Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - SPAM: DC Sues Grubhub, Claiming App Is Full of Hidden Fees and High Prices

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is suing Grubhub for deceptive business practices, saying its food delivery app covertly inflates prices for diners who order through it. The suit demands an end to a laundry list of allegedly illegal practices as well as financial restitution and civil penalties. The newly filed lawsuit (PDF) argues that Grubhub’s promises of “free” online orders — and “unlimited free delivery” for Grubhub Plus — are misleading. While customers can make pickup orders for free, the company charges delivery and service fees for standard orders and service fees for Grubhub Plus orders, displaying the service fee until recently as part of a single line with sales taxes. “Grubhub misled District residents and took advantage of local restaurants to boost its own profits, even as District consumers and small businesses struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Racine in a statement. “Grubhub charged hidden fees and used bait-and-switch advertising tactics — which are illegal.”

The complaint says Grubhub orders often cost more than ordering the same item at a restaurant and argues that the company fails to reasonably disclose this to consumers. “Because Grubhub already charges consumers several different types of fees for its services ... consumers expect that the menu prices listed on Grubhub are the same prices offered at the restaurant or on the restaurant’s website,” it says. Grubhub has also listed many restaurants without their permission to expand its service, routing orders through its services and taking a commission. The complaint says it listed “over a thousand” restaurants in DC that had no connection with the company, asserting that the unapproved listings often contained menu errors and resulted in orders that would “take longer to fill, would be filled incorrectly, would be delivered cold, or would eventually be cancelled altogether.”

Grubhub — which also operates Seamless and several other food delivery apps — has made more elaborate attempts to insert itself into restaurant transactions as well. The lawsuit notes its launch of unsanctioned microsites that appear to be official restaurant sites, as well as custom phone numbers that let it charge fees when customers call restaurants, even when the calls didn’t result in orders. The company also offered a “Supper for Support” promotion that required restaurants to foot the bill for a special discount; it offered restaurants $250 in compensation after a backlash.
Link to Original Source

Comment I Genuinely Laughed... (Score 1) 29

...at the title of this post.

TikTok isn't mental crack, it's frickin' methamphetamine. We're talking Heisenberg quality, here.

Anyone I know with TT on their phone just scrolls, non-stop, unlike anything I've ever seen before, and these are folks who don't have any diagnosed problems.

The folks I know with ADHD or Autism Spectrum Disorder are practically helpless without a non-stop fix. It's genuinely frightening.

Comment Why Haven't We... (Score 4, Interesting) 43

...seen this used by activists?

No, seriously. Think of how fast NSO, Candiru (LOL, WTF?!) and Cognyte would get shut down if a few dozen Senators and representatives had their phones penetrated, and their Grindr profiles, lewd texts, draft Tweets posted by their Russian handlers, and shady financials got posted to the Internet for all to see?

Come on, people. Level up, here.

Comment Dark / Genocide Path (Score 1) 44

by IonOtter (#62250695) Attached to: The Unnerving Rise of Video Games that Spy on You

Everyone who chose the "bad" choices and decided to become "evil" is probably going to be a little nervous about this news? But if they made those choices as part of multiple playthroughs, where they try different routes each time, then not so much.

The folks who made the "evil" choices first - and only playthrough - should probably be worried they'll be picked up as potential political candidates.

Submission + - Samsung spilled up to 763K gallons of sulfuric acid waste into Austin tributary (kxan.com) 1

Submitted by blackprint
blackprint writes: The City of Austin released a memo saying that Samsung released as much as 763k gallons of sulfuric acid waste into a Northeast Austin creek over a period as long as 106 days. They confirmed the leak has stopped, but no fish or macro invertebrates survived in the impacted area. They don't know if there are any long-term impacts, but pH levels in the area have returned close to normal. "Public access to this area is limited, and there are no nearby parks."

They have not stated the cause of the spill.

From the article:

Spill investigators and scientists took a look at the area Jan. 18-19 and saw iron staining in the tributary channel consistent with a low pH environment, the memo states. WPD says it was in this tributary stretch from the Samsung plant to the main branch of Harris Branch Creek that WPD staff found no surviving aquatic life, including fish.

Comment 2FA Is Not A Defense Against Laziness (Score 2) 52

The summary and article make it clear: the baddies are stealing your cookies.

So the answer is simple!

When Google, Amazon, Twitter and other sites using 2FA give you a checkbox, saying, "Don't require OTP on this browser"???

DON'T CHECK IT.

This means you have to enter your OTP every single time, but it also means it can't be stolen.

Submission + - Scaring an Invasive Fish Using A Menacing Robot Predator (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: The mosquitofish is wreaking havoc on native Australian marine life. In a new study, scientists tried to frighten it with a look-alike of its natural foe.

The mosquitofish is not a fussy creature: It can live in filthy bodies of water and has an undiscerning appetite. Larvae? Other fishes’ eggs? Detritus? Delicious. Often, the voracious few-inch creature chomps off the tails of freshwater fish and tadpoles, leaving them to die.

But the invasive fish is threatening some native populations in Australia and other regions, and for decades scientists have been trying to figure out how to control it, without damaging the surrounding ecosystem.

Now, the mosquitofish may have finally met its match: A menacing fish-shaped robot.

It’s “their worst nightmare,” said Giovanni Polverino, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Western Australia and the lead author of a paper published Thursday in iScience, in which scientists designed a simulacrum of the fish’s natural predator, the largemouth bass, to strike at the mosquitofish, scaring it away from its prey.

The robot not only freaked the mosquitofish out, but scarred them with such lasting anxiety that their reproduction rates dropped; evidence that could have long term implications for the species’ viability, according to the paper.

For the study, Dr. Polverino and colleagues designed a mechanical predator in the shape of a largemouth bass. The robot fish used a camera to differentiate between its “prey,” the mosquitofish, and the tadpoles of the Australian motorbike frog, which the mosquitofish hunts.

The researchers put their Terminator-like creation in a tank together with six wild-caught mosquitofish and six wild-caught tadpoles. When a mosquitofish approached a tadpole, the robot would lurch forward, as if to strike.

Comment YouTuber XiaomaNYC... (Score 1) 104

by IonOtter (#62084487) Attached to: How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War

I've been watching Xiaoma for a while. He's been to China a few times, and he studied in Beijing, but I think he cottoned on to the fact that China was using him.

He rather quietly shifted his focus from surprising Chinese people in NYC by speaking several Chinese dialects, to learning and speaking at least two dozen languages and surprising people in their native countries. He still does Chinese, but it's no longer his exclusive focus.

One thing for sure though, he never talks about the Chinese government. Like, at all. He knows which side his bread is buttered on.

Comment No Good Reason??? (Score 1) 91

"Worse, they'll get fooled for no particularly good reason:"

Wrong.

Profit. Profit is the reason.

"Remind me to give you a copy of the rules, you never know when they'll come in handy." - Quark Solves the Problem of War With Economics (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine : Emissary, Part 1)

Comment Please, Please, PLEASE for the Love of God... (Score 1) 93

...read the "Humanure Handbook: Shit In A Nutshell", by Joseph C Jenkins.

Read it online here, and then buy a physical copy here.

Make sure you read it, because while you can make good use of your own waste, you can also make yourself and others really sick if not properly composted.

Slashdot Top Deals

I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ... -- F. H. Wales (1936)

Close