Jeff Gelles covers consumer and technology topics for the Inquirer and writes the weekly Consumer 13.0 and Tech Life columns for The Inquirer. He welcomes comments in this blog as well as calls and e-mails about consumers' concerns. Contact him at 215-854-2776 or jgelles@phillynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffgelles.
Email Jeff at jgelles@phillynews.com
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Jeff Gelles: Does Big Data threaten to play a Big Brother-like role in American electoral politics?
Can America's banks be coaxed into adopting more consumer-friendly practices - and pushed if they don't change voluntarily? That's the hope of researchers at the Pew Charitable Trusts, who helped bring changes to the credit-card industry several years ago and have now turned attention to checking accounts.
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Yanked by eBay, a merchant fights back
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The way Patrick Rodgers sees it, he has two primary locations for his business, which includes promoting Gothic and neo-medieval music, and selling collectible trading cards for a fantasy game called Magic: The Gathering.
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How typos turn into trouble in credit-score land
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Curt Miller was just trying to get a free annual credit report, his right under both federal and New Jersey law, when he uncovered something disturbing.
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Microsoft Xbox One may reduce remote-control mess
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Jeff Gelles: Jaded by juggling multiple remotes? Confounded by the connections linking your TV to your cable box to your DVD and other devices in your television room? Ignorant of how to switch inputs - or even which control to use? You know who you are, and some of you have spent time at my house.
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Beware of credit-report offers when checking your status
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Jeff Gelles: When it comes to credit issues and identity theft, I sometimes feel like what we used to call a broken record.
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Providing online help for funeral planning
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Jeff Gelles: It sounds a bit macabre, but Rachel Zeldin makes a good case why her website, imsorrytohear.com, addresses a real need: providing reliable, local information to consumers when they're at their most vulnerable.
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Some financial specifics before retiring
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Jeff Gelles: It's common in some circles nowadays to scoff at the very notion of retirement. Years after the 2008 financial crisis, unemployment lingers at painful levels. Who can think of voluntarily giving up a job?
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Her ex is dead, but her credit-card bill lives
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Imagine going to a restaurant, enjoying a modest meal, and dutifully paying your bill, while across the way other diners seem oddly carefree about their tab. You don't think much of it - why should you? - until one day you get stuck with their bill, too, and a lot more like it.
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Will Big Data be good or bad for airfares?
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Could Big Data, the popular term for algorithmic analyses that capitalize on our increasingly vast stores of data, also be used by businesses seeking an extra edge in profit - even, ironically, to lead some airline passengers to pay more?
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Jumping into the gun divide, closer to home
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You don't have to be in Washington to get a glimpse of America's seemingly unbridgeable divide over guns. Less than five months after the massacre of 20 Connecticut schoolchildren, there's plenty of evidence closer to home - say, in the 20 miles between Clayton's Hunting & Fishing in Horsham and the University of Pennsylvania, where researcher Charles Branas studies methods of reducing violence.
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High school team puts together a winning app
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Jeff Gelles: Synergy may be one of the more overexposed buzzwords of our era. But it's an inescapable theme in the story behind Workstream, the online-tutoring app that won first-place honors - and $5,000 in seed money - for a team of high schoolers at Tuesday's Switch Philly.
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