Consumer Affairs & Relations

If you were an Uber user in Austin, Texas, this fall, you might have been surprised to see the option to take a horse and buggy instead of a car appear on your smartphone.

The tongue-in-cheek offer was part of Uber’s effort to inform and mobilize customers in its fight against what the company contended were antiquated regulations being considered by local government.

Publix Super Markets has signed two leases for its first stores in Virginia.

The first Publix locations in that state will be in Bristol and in the greater Richmond area of Glen Allen. The Bristol store, at 54,000 square feet, will be located at the northeast corner of Lee Highway & Clear Creek Road in Washington County. In the greater Richmond area, the Glen Allen store, at 49,000 square feet, will be located at the northeast corner of Nuckols Road & Twin Hickory Road in Henrico County.

Columbus, Ohio -- WP Glimcher has completed the sale of Forest Mall in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin and Northlake Mall in Atlanta. The two non-core assets were sold to private real estate investors for $30 million.

Many companies have developed robust social media platforms for marketing and advertising, but aren’t quite sure how to manage customers who visit a company’s site to lodge a customer service inquiry, simply vent or even express satisfaction with a product or service.

They simply run away from customers. Yet, these same companies would never ignore a customer phone call or email, probably because it seems more controllable than the social media environment.

Ahold and Delhaize Group on Monday announced that they have called Extraordinary General Meetings for March 14, 2016, during which their respective shareholders will consider and vote on the proposal to approve the companies' intended merger.

Ahold has also made publicly available the prospectus included in its F-4 registration statement, which has now been declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and its approved EU prospectus. These are required steps in the process of completing their merger.

Retailers looking for validation that their data privacy efforts matter can look to disturbing new figures from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

According to data released by the FTC, it received more than 490,000 consumer complaints about identity theft in 2015. This is a 47% increase from the number of identity theft complaints in 2014. The Department of Justice estimates that in total, 17.6 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2014.

Fast-food chain The Wendy’s Co. may be the first big retailer to suffer a public data security incident in 2016.

According to the Krebs on Security blog, Wendy’s is investigating possible fraudulent activity related to credit cards used at some of its store locations. Wendy’s was notified earlier this month by partners in the payment industry that unusual activity was occurring.

How good is your data?

Seventy-five percent of retailers believe inaccurate data is undermining their ability to provide an excellent customer experience, according to a study by Experian Data Quality.