Walmart Considering Matching Amazon's Prices During Holiday Season

NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is considering matching online prices from competitors such as Amazon.com, raising the stakes for the holiday shopping season.

The world's largest retailer, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, has matched prices of local store competitors but has not followed other retailers including Best Buy and Target in matching prices of online rivals. But last month, Wal-Mart started to test the strategy in five markets: Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas; Phoenix; and northwest Arkansas.

The move was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

Wal-Mart is trying to rev up sluggish sales in the U.S. as it battles competition from online retailers, dollar stores and drugstores. At the same time, it's also dealing with a slowly recovering economy that hasn't benefited its low-income shoppers. As a result, Wal-Mart's U.S. namesake stores, which account for 60 percent of its total business, haven't reported growth in a key sales measure in six straight quarters.

But matching prices from sellers that don't have the costs associated with running brick-and-mortar stores could also hurt profits.

Wal-Mart's move underscores how stores are being forced to step up their game for the holiday shopping season, which accounts for about 20 percent of retail industry's annual sales. The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, forecasts a 4.1 percent sales increase to $616.9 billion for November and December from last year. But online sales, which are included in the forecast, are expected to increase anywhere from 8 percent to 11 percent.

Overall, stores need to ply shoppers with deals and free shipping to win their money. Target Corp. announced this month that it's offering free shipping on all items for the holiday season until Dec. 20.

As for Wal-Mart's price-matching policy, Deisha Barnett, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, says many store managers have matched online prices for customers on a case-by-case basis.

"Taking care of the customers who shop our stores is what we always aim to do," she added.

Wal-Mart has been trying to reclaim its role as the low price leader. This year, it rolled out an online tool called Savings Catcher that compares prices on thousands of products with those of some of its store competitors. If the tool finds a lower price elsewhere, it refunds the difference to shoppers in the form of a store credit. That's different from traditional pricing matching because Savings Catcher does the work for the customer.

Wal-Mart told investors earlier this month that since the national launch in August, it's had more than 5 million people using the tool and almost 3 percent of all receipts are submitted through the application.

Wal-Mart has matched advertised prices from competitors' physical stores for several years. In 2011, it simplified the policy by making sure workers have the advertised prices of competitors on hand at the register, eliminating the need for shoppers to bring in an ad from a rival store.

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If You Had A Verizon Family Plan In The 2000s, There's Some Cash Coming Your Way

Verizon agreed to a proposed settlement last week under which it would pay $64.2 million to settle claims that it overcharged customers who signed up for family plans.

Family SharePlan customers were allegedly billed for in-network calls that were supposed to be free, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2006 in a New Jersey federal court. Customers with that plan were also allegedly billed more than the advertised rate for additional minutes they used over their monthly allowance.

The alleged overcharges happened between 2002 and 2006, at the height of so-called "family share" plans' popularity with customers.

Under the terms of the settlement, which has yet to be approved by the court, Verizon would pay $36.7 million into a settlement fund, according to court filings obtained by Consumerist. Once lawyer fees and other expenses have been deducted -- $19.26 million alone will be paid to plaintiffs' attorneys, Law360 reports -- Verizon would pay the remaining amount in cash and bill credits to affected customers.

Verizon would then pay out another $27.5 million in the form of credits for free phone calls, the court documents state.

When asked whether Verizon had deliberately overcharged people with Family SharePlans, or whether it was merely a mistake, Peter Bezek, one of the attorneys who filed the class-action suit, said he believed it was “primarily an oversight.”

“I assume they legitimately believed in the billing practices they had,” Bezek told The Huffington Post. “Ultimately, when they were shown there were, in fact, billing problems, they acted responsibly and settled the case.”

Verizon declined to comment for this story.

Of course, we don’t make phone calls today nearly as much as we used to, opting instead to send text messages and emails. As a result, cell phone providers now offer plans with unlimited talk time, meaning this problem is unlikely to happen on a large scale again.

But just because charging for "minutes" isn't as common now doesn't mean that Verizon -- and companies like it -- won't overcharge you in other ways. Verizon and AT&T have both been accused of other types of improper billing, and have had to pay out substantial sums of money in order to make such cases go away.

This Map Depicts The Staggering Highs And Lows Of The U.S. Economy Since 1999

America has been through a roller coaster ride of job creation and job loss over the last 15 years. But sometimes it can be difficult to really grasp just how wild that ride has been.

This map, which was created by TIP Strategies, an economic development consulting firm, will certainly help you do that. The map charts annual job growth and job loss in every metro area in the country between 1999 and 2014. The size of the bubbles corresponds to the net number of jobs gained or lost. Blue bubbles represent overall gains and red, losses.

Press play to start the visualization, and scroll over the bubbles to see the exact job stats for each city.

The most dramatic moments occur at the peak of the financial crisis in the middle of 2009. In the years before the financial crisis, the housing bubble had fueled significant job growth, especially in cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix where the subprime mortgage industry was particularly prevalent.

After the bubble popped, metro areas across the country hemorrhaged jobs. But since 2010, many of the red bubbles fade to blue as the economy recovers. Unfortunately, too many of those jobs have paid low wages.

The map also more subtly highlights other major events of the last 15 years, like the Dot-Com Bubble of 1999-2000 and its subsequent burst from 2001-2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the regeneration of the Midwest auto industry in the last few years. It has been a wild ride.

David Perdue Dismisses Pay Discrimination Lawsuit: 'It Was Less Than 2,000' Women

David Perdue, Georgia's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, defended himself Sunday night against charges that he paid female managers less than male ones when he was CEO of Dollar General, saying "it was less than 2,000 people" who brought the lawsuit against the company.

"There was no wrongdoing there," Perdue said in a debate Sunday night against Democrat Michelle Nunn. "That lawsuit or that claim or that complaint was settled five years after I was there. She knows that. And it was less than 2,000 people. We had upwards of 70,000 employees at that company."

Nunn jumped on Perdue's statement. "You know, 2,000 women, that actually seems like quite a lot to me who say that they were discriminated against. And federal investigators -- public knowledge -- found that that was true. And it was during your tenure."

The lawsuit in question was brought against Dollar General in 2006, while Perdue was CEO. Almost 2,100 female store managers sued the company, claiming they had been discriminated against and "generally were paid less" than men with the same job title. Several years after Perdue left Dollar General, the company paid the employees a settlement of almost $19 million.

While Dollar General always claimed it had justifiable reasons for paying women less than men, an area director with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found the company’s explanation for the difference in pay was "not supported by the evidence nor is it sufficient to rebut the sex-based inference established by pay differentials."

Nunn's campaign and EMILY's List, a progressive women's PAC that supports Nunn, are both running ads against Perdue based on the pay discrimination suit. “If David Perdue didn’t do right by women at his company, why would he do right for Georgia?” the announcer asks in one ad.

The attack line may be working. The latest CNN/ORC International poll shows Nunn leading Perdue by 3 points overall, thanks to a huge advantage among women voters.

Perdue's campaign maintains that the candidate has always supported fair pay for women. “David absolutely believes in equal pay for equal work," Megan Whittemore, a spokeswoman for Perdue's campaign, told Time. "That is the law and he has always supported that. Unlike Michelle Nunn who will make it harder for women to succeed, David will be a strong voice for Georgia’s women and families in the U.S. Senate.”

Majority Of Kroger Shoppers Want Gun-Friendly Chain To Ban Guns

The cadre of mothers crusading to ban the open carry of firearms in stores has added a new poll to its arsenal.

Sixty-four percent of shoppers in states allowing gun owners to brandish their weapons in public want supermarket giant Kroger to prohibit open carry in its stores, according to the poll, commissioned by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America, the increasingly powerful gun-control group backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

On Wednesday, the moms plan to picket outside Kroger’s annual investor relations meeting in Cincinnati armed with a 300,000-signature petition and the poll, which was released Tuesday by the Benenson Strategy Group.

“People are now just realizing how absurd it is that someone could bring a loaded AR-15 into Kroger with them while they’re shopping,” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, told The Huffington Post on Tuesday.

Moms Demand Action has already notched significant victories through powerful social media campaigns. At its urging, corporate food chains Chili’s, Sonic, Jack in the Box, Chipotle and Starbucks asked customers to leave guns at home or in the car. After a prolonged fight, during which the moms faced fierce rallies by rifle-toting open-carry advocates, the group convinced Target to announce a no-guns policy.

But the Kroger campaign marked a shift for the group toward more sophisticated tactics. Flush with cash from Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety fund, the moms rolled out campaign ads for the first time last month. Meant to jolt shoppers into realizing the absurdity of allowing assault-grade firearms in the stores, the ads juxtapose a person with an AR-15 slung around his shoulders with either a child holding an ice cream cone, a shirtless man or a teenager with a skateboard. The message: Deadly weapons are allowed at Kroger, where policy forbids these other, relatively harmless things.

One of the ads released by Moms Demand Action to pressure Kroger to ban guns.

Two radio ads, made by recording real customer service calls to Kroger, are also getting air time.

Since the moms embarked on the campaign, smaller grocers have approached the group for help drafting gun bans of their own.

Watts said her group chose the supermarket giant because of its size and visibility. Kroger operates 2,419 stores in 31 states, most of which are in the South and Midwest, regions where gun culture and the powerful National Rifle Association maintain a stronger grip than in, say, the liberal Northeast.

“We wanted to pick a campaign that would give us the opportunity, frankly, to do more brand damage by running ads,” Watts said. “They may at first sit back and allow the brand damage to occur, and then realize, ‘Oh, wait, we’re alienating most of our customer base, which is women and mothers.”

Kroger said it has no plans to change its current policy, and that it believes the Everytown is "a national political organization that is attempting to use retailers to further their agenda."

"Kroger's policy has been and continues to be to follow state and local laws and to ask customers to be respectful of others while shopping in our stores," Keith Dailey, a spokesman for the chain, wrote in an email to HuffPost. "We believe the controversial gun issue is best resolved by lawmakers, not retailers."

Though the results of the moms' new poll should be taken with a grain of salt, considering the group financed the poll, the findings indicate a desire to leave guns out of the grocery store.

A huge majority of those polled, 83 percent, said they believe Kroger has the right to prohibit guns if it so chooses. And 61 percent of shoppers who have guns in their homes say they don’t think such a policy would violate their Second Amendment rights. Most notably, 52 percent of shoppers who said they support a gun ban at Kroger keep firearms in their homes.

Open-carry activists marched through a Target location in Texas to protest the moms' early efforts pushing the retailer to ban guns.

Watts said most of the retailers that have announced no-guns rules over the last year conducted their own polls ahead of any policy changes.

But the rules aren’t always legally binding. It can be difficult for individual chains to enforce the policies, both legally and logistically, if a defiant customer decides to carry in a loaded assault rifle strapped to their back. But Watts, who has endured violent threats and brutal, misogynistic hate speech since founding the group after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, said the policies are first steps toward loosening the grip of the NRA gun culture.

“Ultimately,” she said, “businesses cannot withstand the wrath of American moms and women.”

This story has been updated with a statement from Kroger.

Walmart Was Offering A Special 'Fat Girl Costumes' Section In Its Online Store

Walmart has everyone's Halloween needs covered this year -- especially if you happen to fall into the category known as "fat girl."

No, we're not kidding, though we wish we were. Until just after 11am this morning, the mega-retailer actually had a subsection of online Halloween costumes marked as "fat girl costumes." (See below.)

A screenshot from Walmart.com taken on October 27.

This is an ill-advised category name, to say the least. "Fat girl" still remains a derogatory label, though it shouldn't be. And it's also unclear what the retailer's motivations were for creating such a category. As Anna Merlan at Jezebel pointed out, many of the costumes featured in the "Fat Girl" section were also available on a page labeled "Women's Plus Size Adult." So was this someone's idea of a funny joke? Or did Walmart actually think people were searching for "Fat Girl" costumes?

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the section was taken down shortly after HuffPost contacted them. The "Fat Girl Costumes" page now redirects to an empty "Women's Plus Size Costumes" page.

In case you're not a fat girl but just think it would be hilarious to dress up as one for Halloween, why not try the Walmart "Fat Tinkerbell" getup? Or purchase a straight-up fat suit?

Halloween, brought to you by Walmart -- the best time of year to make fun of any woman over a size 6.

If you want some actually clever costume ideas, check out our list here.

UPDATE 2:04pm EST: The Huffington Post received the following statement from a Walmart spokesperson: "This never should have been on our site. It is unacceptable, and we apologize. We are working to remove it as soon as possible and ensure this never happens again."

H/T Jezebel

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The Workers Making Sure The NYC Subway Is Ebola-Free

The people who clean the subways might be New York City's unsung heroes. They work at all hours, power-washing urine from platforms, putting themselves in harm's way to clean tracks and mopping the train car floors and seats that millions of people use every day.

Still, workers were disconcerted by the news that Craig Spencer, the doctor who tested positive for Ebola in New York City on Thursday, rode the A, L and 1 subway lines the day before he was diagnosed. After all, they’re the ones who have to clean the trains on which Spencer travelled.

"It's a time for caution, a high level of caution," said John Samuelsen, president of the Transportation Workers Union Local 100, which represents Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers.

Samuelson told The Huffington Post that the biggest concern for transit workers right now is making sure they have the right protective gear for cleaning up hazardous waste. The union is advising workers to do their jobs and be professional, but to challenge any supervisor who tells them to deal with infectious waste without protective equipment.

The risk of any transit worker contracting Ebola is relatively low. The disease is not airborne, and it’s only spread through bodily fluids. For someone to catch it, they would have to actually come in contact with something like mucus or vomit from an infected person.

Bodily fluids weren’t reported on any of the subway lines Spencer rode on Wednesday, according to the MTA.

That said, uncomfortable cleanups are all too common on New York City's busy subway system.

"This is nothing new for transit workers," Samuelsen said.

Indeed, whoever ends up cleaning the subway will be well-prepared. Transit workers are trained regularly on how to deal with emergencies. Moreover, the MTA already has procedures in place for cleaning up infectious waste in the transit system, including isolating the bus, train car or subway where the waste is found and providing protective equipment and training to the people cleaning it up. The MTA has added extra levels of protection for workers cleaning the places where Spencer came in contact with the system.

“Based on advice from health experts, the MTA has updated the protocols to ensure employees are issued nitrile gloves, use a 10 percent bleach solution for disinfection, and double-bag any potentially infectious waste,” according to a statement from the agency.

In addition, the TWU Local 100 union released a statement Thursday saying that its director of occupational health, Dr. Frank Goldsmith, is “closely monitoring the situation."

The people who keep the subway humming work under a variety of strange conditions that would be foreign to most New Yorkers, according to Robert W. Snyder, the author of Transit Talk: New York Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories. Their hours can be erratic. They’re in contact with many more people every day than most of us are. Some of their jobs are “industrial” and can involve dangerous conditions. Amid all of this, these workers are also expected to maintain a happy face for customers, Snyder told HuffPost.

(This is confirmed by just one look at the union's website, which is currently advertising a workshop called “Dealing with Difficult People.")

Transit workers are "often seen as invisible unless something goes catastrophically wrong,” said Snyder, who is also a professor at Rutgers University’s Newark campus.

That dynamic was on display earlier this month, when passengers wrote in anger to various news outlets about a used condom that had been hanging from a handrail on the F line for weeks. An MTA spokesman told Gothamist that he wasn’t necessarily surprised workers had missed the condom, which was relatively high up, because they’re so focused on cleaning the floors and seats of the train.

Despite the stressful conditions of transit work, people still flock to the job because “it remains one of the few jobs in the city where an ordinary person with an ordinary education can build a decent life with decent pay,” Snyder said.

Transit workers who clean the subway make about $25 an hour, according to data provided by the union. MTA workers also get dental and medical benefits, as well as perks like two weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave.

That may be part of the reason that, so far, transit workers and organizers haven’t used the Ebola panic to highlight the difficulties of the work. By contrast, earlier this month, airplane cleaners and other LaGuardia airport workers addressed Ebola in a strike that was organized with the help of the Service Employee International Union.

Though the LaGuardia protest dealt with working conditions more broadly, the Ebola outbreak offered a good opportunity to highlight those conditions, since the workers cleaning airplane cabins regularly come into contact with passengers’ bodily fluids.

Samuelsen added that his organization was in constant communication with workers and the MTA to ensure employees are working safely.

"We're not going to put ourselves in harm's way," he said.