Crazed parents flock for Zhu Zhu Pets in Florida

Our favorite Black Friday video for 2009? It has to be a clip from Fox 13 in Tampa-St. Petersburg featuring a pack of crazed shoppers on the prowl for Zhu Zhu Pets at the Toys R Us in Clearwater, Florida.

Here's the lowdown from the report:

There were an estimated 1,000 people in line before the store opened, and at one point, store managers asked police to keep an eye on the line, which wrapped around the building.

What's a Zhu Zhu? Robotic hamsters. Yes, the furry critters that come in five different characters have parents all worked up in a shopping tizzy.

Click here for details.

Boston's inflation rate trumps other metro areas

Inflation is impacting Americans across the country, but the Boston area has been hit especially hard by rising prices. The Associated Press reports that consumer prices increased over six percent last year, the biggest jump of all metropolitan areas.

Overall, inflation rose about 5.5 percent last year. The country has not experienced that kind of year-to-year jump since 1991. One of the major underlying causes for the increase is the price of fuel.

As the price of crude oil spent weeks setting records, those price increases translated into higher prices for gas, food and other goods.

These effects have been compounded in the Boston area because of the region’s distance from the country’s main production centers of food and fuel. A significant amount of the nation’s oil comes from the South and the Midwest, and the Midwest and California are the major agricultural centers.

The more it costs to transport these items and the further they have to go, the more consumers must pay. In addition, many homes in the Boston area are dependant on oil to heat their homes, so an increase in the price of fuel causes home heating bills to rise as well.

--Bridget O'Sullivan

DRIVER'S ED: Hub parking rates 2nd highest

It will hardly come as a shock to the Bay Staters who drive to work every day, but Massachusetts is officially the second most expensive place to park in America.

The Boston Globe reports that only New York City has monthly parking rates higher than Boston’s. By the day, however, Boston’s rate of $33 comes in third compared to New York’s $35 and Honolulu’s whopping $44.

The data comes from a survey conducted by Colliers international property consultants and proves that drivers in Boston pay even more than those in West Coast cities of San Francisco or Los Angeles, where the car is king.

This news, however, has only reinforced what some commuters have known for years. Take the T to work and save the car for your Sunday drives.

On the up side, the average Londoner pays the equivalent of $68 each day to park downtown, and often racks up other charges for entering and leaving the city. In comparison, Boston is a bargain.

Click here for the report.

--Bridget O'Sullivan

High costs drive up school lunch prices

Boston Public Schools are feeling the same squeeze ordinary consumers are experiencing with their grocery budget this year.

According to an article in The Boston Globe, city schools will raise the price of both breakfast and lunch by 25 cents at the start of the upcoming school year.

Due to the fact that about three quarters of students in the district qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, the savings will only total about $100,000 for the year.

Superintendent Carol Johnson defended the decision in an interview after the School Committee meeting.

“Every dollar we spend over revenue received has to come out of academic programs. We all regret increasing lunch prices, but the price of food is going up," she told the Globe.

A student can now expect to spend about $1.25 for breakfast and between $2.25 and $2.50 for lunch each day. The average price for public school lunch across the nation is expected to rise to $1.98 for the 2008-2009 school year.

The amount that federal government will reimburse city schools for each free lunch, however, has also gone up to $2.56.

In the wake of rising fuel and food prices and a growing emphasis on providing students with fresh, nutritious food, the increases are part of a plan to prevent expanding the school system’s budget deficit.

--Bridget O'Sullivan

STICKER SHOCK: Going somewhere?

If you’ve ever driven to Providence or Manchester to catch a flight, you already know that flying out of Logan Airport can be very expensive. Since the beginning of 2008, however, the price of flights originating out of Boston have risen to levels twice as high as the national average.

As Nicole Wong of the Boston Globe reports, ticket prices everywhere are rising, but Boston has been hit particularly hard because so many flights out of Logan serve a radius of about 1,000 miles around Boston.

Shorter flights tend to cost less, but raising the sticker prices can lead to big jumps in the percentage increase of the cost of the airfare. Additionally, Logan is not serviced by the major discount airline Southwest.

Well-known for their inexpensive short distance flights, the absence of Southwest at Logan could be influencing the increase in fares. Rick Seany, chief executive of farecompare.com, said to the Boston Globe "If Southwest flew to Logan, you'd be in the bottom part of the pack for fare increases."

The good news is some discount providers such as JetBlue and AirTran do fly out of Logan, and they offer many long distance options. "If you didn't have JetBlue flying coast to coast, [the increases] would be a lot higher."

While flying out of Boston is often the most convenient option, doing a quick search of the surrounding airports could be cost effective.

Consumer Prices Spike in June

Consumer prices spiked 1.1 percent last month—the second fastest increase in 26 years with a majority of the surge blamed on soaring energy costs--according to a report released by the Labor Department.

Swelling rates on home heating oil, gasoline and natural gas reflect the largest increase in years with a 6.6 spike upward in June. The report on retail inflation reflected similarly grim news revealing a 1.8 percent increase in wholesale prices.

Democrats in Congress say the new inflation report emphasized the need to pass a second stimulus package.

“We're not seeing danger for the economy on both sides ... growth is too slow and inflation is too high,” says Sen. Charles Schumer in a statement.

The White House expressed concern about the weakening economy in a recent press conference.

"The President is very concerned about the impact high prices are having on Americans, especially those who are on lower incomes,” presidential press secretary Dana Perino tells reporters.

“What the president would reiterate is what he said yesterday ... that the health of the overall economy is dependent on inflation remaining low,” Perino continues.

Click here for more information.

MyGallons.com Running on Empty?

With gas threatening to hit $5 a gallon, it’s no wonder that drivers are looking high and low for a better deal. However, if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

MyGallons.com, a membership program which has promised customers that they will be able to lock in today’s prices for gas purchased in the future, has come under scrutiny by the Better Business Bureau.

The BBB began investigating MyGallons.com when they noticed that their advertisements suggested that they had a relationship with US Bank, a major American financial services company.

After looking into the matter more closely, the BBB learned that US Bank had actually turned down the request of MyGallons.com to form a partnership. Despite the fact that they were misleading customers about how they processed transactions, they continued to collect membership fees.

Following the attention from the BBB, MyGallons.com has stopped accepting payments because the company does not have an appropriate contract in place to continue operations. The BBB has since modified their evaluation of MyGallons.com from an “F” to “No Rating."

Click here for the lowdown.

UPDATE: There are reports that MyGallons.com is now refunding membership fees.

--Bridget O'Sullivan

Supermarket consumers may face sticker shock

There's a bill being pushed through the Massachusetts legislature that will allow grocery stores to conveniently leave off price tags on items. With this new proposal, consumers are expected to rely on electronic scanners instead of item-by-item pricing.

John Hurst, the president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, tells The Enterprise in Brockton that “consumers will benefit in the form of lower prices and shortened lines once stores no longer need to devote resources to item-by-item pricing.”

Watchdog Edgar Dworsky, the founder of ConsumerWorld.org, believes it's a ploy to cheat consumers.

“They’re not going to pass on savings to consumers,” Dworsky says. “It’s going to go to pad their bottom line.”