McDonald’s Tries To Open Up The Elusive 2 To 5 A.M. Breakfast Market

I do most of my writing between 2 A.M. and 5 A.M. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't drive over to the nearest 24-hour McDonald's and order up an Egg McMuffin or a breakfast burrito right now. Breakfast food in the most wee hours of the morning? Who could imagine such a wondrous thing? McDonald's, of course. They're currently testing out very, very early breakfast service at their 24-hour locations in Ohio.

2-5 is a low-volume time in the fast-food business. That's not because customers' need for late-night eggs aren't being met, but because most normal people have jobs that don't involve illustrating appliance horror stories with cat pictures, and they are sleeping. Right? Maybe. The ad agency handling this project in Ohio is running a campaign aimed at what it terms "Nocturnivores," or "young people who want burgers or maybe McMuffins late at night." Will it work? Guess we'll find out. As far as this site is concerned, though, the success or failure of this campaign isn't the real issue at hand. The real reason why this makes us happy? You should be able to make a Mc10:35 late into the night.

A Mc10:35, in case you missed it the first time or have blocked it from your memory, is a secret menu item normally only available during the changeover period from breakfast to lunch. Except it's not all that secret, because you have to order two things and combine the disparate elements yourself. It consists of a McDouble (or your burger of choice) with the egg and Canadian bacon from an Egg McMuffin placed deliciously on top of the burger.

If you live in Ohio and have an interesting late-night breakfast experience or even a Mc10:35, you know where to find us.

McDonald’s launches Breakfast After Midnight for late-night diners [Columbus Business First]

McDonald's Is Going For American Fast Food's Last Unconquered Frontier [Business Insier]

by Laura Northrup via The Consumerist

Are You Overdosing On Supermarket Loyalty Cards?

Just about anyone who has been into a chain grocery store in the last decade is familiar with loyalty programs -- and the little barcode cards that can quickly clog up your wallet and/or key chain. But one Consumerist reader thinks it's time for supermarkets to rethink these programs and just pass the savings on to everyone.

"My wife now has loyalty keyfobs on her keyring outnumbering keys almost 2:1," writes H., who dreads those times when he forgets to bring the stash of cards with him when he makes a grocery run. And since they have so many of these cards, not all of them are correctly tied to his or his wife's phone number, meaning the cashier can't look up the cards using that info.

"When I find myself in that state I simply want to pay my 'just dues' and buy my stuff and get on with life," says H.

But he finds that cashiers are not always willing to let him get away without joining the loyalty program.

"The other day as I was checking out at Vons I failed to provide my card," he writes. "The cashier asked if I had a Vons card. I lied and said 'No' (because I simply wanted to go home before the butter melted). She didn't seem satisfied so she asked 'Are you on vacation?' I looked at her and said 'No.' She pointed out that she wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some possibility to save a few extra cents."

He asks, "Why not just give everyone the discount and dispense with tracking my every move with your card?"

And that's exactly the point, as a good part of the value of these cards to supermarkets is the ability to track regular shoppers' habits. They also can lock people into becoming perpetual customers through the use of rewards points. So it's in a grocery store's own interest to get these cards in as many customers' hands as possible.

(On a side note: The CDC has used supermarket loyalty cards to track a salmonella outbreak, while the USPS used them to return someone's lost keys.)

But the problem happens when every store offers the exact same kind of loyalty programs. It takes away any incentive to shop at any one store, and requires you to make extra room on your key chain.

"The fact that I can have an unlimited collection of 'loyalty' cards from every single grocery in this town indicates that it only serves to make sure I'm annoyed when I try to get out of the store without presenting the plastic key to leave," writes H.

So who can win over these customers who want discounts but don't want to be overwhelmed with plastic fobs?

"We have found a couple of local smaller chains that don't bother with the card system," says H. "I'm growing more fond of them by the day!"

Feel free to use the comments to talk up your favorite -- and least favorite -- rewards programs, and why they do or don't work for you.

by Chris Morran via The Consumerist

Citi Has Some Very Strange Ideas On How I Plan To Spend My Extra Cash Points

Is there no limit to what banking rewards programs will cover these days? Flights, hotel rooms, rental cars, electronics, women. Wait -- what?

Consumerist reader F. is a member of Citi's Extra Cash rewards program and saw they could earn 100 points just for taking this survey. But when F. got to this question about "What products or services are you considering purchasing using your Extra Cash?", they noticed that apparently Extra Cash can be spent on adult human females.

We're sending this to Citi, because we're pretty sure this isn't what the survey was meant to say.

And it gives us a reason to run this clip from the Blues Brothers:

by Chris Morran via The Consumerist

Setting Cheerios On Fire Outside General Mills Office Is Maybe Not The Best Way To Voice Opinion On Same-Sex Marriage

Whatever your opinion on same-sex marriage (and the companies whose executives may oppose or support it), you certainly have the right to express your beliefs. However, we are pretty sure that only bad things can happen if your protest involves an attempt to ignite a bowl of Cheerios in public.

"One out of every eight boxes of cereal in this country is Cheerios," says a man standing outside a General Mills office with a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in one hand and a torch in the other. "This is really the treat now for the homosexuals. And this is our protest of General Mills advocating same-sex marriages."

The man then attempts to light the cereal on fire, and not with much success.

Not that the cereal doesn't eventually go up in flames, but so does the plastic bag inside the box. That flaming bag then falls to the grass and lots of stomping ensues.

Much like the Arizona man on the opposite side of this debate -- who lost his job after he posted a video of himself harassing a Chick fil-A drive-thru worker over the beliefs of that company's president -- we're at a loss to figure out what the cereal flamer had hoped to achieve, other than becoming the butt of Internet jokes.

[via Buzzfeed]

by Chris Morran via The Consumerist

Scammers Find New Favorite Target: Lawyers

Lest you think that the only people being taken in by apparently obvious scams are naive rubes, it looks like lots of people with fancy law degrees are being scammed by letting their avarice get the better of them.

The Wall Street Journal has the story of how scammers are increasingly targeting lawyers who are hungry to take on new clients:

Crafting elaborate stories that often involve real companies or properties, con artists say they live abroad and need help collecting money from a debtor or a legal settlement. They ask the lawyers to wire the funds to bank accounts overseas, after taking a cut in fees for their services.

The scammer then sends a bogus settlement check -- along with documents that add an air of truth to the story -- to the lawyer. If the lawyer attempts to call any of the people referenced in the documents, they will reach actual people; actual people who are part of the scam.

So the lawyer then deposits the settlement check and wires money (minus the attorney's fee) to the "client." Meanwhile, the lawyer's bank is figuring out that the check is worth absolutely nothing.

It takes a higher class of criminal to rook a lawyer, say those who investigate such scams.

"The guys that are doing this, they are the top of the game," admits U.S. Postal Inspector Louis Di Rienzo, who estimates that law firms have been scammed out of at least $70 million since 2009.

In Email, Scammers Take Aim At Lawyers [Wall Street Jounal]

by Chris Morran via The Consumerist

Man Buys All 650 Foreclosed Properties In One County For $4.8 Million In Back Taxes

Why settle for scooping up one tax-foreclosed property when you can nab say, 650 of them in one fell swoop? Of course, being a millionaire helped in the case of one Michigan man who plunked down $4.8 million to buy every foreclosed property in a recent county sale. All he had to do was pay off the total amount of back taxes owed, and voila! He's got a bunch of property and is the only one in county history to have pulled off such a feat.

The businessman says he just went for something that was available to anyone after authorities said the properties could sell as a package deal. He says it's not like he's the only one who could've gotten such a deal — he was just the guy who went for it.

"I paid all the back taxes that was due and that's what the county wanted," he explained to MyFoxDetroit.com.

Of course, some of his fellow hopeful buyers were a bit peeved to see all the properties go in a flash without the chance to bid on any of them. One particularly dumbfounded Canadian investor said his company had been willing to bid much higher than $4.8 million.

"The price we were willing to pay is like three to four times what they're asking," he told the news station. "If we knew it was going to happen like this, we wouldn't even have spent any time. They could've made more money, I mean triple the money they made."

The new owner of those 650 properties says he's willing to part ways with some of the houses and has been flooded with emails from interested buyers. He's even offering to sell for near-auction prices and says his situation as a private citizen will benefit buyers. Any lots or homes he can't sell he's going to donate.

"There's no hype, they will just buy it at a realistic price," he said. "And they can look inside before they pay for it, which they can't do with the county."

Fox 2 News Headlines

Millionaire buys every tax-foreclosed home in Macomb County [MyFoxDetroit.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via The Consumerist

Why Should Consumers Settle For Crappy Concert Sound?

Back during our comments outage, reader Chris wrote to us about an incredibly disappointing concert that he attended. The show wasn't terrible because the artists weren't any good: even if you don't like country music, you have to grant that Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw are hard-working, talented, and very attractive entertainers. No, Chris's problem was that up in his seats on the upper level of the arena, the Angel Stadium of Anaheim, the sound quality was terrible, song lyrics impossible to decipher, and even spoken words in between songs impossible to understand.

He writes:

Last Saturday, I wen to the Kenny Chesney/Tim McGraw concert in Anaheim, California. My family and I sat in the upper level high above the stage to the left. The audio quality was horrible up there. For thousands of us, the audio was muddy and you couldn't understand the lyrics to songs or to what the singers would say between songs. With the amount of speakers and sophistication of the shows and high celebrity status of the singers, you would think that the audio quality would be at least decent for everyone. It wasn't and I'm having trouble finding a contact person within the two bands to ask about the audio set-up and if there was a known problem or the crews didn't bother to check around the stadium before the show to ensure decent audio quality.

When someone buys something at a store or gets a service, they can go back to the merchant and ask for a refund or a credit. But when you go to a large concert, the product delivered to the customer is a bit intangible. How does one communicate with the people providing the service to tell them that the delivered product was subpar? I've tried finding the bands' management people but I've had no luck. How else can I find out who to talk to about a poor product within such a large scale operation? I'm sure there are other Consumerist readers who have felt the same way about concerts.

An LA Times review of the concert points out that it's not the sound quality that drew many of the fans in the Anaheim Stadium that night, so maybe other purchasers of upper-level seats weren't about to complain. Maybe.

[W]hen some of the biggest ovations of the evening are generated by projected images of the show's star without his shirt, you know that it's more than catchy turns of phrase and hummable melodies that pull nearly 45,000 people to the show.

Why bother going to a concert if you can't understand anything, though? Should less expensive tickets come with a warning that you won't be able to hear a darn thing, or is it understood that you need to buy the $300 primo seats if you want to understand every word in a big venue like a major-league baseball stadium?

by Laura Northrup via The Consumerist