast” Menu In Southern California

As it was foretold, so it has come to past: after filing a trademark application for the term “brunchfast” earlier this summer, Jack in the Box is now testing a new menu with that name in Southern California.

InsideSoCal.com’s Dine 909 blog spotted the new menu in the wild way back in July, with BurgerBusiness.com noting the find just this week. The chain is reportedly testing the option at about 20 locations in Riverside County, CA.

Jack in the Box already serves regular breakfast all day, so this effort seems to be more about having a funny name/idea to bring in customers in between breakfast and brunch. To that end, the company’s chairman and CEO admitted during the most recent earnings call that all-day breakfast at McDonald’s is affecting their business from 10:30 to noon, even though Jack’s breakfast business remains brisk. Brunchfast to the rescue?

Brunchfast is also available all day long, and includes a Brunch Burger that previously appeared on the chain’s late night Munchie Meal menu: it’s a burger patty, bacon, cheddar, and a fried egg on a croissant bun. There’s also a bacon and chicken brunch sandwich, a sourdough omelet sandwich, and a Southwest scrambler plate. Each option can be made into a combo, which includes one side and either a regular hot coffee or fountain drink.

We’ve reached out to Jack in the Box for more details — like whether brunchfast will be tested in any other locations or go nationwide eventually — and will update this post when we hear back.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist