Consumer Inq

Not that we really needed any, but this week's recall of nearly one million lead-painted kids' toys by Mattel's Fisher-Price subsidiary is more evidence of the risks of commerce in the Wild East, a.k.a. China, and the particular risks it poses to kids.

Today, the California company apologized for the recall.

"We apologize to everyone affected by this recall, especially those who bought the toys in question," Mattel CEO Robert A. Eckert said in a statement. "Our goal is to correct this problem, improve our systems and maintain the trust of the families that have allowed us to be part of their lives by acting responsibly and quickly to address their concerns."

Here's the rub: Mattel had to recall were 83 types of toys, some based on such classic kids characters Big Bird and Elmo. Recalls of consumer items never catch all the tainted product – usually, they're not even close.

So some kids are going to be chewing on Big Bird and getting lead poisoning – just like some of the millions of kids who have undoubtedly been exposed to Chinese-made trinkets, sold in gumball machines, that have been found to be loaded with lead.

According to the nonprofit Kids in Danger, more than 152 million pieces of vending
machine toy jewelry were recalled between 1990 and 2004 because they contained elemental lead – some of them were as much as 30 percent lead. Of the recalled products traceable to their place of manufacture, only one was manufactured in the United States. Over half were made in China.

What have we done? Despite all the evidence of danger, and despite its own staff's recommendation for a ban, the CPSC still hasn't managed to finally outlaw lead in toy jewelry. After all, it gives that 25-cent trinket a weighty, real-jewelry feel.

Now come the lead-painted Fisher-Price toys, hard on the heels of June's recall of 1.5 million lead-painted Thomas & Friends "Wooden Railway Toys" by RC2 Corp. of Oak Brook, Ill., also made in China.

Will it finally sink in? Consumers Union says the Mattel recall is the 26th toy recall of this year, and that all involved toys produced in China.

I don't want to engage in China-bashing, but I want my kids and your kids to be safe. Something's got to give – and the first thing should be China's laissez-faire regulatory system, and our sluggish, largely laissez-faire response to it.

This just in (though I don't yet know its significance): The Federal Trade Commission announced a streamlined new format for comparing average annual energy consumption when you go shopping for home appliances. See the new one here.

The FTC says the new yellow sticker was the result of a two-year review and was informed by "substantial public comment and consumer research."

Inefficient appliances are big drains on electricity, which means they're costly both to your wallet and the environment. I hope this helps, but at a glance, it's hard to see what's different.

If you've been blissfully free from dinnertime interruptions by telemarketers for the last few years, I'll bet you a Florida time-share that I know the reason, and that it's not because the business suddenly vanished.

Your evenings are your own again because the government crackdown on unwelcome telemarketing worked. You added your number to the Pennsylvania Do Not Call list or to its counterpart in another state, or you joined the federal Do Not Call list, and telemarketers knew not to bother you.

Trust me: As sure as Mortgage Rates Have Never Been Lower! (well, surer), they're still calling sombody. I know this firsthand because, alone among my friends and acquaintances, I've never added my phone number to a do-not-call lists. Yes, keeping an ear on this often-smarmy business was a dirty job, but as a consumer writer I figured it was my duty. And thanks to my valiant sacrifice, I can assure you that lenders, vacation-deal peddlers, and home-improvement contractors are standing by, ready to call you first chance they get.

When might that be? Last week, the Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett began a campaign to renew the no-calls status for the first million phone numbers that were signed up as soon as the state's list became available in mid-2002. If you were one of the first to enroll your number, and you don't renew by Sept. 15th, Corbett said you could start getting calls in November. (To enroll or re-enroll online, click here.)

Do you need to re-up for the Pennsylvania list if you're also on the national Do Not Call list, which was started a year later?

That's not clear. The state and federal lists both should spare you from the same kinds of calls and carry the same kinds of exceptions – such as for companies with whom you have an existing business relationship, nonprofits, and political calls. So I called Corbett's office to ask.

The answer: "The reason to be on both is that you might benefit from enforcement on both," said spokesman Nils Frederiksen. "It’s double the protection, and you get a financial bonus if you file a complaint in Pennsylvania and we’re able to collect a fine from the company."

The AG's office says that since the law was enacted, it has filed 75 legal actions against telemarketers who have made calls violating it, and collected more than $800,000 in civil penalties. Under the law, a consumer whose complaint leads to a successful prosecution is entitled to 10 percent of the fine, up to $100 apiece.

Could I talk to someone who got a check from the state? Frederiksen put me in touch with Joann Brown of South Philadelphia, a restaurant hostess who reported an unwanted call from a company called Vacation Depot.

Violating the telemarketing rules wasn't necessarily the worst thing the company had done. In December, Corbett settled a year-old state lawsuit against the Michigan company behind Vacation Depot, which agreed to pay $15,000 in fines and in restitution to consumers it was accused of misleading.

According to state investigators, the company called consumers and told them they'd won a vacation or a motor vehicle. But to collect, they would first have to listen to a seminar about the Vacation Depot club.

Those who heard the pitch were promised they could save up to 40 percent on vacations, "including cruises, hotel rooms, car rentals and airline tickets," the AG's settlement announcement said. It said club memberships ranged in price from $2,453 to $6,453.

"In reality, many club members complained that the promised discounts just weren't there," Corbett said in the statement. "In one case, the vacation package offered by the defendants was $500 more than a similar package a consumer found on Expedia.com, an online travel service provider. In other cases, the company was unable to arrange the requested trips and services at all. Dissatisfied customers were then told that they could not cancel their memberships and get their money back."

Joanna Brown was one of the club's luckier – OK, smarter – potential victims. She got a call, reported it, and eventually got a $15 check – her share of the part of the penalty not used for direct restitution. Never messed with the company itself.

Clearly, a side-benefit of the Do Not Call laws are that it makes it easier for state and federal officials to nail telemarketers who play so close to the edge that they forget there is one. In Vacation Depot's case, more than 50 consumers complained that they got the company's calls even though they were on the Do Not Call list. Those allegations were a key part of the case against the company, which otherwise could rely heavily on the usual buyer-beware defense.

How have the feds done in comparison?

At the end of December, the federal Do Not Call list had 132 million numbers on it. The federal law allows a penalty of $11,000 per violation, well beyond Pennsylvania's limit of $1,000 per violation. On the other hand, Pennsylvania has already filed more than twice as many cases as the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the federal law.

As of Sept. 30, 2006, the FTC had filed 28 cases and settled 21 of them. But those 21 cases were clearly on a different scale than Pennsylvania's, generating more than $15 million in court-ordered penalties or redress, roughly half for do-not-call violations and half for other charges. (Want to read about its enforcement? Click here to read the FTC's annual report to Congress on the Do Not Call registry.)

The bottom line? Sign up for both lists, if only to encourage both the state and federal governments to continue enforcing the laws against marketing that crosses the line.

Someday, I just might join you. Maybe after I win the Florida time-share sweepstakes.

For instructions on renewing your Pennsylvania registration, click here.

For informationn and instructions about the federal law, click here.

Memo to wife: Time to talk to 16-year-old. Again.

Just in over the e-mail transome is a new poll done for Symantec, the computer security company, by Harris Interactive. Its major finding: "a significant digital divide between parents and their cyber-savvy children."

No, we don't need to be told this. Nor do our kids. But this poll supposedly tells us what they don't want to, probably because they're too busy playing games, chatting, reading, flirting or whatevering online.

Some of it is so-whattish. So what that the average parent thinks his or her kid is online three hours a week, but kids ages 8 to 17 admit to spending an average of seven hours online a week (which probably means they're actually spending 15 to 20 hours online)?

The part that worries me: Nearly a quarter admit "doing things online that their parents would not condone."

What's going on with kids in cyberspace? Well, one-fifth report encountering "inappropriate material ... that made them feel uncomfortable." Unfortunately, that goes with the territory: The Internet is an incredible window onto our great, big – and often ugly – world. Give a kid a mouse and free rein, and that's one of the first things they'll discover.

But here are some numbers that made me uncomfortable:

* 18 percent of children have had an experience with cyberbullying or cyber-pranks.

* 23 percent have had an encounter with a stranger on the Internet.

* 7 percent reported having met someone in the real world from the Internet.

“I wasn’t aware kids were posting their entire profiles online – including their name, location, photos and contact information,” said one parent, the father of two young boys, who attended a Symantec-sponsored conference on online kid safety last week in New York.

Well, I was. But not my kid – as far as I know from our last chat.

Time to have that talk again.

Symantec has assembled an impressive "Family Resource Web Site," which deals with everything from cyberbullying to Internet addiction. (That last one could help some adults I know.)

If you're shopping around for a new credit card, you might be tempted to think all cards are created equal — equally good or equally bad, depending on your perspective. After all, they all allow you to pay with plastic, charge interest if you carry a balance, and hit you with penalties if you mess up on payments. Card to card, what could be different?

Plenty, according to the latest survey of 36,300 Consumer Reports readers, who collectively hold nearly 62,000 cards and answered questions about problems related to interest rates, billing, and customer service.

The complete results are available online here, though a subscription is required to view details — including the ratings.

The best of the bunch? Topping the list, as it often does, was USAA, available to members of the military, retirees and their families. Scoring almost as well (cardholders were "very satisfied") were cards issued by a group of credit unions, two retailers (Cabela's and Nordstrom), American Express and Discover.

Results were much less inspiring for cards issued by some of the nation's leading credit-card banks.

Consumer Reports put it this way: "The nation's five largest MasterCard and Visa issuers — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Capital One, and HSBC, which control almost 80 percent of the Visa and MasterCard market — all had undistinguished scores. More of our readers who used those banks' cards complained that they were assessed unfair late fees or experienced unexpected interest-rate increases than did readers who held cards from the top-rated issuers. And none of them was exceptional at resolving problems."

Overall, the five worst scorers were JP Morgan Chase, MBNA, Capital One, Direct Merchants, and, at the bottom, Providian.

Credit-card trickery remains a problem, despite pressure from advocates and lawmakers. On that subject, Consumer Reports quotes a GAO study and a report from a California advocacy group, Consumer Action:

A September 2006 Government Accountability Office study also noted new hidden fees, such as charges for making payments over the phone, which can range from $5 to $15, even when the payments are on time.

But Consumer Action's survey, issued in May, noted that many cards still employed universal default. "And if you carefully read the change-in-terms section of most disclosure statements, most say that the issuers can change the terms of the cardholder's agreement at any time for any reason, language that amounts to the same thing as universal default," says Ruth Susswein, deputy director of national priorities for Consumer Action. "There is no other contract in the world that can change its terms at any time."

Consume Reports said its survey "found evidence of the damage that universal default can inflict on cardholders. Fully 28 percent of our readers who were paying the highest interest rates (more than 25 percent) reported that their rate had increased due to a universal-default clause."

The bottom line: Pick a card carefully. Read the terms. Then watch your bills like a hawk. If you use the card for convenience, paying charges on time and in full, you're probably OK with most cards. But if you ever carry a balance, you're at risk of paying an extra, unexpected price.

If that happens, all you can do is complain to the issuer (which sometimes will get charges reversed "as a courtesy"), complain to bank regulators, or find a new card. You'd do better to choose a card carefully in the first place.