Category Archives: Consumer issues

More Turo parking woes

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Problems with Turo peer-to-peer car rental hosts using public streets to park their cars between rentals has been mentioned here before.

Now another complaint is bouncing around, this time about a Turo “host” who apparently manages more than 50 vehicles.

Copies of several emails about the situation have been circulating, and I had a chance to read one of those.

According to the complaint, a Turo host parks as many as 20 cars on a residential street in Manoa, initially in the 2300 and 2400 blocks of Oahu Avenue, later forther down on the 2200 block, near the UH president’s home and the Honolulu Christian Church.

This particular host started a car rental company in mid-2021, state business registration records show. Two others were added as company officers in November 2022.

In 2022, the host—who is listed as the car rental company’s president—purchased a home on East Manoa Road home for about $1.5 million. The deed for that home identified him as a resident of Irvine, California.

The house, which sits on a lot of about 5,000 square feet, has no room for parking of the fleet of rental cars, and city rules allow only two rental vehicles to be parked as part of a legal “home business.”

According to a June 9 email, complaints about this particular host have been on record with Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting since August 2021, and was also reported to the city’s Customer Service Branch.

The complainant did not know whether the host has faced fines from the city.

Turo claims to have an internal system for resolving complaints about parking, but had failed to resolve this complaint after earlier complaints.

Add it to the list of issues to keep track of.

Are you aware of Turo hosts with large rental fleets in your neighborhood?

Safeway accused of deceptive pricing (again!)

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The Safeway grocery chain had been sued again in California for overcharging consumers through deceptive pricing and advertising.

It’s far from the first time. Similar successful consumer lawsuits go back more than a decade.

The latest lawsuit accuses Safeway of advertising “Buy one-get one free” (or BOGO) specials that regularly bumped up the price for the first item so that the “free” item was far from free, often almost at full price.

Here’s how it was described by an article in SFGate.com:

On April 14, Caleb Haley went to his local grocery store in McKinleyville to buy the ice cream, paying $7.49 in a buy one, get one free sale that he was eligible for using his Safeway Club Card. But the price of the ice cream was lower than that prior to the promotion, costing $4 – a price that returned as soon as the BOGO deal ended, Haley alleged.

These promotions have been offered at 243 California Safeway stores over the last four years, according to the lawsuit filed by Haley against the grocery retailer and its parent company Albertsons. The lawsuit accuses Safeway of raising the cost of goods included in special sales so that customers have to pay more for their product of choice – and buy more of it than they typically would – in order to get what is being advertised to them as a better deal.

Although the lawsuit doesn’t appear to include Hawaii, it seems likely similar tactics could be used by the company’s stores in the islands. This is a ploy that is hard to catch, because it relies on either knowing the price before the BOGO special, or going back to check the regular prices when the sale is over.

I did notice another interesting issue recently when we were shopping for toilet paper. Safeway often has specials on paper products, but it pays to examine them carefully.

For example, on the day we were shopping at the Kapahulu store, large packages of TP were on sale, with the biggest signs on the largest packages, which you might reasonably think would indicate the lowest prices.

With different numbers of rolls, and different sizes of rolls as well, it was hard to compare prices of different brands, including others that were on sale.

Luckily, Safeway does offer a way to compare. The little signs stating the price include, in small print, the cost per 100 sheets of TP. This makes it possible to compare the actual costs of the different offerings.

On this particular day, the biggest package on sale was actually about twice the price of some other packages when compared on the “per 100 sheets” measure.

So buyer beware!

Safeway was purchased by Albertsons in 2015, and then the combined company and all its brands were in turn gobbled up by Krogers last year, which I believe makes it by far the largest supermarket chain in the U.S.

When we lived in Kaaawa, we used to shop at the Kaneohe Safeway quite often. But in recent years, we have found Safeway’s prices on most items to be significantly higher than other stores, and have shifted our shopping to Times. We now shop at Safeway only for certain specific items which, in our experience, are well priced. Even Whole Foods beats Safeway prices on most vegetables and many other items as well.

No conspiracy theory needed to explain the general absence of in-depth reporting

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A comment left on my latest Miske-case story by a reader using the name “Shoeter” raised questions about the reason that my reporting on the case stands out.

Shoeter wrote:

Why aren’t the other outlets here following this incredibly complex and dramatic criminal investigation and looming trial? I noted the same thing with the Kealohas’ prosecution.

It seems as if local print and TV here are neither ready, willing, and/or able to commit any resources, which yields this presumption/suspicion that an excessively sycophantic, cozy, and/or other unprofessional relationship exists here between the local press and these high-visibility “bad actors”.

It stands to reason then that local media is part of the same “bradduh-bradduh” network that includes criminals and corrupt politicians.

I respectfully disagree.

In my view, it really has nothing at all to do with anyone’s “excessively sycophantic, cozy, and/or other unprofessional” relationships.

The reason is much more basic. Money. And money determines how many reporters are available, and what they are assigned to do. The fact is that remaining newsrooms have fewer people expected to produce more than ever before. Quick and simple is preferred over long and complex. That’s just economics, plain and simple.

For decades, local news has been under the gun, and repeated rounds of budget cuts have hit newsrooms of all types, whether print or broadcast.

I’m more familiar with the newspaper side. I was given an opportunity to do investigative reporting for the old Honolulu Star-Bulletin, back in a day when even a local newspapers was able to justify releasing me from most daily responsibilities in order to pursue stories that took more time to research and report. It was an exhilarating time. It’s also a time that has passed.

If you hadn’t noticed, newspapers have been closing at an alarming rate. It’s a national problem. The NY Times reported that 2,500 U.S. newspapers have closed since 2005, about 25% of all newspapers. Remember that Honolulu had completing daily newspapers until 2010, when the Gannett newspaper chain, itself under financial pressure, decided to sell its Honolulu Advertiser, which was merged with its rival, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, to create the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. And the resulting decline of local reporting, not only here but across the country, is widely recognized as a significant national issue threatening the future of our democracy.

I’m not employed by Civil Beat. I’m not given “assignments” for future stories. Technically, I’m retired, and comfortably so, but my own drive keeps me digging into and writing about things I’m interested in. And this unusually significant and complex case is one of those things. I even stopped billing CB long ago, so that I consider my reporting to be a contribution to its efforts to keep in-depth local reporting alive and well.

I’m a contributing writer, and as such I’m free to follow my nose, so to speak. Being retired allows allows me to devote much more time to the intricacies of this case than any rational editor would be able to allow if I were on the payroll, where time is money. And that allows me to provide you, the readers, with more intricate descriptions and, when possible, explanations of what’s going on in the case, and what is slowly becoming known about the underlying crimes the government alleges, all while the case creeps towards an eventual trial.

I would encourage you to contribute to Civil Beat’s nonprofit efforts. I would also highly encourage everyone to subscribe to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Perhaps it’s not the newspaper we would ideally like to have, but we would be far worse off without its daily news coverage, which is often quite good, despite all the constraints.

Just for the record, I tried to post this reply directly on the Civil Beat site, but found that I had exceeded the upper character count allowed for comments. So it appears here, where I allow myself as much room as necessary.

Respected photograpy website will continue under new ownership

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Here’s a bit of good news, for those who are interested in such things.

Digital Photography Review, a highly regarded website featuring critical reviews of all things related to photography, has gained a new lease on life.

It was reported back in April that the site was being shut down by its owner, Amazon.com.

But it remained onine.

And then just this week it was announced that the site will continue under new ownership.

Dear readers,

We’ve heard from many of you over the past several weeks, and we realize there are many questions about what comes next for DPReview. We’re thrilled to share the news that Gear Patrol has acquired DPReview. Gear Patrol is a natural home for the next phase of DPReview’s journey, and I’m excited to see what we can accomplish together.

I want to reassure you that we remain firmly committed to what makes DPReview great: the best camera reviews in the business, industry-leading photography news and features, and one of the most active photography communities anywhere on the internet.

This is just the beginning of a new chapter for DPReview and we don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m sharing what we know below and will continue to share information about this change as we get more acquainted with our partners at Gear Patrol.

Thank you for your continued support of our team and legacy. We appreciate it and can’t thank you all enough.

– Scott Everett
General Manager – DPReview.com

Here’s how Gear Patrol describes itself.

Founded in 2007, Gear Patrol is an award-winning publisher and content studio dedicated to guiding the next generation of consumers about the best products and strategies to pursue their lives. As an early pioneer of product journalism, Gear Patrol Reaches over seven million readers every month in digital, print and social media with its unique blend of product storytelling and service-centric journalism across its core categories of outdoors, tech, watches, motoring, home and style. Gear Patrol is driven by its core value that everyone deserves the best product.