Everyday Money

The Internal Revenue Service has cut taxes on Ebola relief and simplified making contributions to fight the outbreak.

Hey kids, you know your parents aren't going to let you eat all of the candy hauled in on Halloween trick-or-treating rounds. So why not swap some of it for cash money?

The cash payoff isn’t the only reason kids might want to trade in candy soon after Halloween is over. Doing so also supports the troops overseas.

To participate in the annual program, called the Halloween Candy Buy Back, families should start by finding a participating nearby dentist’s office, via a search tool at the link or at the program’s Facebook page. There are thousands of participants around the country–in New Jersey, Ohio, California, and beyond. Chances are, there’s a poster up at your dentist’s office asking locals to join in its Candy Buy Back campaign.

While the particulars of each participating office may differ slightly, they generally all welcome unopened candy donations in the days right after Halloween, and they pay $1 per pound of candy dropped off, with a $5 maximum payout. Some also give treats or goodie bags for kids—toys, stickers, toothbrushes, sometimes pizza or local baked goods—as well as the chance to win iPods, gift cards, and other prizes. It softens the blow inherent in handing over the sweet and chocolatey fruits of one’s labor spent trick-or-treating.

The program was originally envisioned as a means to get massive quantities of Halloween candy “off the streets” and out of the bellies of America’s children, and the campaign truly caught fire when it partnered with Operation Gratitude, an organization that sends care packages to military veterans, new recruits, and most especially troops who are deployed overseas. Some 130+ million tons of candy has been collected over the years, and with the help of Halloween Candy Buy Back participants, Operation Gratitude was able to ship its one millionth care package last December.

As for the more mercenary kids out there—those who are trading candy in for cash at least as much as they are motivated to support the troops—they’re probably trying to figure out what candies weigh the most to maximize their payout.

AT&T and other wireless carriers may continue to offer unlimited data plans, but they're not the great deal they once were.

Almost half of all AT&T mobile customers are still clinging desperately to a grandfathered cellphone plan with unlimited data, according to a survey from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). But that choice is looking particularly unfortunate in light of the Federal Trade Commission’s latest lawsuit.

In a complaint filed Tuesday, the federal agency alleges that AT&T has been slowing data speeds for consumers on “unlimited” plans, in some cases by up to 95%. The practice of reducing data speeds for heavy users, called “throttling,” can make it very difficult to complete routine tasks like browsing the web or using GPS navigation. In some dense metro areas like New York and San Francisco, AT&T allegedly throttled users who consumed as little as 2 GB a month. Altogether, the New York Times estimates, about 25% of AT&T’s unlimited data plan customers were affected.

“AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise,” FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez says in a statement. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.”

AT&T calls the charges “baseless” and says it warned customers that heavy users could be throttled. But while AT&T’s alleged behavior is particularly egregious, the carrier wouldn’t be the only one to limit data use on so-called “unlimited” plans, as Ars Technica has reported.

For example, Sprint’s My Way plan promises unlimited data for the life of the line of service, but read the fine print: The carrier also throttles the top 5% of its users, as part of its “network management” strategy. Sprint says that users who consume more than 5 GB are generally at risk for throttling, though it varies by month.

Likewise, while T-Mobile has repeatedly said it does not throttle its unlimited customers, its fine print notes that the top 3% of users might see their data slowed “during times and in places of network congestion.”

Similarly, Verizon throttles the top 5% of customers still on 3G. Verizon had planned to slow speeds for the heaviest users on 4G, but it shelved that idea after receiving its own stern warning from the FTC. Maybe Verizon has less to worry about—according to CIRP, it has already moved the vast majority of its customers off unlimited plans.

In fact, Verizon hasn’t sold a single new unlimited cellphone plan in two years. AT&T hasn’t offered an unlimited plan in four years. The two biggest American carriers have been trying to wean customers off of unlimited data plans for a while now, or else the wireless companies risk becoming victims of their own success.

First Unlimited Calls, Then Unlimited Data

The unlimited model was born in the late 1990s, when AT&T launched its first One Rate phone plan, explains Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecom services at J.D. Power. Customers loved the certainty: the same bill, every month, with no separate charges for roaming or long distance calls.

That model still made sense when the phone carrier introduced data plans for smartphone users—so much sense that by 2008, AT&T actually forced all iPhone 3G customers to buy an unlimited data plan. Back then, it was a moneymaker: You could offer unlimited data because people wouldn’t use a lot of it, and it didn’t cost a lot anyways. That’s all changed.

“When smartphones started coming out, the networks weren’t up to snuff,” Parsons says. “You couldn’t actually enjoy the experience of videos and downloads. Once 3G coverage widened, then we transitioned from 3G to 4G, that’s when you really saw people using data on their phones, streaming music, watching shows.”

Now, the carriers have created a nation of data addicts. As of December 2013, Americans consumed 269.1 billion MB of cellphone data a month—far more than double what they consumed a year before. It’s just too expensive to keep up with our insatiable demand. The carriers have to buy or lease radio frequencies all around the country to provide good service, says Logan Abbott, president of Wirefly.com. There’s only so much bandwidth.

“Consider it like a nationwide wifi network,” Abbott says. “If you have everyone in your house on one wifi connection—downloading, streaming Netflix, doing data-intensive stuff—your bandwidth is going to get used up … It’s going to put drag on your network.”

Of course, if AT&T acted as the FTC claims, consumers got a really raw deal. While the other carriers say they throttle just a small fraction of the heaviest users for network management reasons, AT&T is accused of slowing service for 3.5 million of its 14 million subscribers.

Still, limited data is the way of the future. Not that AT&T customers want to hear it—there’s a reason 44% of them haven’t changed cellphone plans in over four years. “It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but they like the security blanket of never being overcharged,” Abbott says. “They have a vintage product, and they don’t want to let go.”

Paying for More Data Than You Actually Use

The truth is, if you’re an AT&T user, it might be time to give up your unlimited plan. The first thing to do is check your account to see how much data you really use—it may not be as much as you think.

Slate has prepared some handy interactive charts that show how much data you’d have to use before an unlimited plan pays off, but this is the main takeaway: If you’re only using 1 or 2 GB of data—like most typical users—you’re likely overpaying for the unlimited option. You simply don’t need that much.

If, on the other hand, you’re using a lot more, the FTC says you’re being throttled—in which case, you might as well shell out a little more money for a data plan that actually delivers the speeds advertised.

Related:

• The 10 Best Cellphone Plans of 2014
• QUIZ: What’s Your Perfect Cellphone Plan?
• Want to Dump Your Cell Service Provider? Do These 4 Things First

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Writers are selling character names—but no, it's not for personal gain.

Tracy Chevalier, author of the 1999 novel-cum-Scarlett-Johansson-flick Girl With a Pearl Earring, is one of seventeen authors auctioning off character names for upcoming novels—not to pay for giant-mansion-hiding hedges—but to fund therapy for survivors of torture living in the U.K.

Other authors participating include Margaret Atwood, Ken Follett, Julian Barnes, Pat Barker, Ian McEwan, Robert Harris, Will Self, and Zadie Smith.

The November 20 auction is for books in the works (so no, you can’t actually be Johan Vermeer’s fictional servant this time) and you can start bidding today.

Chevalier says she auctioned off the name of a minor character in a book for £800 (about $1,300) last year but would require a bigger donation—to the tune of $10,000— for a main character.

No matter how generous the donation, however, it’s important your name isn’t already famous for other reasons. “It’s not going to work if you’re Bill Gates,” Chevalier says.

This isn’t the first time authors have used a similar stunt for charity: Stephen King, John Grisham, Dave Eggers, and Game of Thrones author George RR Martin have all done the same for causes including a wolf sanctuary and food charity.

The Kardashians did not respond to requests for comment on how much it would cost to star in the next edition of gaming app Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.

Like McDonald's, Taco Bell is trying to win over millennials by feeding their need for speed.

Even as the paid-membership review service Angie's List has announced major plans for expansion and increased hiring, investors are bailing on the company.

On Wednesday, the stock price of Angie’s List dropped more than 5%, after a decline of as much as 20% a week ago. Overall, the price of Angie’s List stock is hovering near its 52-week low, and it has fallen nearly 60% over the past 12 months. Last week’s plunge stemmed largely from the release of disappointing third-quarter results. Even as the company decreased marketing expenses by 20% and increased membership revenue by 7%, a slowdown in paid memberships and the failure to meet profit revenue expectations have apparently spooked investors.

Angie’s List watchers have been on a particularly wild rollercoaster ride of late. Roughly one month ago, a report surfaced indicating that the company had hired investment bankers to explore the possibility of putting Angie’s List up for sale. Shares of the stock rose more than 20% on the news but were still down more than 50% compared to a year ago.

A couple weeks later, Angie’s List announced that it was adding 1,000 jobs and expanding its Indianapolis headquarters, leading some to believe there would be much brighter days ahead. One week after that, third-quarter results were released, leading many investors to bail—but also leading opportunistic value investors such as billionaire Ken Griffin, owner of the Citadel Investment Group, to go bullish on Angie’s List.

So what does the future have in hold for a paid membership review service such as Angie’s List? Well, to anyone under the age of 30, the idea of paying for reviews or online content of any sort is probably puzzling. But for nearly two decades, the online review service Angie’s List has built a loyal, paying membership of homeowners and renters who find real value in a network where real-life people can exchange honest, trustworthy recommendations about handymen, contractors, plumbers, electricians, clean-it crews, and other services they’ve used personally.

To these folks, the value proposition is simple: When you’re considering who to hire to do a $50,000 home renovation, forking over $20 or $40 for access to reviews on local contractors is a no-brainer. Indeed, according to the company’s second quarter 2014 results, paid memberships hit 2.8 million at the end of June, up from 2.2 million a year before and just 820,000 as recently as 2011.

So why does Angie’s List appear to be on the ropes?

An in-depth post by the Indianapolis Business Journal suggests why: Angie’s List, founded in 1995, has never turned a profit. A report released last October, for instance, showed the company had a net loss of $13.5 million for the third quarter of 2013, following a loss of $18.5 million for the same period a year prior.

Why hasn’t all its growth translated into profits? Much of it can be attributed to (presumably expensive) expansion into new markets; the service is now available in 253 areas of the country, compared with around 200 in 2012.

More to the point, Angie’s List has been forced to scale back the amount charged for each membership as Yelp, Google+ Local, TripAdvisor, and other user review sites have flourished with an open-to-everyone, completely free business model. The most recent Angie’s List report states that from 2010 onward, the average annual membership fee was just over $12, down from more than $36 a decade earlier.

And the amount members pay continues to drop. A Wall Street Journal post published a year ago detailed Angie’s List’s plans to cut membership fees in several key cities to around $10 annually. Today, it’s a cinch to head over to an online coupon site to find offers for 30% or 40% off, bringing the cost of a one-year subscription down as low as $5.39.

Meanwhile, the company recently agreed to pay a $2.8 million settlement to end a lawsuit alleging it had re-upped members without proper notice and at higher rates than subscribers were led to believe.

Perhaps an even bigger problem is that the trustworthiness of Angie’s List is increasingly being called into question. Critics point out that a growing portion of Angie’s List revenues come from service providers paying for advertising on the site—the same service providers that are supposed to be rated in non-biased fashion by members. “Almost 70 percent of the company’s revenues come from advertising purchased by the service providers being rated,” a 2013 Consumer Reports investigation explained.

CR called out in particular the practice of allowing advertisers with B or better ratings to be pushed to the top of search results as questionable at best. “We think the ability of A- and B-rated companies to buy their way to the top of the default search results skews the results… They get 12 times more profile views than companies that don’t buy ads.”

To be fair, many Angie’s List competitors also actively solicit the businesses reviewed on their sites as advertisers. Yelp is known to flood restaurants, doctors’ offices, and other small businesses with pleas to advertise on the site, to the point that one restaurant in the San Francisco area launched a bizarre “Hate Us on Yelp” campaign to undermine the user-review site. (Despite claims that it engages in what amounts to extortion, Yelp has repeatedly stated that advertising doesn’t affect a business’s ratings in any way.) Porch.com, an online network created to help homeowners find contractors and other home improvement services, launched a partnership referral system with Lowe’s this year. While businesses don’t pay to be listed, the website gives extra visibility to contractors that pay for a premium membership, such as making it easier to see their phone numbers in search results. (Full disclosure: Porch contributes articles on home improvement to Money.com.)

For the time being, Angie’s List seems to have figured out how low it must cut membership fees in order to keep subscriber numbers from falling. But the strategy hardly seems sustainable, especially if the perception that the service’s ratings aren’t trustworthy continues to spread. Convincing consumers it’s worthwhile to pay for a review-and-ratings service when there are free alternatives is tough enough. It’s borderline impossible to convince them that doing so is worth the money when there’s reason to question whether the ratings are entirely legitimate.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described how Porch.com enhances the visibility of contractors who pay for a premium profile on their site.

Lower fuel costs helped Spirit Airlines' stock soar this week, and may even mean cheaper flights for travelers. Just don't expect Spirit's fees to disappear anytime soon, or ever.

A sizable chunk of travelers hate Spirit Airlines and its cramped-seat, a la carte, fee-crazed business model. In a new MONEY poll, voters prefer the option of flying with snakes on a plane over flying on a Spirit plane. Yet investors sure are loving the company’s third quarter results, which were made public on Wednesday. Spirit’s adjusted net income for the quarter is up 28% year-over-year, while total operating revenue was up 14%. The results bumped the price of Spirit stock up more than 7% on Wednesday, and Morgan Stanley just named Spirit its top growth airline pick for investors.

What’s particularly interesting is that Spirit’s performance and its plans for expansion are likely to benefit non-investors as well. The airline’s sales pitch to travelers is based almost exclusively on the low prices of its “Bare Fare” flights, and analysts see the stars aligning that will allow Spirit to cut base fares even lower. It’s possible that this turn of events could even help out travelers who would never fly with Spirit Airlines—because other carriers may feel forced to scale back fares, or at least slow the pace of fare hikes, in order to compete with Spirit’s cheaper flights.

Only three weeks ago, Spirit stock dipped significantly because of fears that higher company costs—including tax payments and the hiring and training of more pilots—would be headwinds getting in the way of higher profit margins. Yet a Motley Fool post pointed out this week:

Looking ahead to Q4 and 2015, these cost headwinds are likely to turn into tailwinds due to 1) lower jet fuel prices; 2) faster growth; and 3) a shift toward larger, more efficient aircraft.

Airlines typically spend about 30% of their revenue on fuel. So when gas prices drop like they have been lately, it’s a huge deal for the airline industry. For the most part, airlines will simply pocket the fuel-cost savings rather than pass any of it along to travelers in the form of cheaper flight prices.

But there’s reason to believe that Spirit Airlines is different. After all, the airline’s main (only?) selling point is that the base price of flights is cheap, so it will lower fares to attract more customers whenever a price cut can be justified. In addition to lower fuel costs, Spirit is expanding rapidly (28 new routes added between August 2014 and April 2015), and has been getting more productivity out of planes and employees. All of which helps the company lower costs—and enables it to make its product more attractive to customers by lowering prices.

In a conference call with investors yesterday, Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza said that’s essentially what the airline plans on doing. “The customers we seek to attract overwhelmingly ranked total price as the most important variable when choosing an airline,” Baldanza said. As Spirit manages to keep the costs of fuel and other expenses low, “that’s a great thing for our model, and that means even lower fares for customers and a good thing for investors.”

And who knows? Spirit’s expansion and low-fare strategy may very well compel the larger airlines to compete more on flight prices as well. Now that fuel prices are shrinking and airlines are enjoying record-high profits, it certainly wouldn’t kill them to do so.