The Complaints Department
Crucial Existed for Nearly Three Decades. Micron Killed It the Moment AI Started Paying More.
Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, Western Digital, and Seagate all discovered the same thing at the same time: AI data centers pay more for memory and storage than you do. So now they sell to AI data centers.
A Chinese Vaccine Maker Faked Its Paperwork for Two Years Before Anyone Noticed
Changsheng supplied nearly a quarter of the country's rabies shots. Regulators only found out the records were fiction after a tip from inside the building.
Enron Was America's Most Admired Company Right Up Until It Was a Crime Scene
Fortune named it America's most innovative company six years running. The innovation, it turned out, was mostly in the accounting.
Facebook Let a Personality Quiz Harvest 87 Million Profiles
One professor's app collected data on 300,000 people who took a quiz, and on 87 million people who never touched it.
China's Biggest Baby Formula Maker Was Cutting Milk With Plastic
Melamine made the protein numbers look right on a lab test. It did not make the formula safe to actually feed a baby.
This Site Almost Had the .com. Someone's Been Sitting on It Since 2014.
We went looking for the nicer version of our own domain name. We found a Network Solutions error page that hasn't changed in over a decade, and a 'Coming Soon' banner that's been coming soon since 2025.
Volkswagen's Diesel Cars Were Only Clean When Someone Was Watching
For nine years, 11 million cars ran a second, secret program whenever a lab was watching. The rest of the time, they just breathed normally.
The Man Who Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game for a Decade (1989–2001)
For twelve years, the house always won the McDonald's Monopoly game — because the house was stealing the winning pieces.
JetBlue's All You Can Jet Pass (2009)
$599 bought a month of unlimited flights. JetBlue's booking system was not built for what happened next.
L.L.Bean Ends Its 100-Year No-Questions-Asked Return Policy
The guarantee said 100% satisfactory, forever, no receipt required. It survived two world wars. It did not survive eBay.
MoviePass's $9.95 Unlimited Movie Plan (2017–2019)
It promised a movie a day for less than the price of one ticket. The people who signed up took that extremely literally.
Southwest Ends 'Bags Fly Free' After Nearly Five Decades
Two free bags and no assigned seats were the whole pitch for fifty years. An activist investor had other ideas.