The plane was diverted to land at Logan, where emergency crews arrived to look for the source of the smoke. What they didn’t do was deplane passengers, who waited until after airport firefighters had checked out the galley before departing the plane.

Boston’s fire department reported to the scene, but their services weren’t needed, and firefighters were “turned back.”

A spokesman for United Airlines told NBC4 Washington that no passengers were injured, but the airline wasn’t sure at that time whether the smoke was caused by an actual fire in the galley. An FAA spokeswoman told the Boston Globe that the problem was a “possible fire.”

Passengers on the ground made the best of the situation, taking pictures, since if you don’t tell your Facebook friends about something, it never happened.

Recalls can endanger the lives of drivers and passengers, like the notable recent recalls of shrapnel-spewing Takata airbags, or the General Motors ignition lock defect. Yet only around 70% of recalled vehicles get repaired, a figure that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to improve.

While the Repairing Every Car to Avoid Lost Lives (RECALL) Act, a U.S. Senate bill with an excellent name, would have required every state to implement such a program, that specific bill was not passed.

Instead, funding for a pilot program for up to six states was part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, a transportation infrastructure bill signed into law by President Obama in late 2015. Only one state applied, the Baltimore Sun notes, and that was Maryland, which recieved a $222,300 grant to test whether such a notification program will work.

“Recalls are serious. Recall repairs are completely free to the consumer. This first-in-the-nation grant will serve as an example to the rest of the country as we continue to work across government to reach consumers in new and creative ways with potentially life-saving information about their vehicles,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.

Recall notices sent with registrations will not be a substitute for notifications from manufacturers, which are still obligated to contact customers. They’re just a supplement, since customers tend to mistake the letters for junk mail.

However, vehicles with open recalls won’t be prevented from registering with the state. The MVA, which is what Maryland calls its motor vehicle agency, would obtain recall information from a database that includes whether a particular vehicle has been repaired or not, so it wouldn’t pester car owners who have already had the repairs performed.

The pilot program will run for two years, after which it could expand to more states. Or not.

Reader Patrick is one of the Raiders of the Lost Walmart, a brave team of retail archaeologists who comb through the electronics sections of big-box stores to find gadgets that aren’t just obsolete or just plain old, but are also comically overpriced.

Reader Patrick noticed the Garmin Quest 2, a device first released in 2005, for sale at Walmart. He looked back at the price stickers, noting the rich history. It had been marked $578.76 in May 2009 and in July 2016, and finally discounted a little bit to $350.00 in June of 2017, a few days before he unearthed this artifact.

If you don’t mind having a used unit and downloading the manual online, you can buy this same GPS on eBay for $84.

Or you could spend more than four times that much in the bizarro electronics universe of Walmart.

“Hey, that could just be a photo from 2008!” you might be saying — so here’s a close-up of the dated shelf tag.

The zombeverage consists of a caramel-apple sweet blended base with mocha “blood,” topped with whipped cream that’s supposed to look like brains.

Like the Unicorn frap, the drink is designed more for looks than for flavor, and many employees report that the beverages are going straight in the trash after one sip. Or, at least, after customers snap a photo.

“I think the drink tastes pretty bad so I get it,” one worker observed on Reddit. “But not a single empty zombie frapp at my store yet, figure someone would suck it down.”

What Starbucks wisely did this time, though, was make sure that the drink is only in circulation for as long as supplies last. Business Insider noticed that this means a lot of stores have already sold out, with their staff presumably sighing with relief.

The sparkly color-changing unicorn beverage became an object of nationwide derision back in April, creating a brief and peaceful moment when all Americans agreed on something.

You may not be familiar with the series, but Southwest calls its in-air concerts “Live at 35,” as in 35,000 feet of altitude. They’ve been happening since 2011, and Southwest and Warner Music Nashville recently made a deal to make their midair concert series official.

A recent show on a flight from Nashville to Philadelphia, for example, featured country artist Devin Dawson. Billboard referred to the concert as having a “capacity crowd,” which one could also frame as a “fully booked flight of people forced to attend a concert.”

The audience mostly seems happy about the surprise, if a bit confused at first. You can watch a longer clip on Southwest’s site.

“You know, some people don’t really enjoy flying; some people get very nervous and don’t like it,” Dawson told Billboard. “I hope that something like this [concert] is just a cool surprise for some [passengers] that helps them forget about their everyday woes, and I’ll just play a couple of songs to make them smile.”

Specifically, class actions filed this week [PDF] and two weeks ago [PDF] both accuse the company of running what California law calls an “endless chain scheme,” an even better term than “pyramid scheme.” That’s a term for a marketing scheme where selling actual merchandise to new participants isn’t the point, but recruiting new participants is.

LEARN MORE: John Oliver Wants To Sell You On Why Multi-Level Marketing Stinks

The plaintiffs also allege that LuLaRoe changed the rules and rates after implementing a recent refund program.

“Once consultants signed up, they were pressured to invest and reinvest by purchasing Defendants’ clothing products — regardless of whether they were able to sell their inventory. Plaintiffs were inundated with the slogan ‘buy more sell more’ and were told they would recoup their investments through retail sales and recruitment,” the initial complaint for one class action explains.

READ MORE: 4 Things LuLaRoe Sellers Say About The Stress & Cost Of Their Job

The plaintiffs allege that they were rewarded for placing larger and larger orders from the company, but not necessarily for selling that merchandise. You know, to customers.

Distributors with poor sales were told that they needed to recruit more participants and buy more inventory, with leaders suggesting tactics like running up credit cards, taking out loans, and selling pumped breast milk to finance their original assortment of inventory and ever-greater inventory purchases. Distributors have no control over the selection of sizes and patterns that they’re sent.

READ MORE: 4 Things To Know About LuLaRoe Sales Reps’ Problems With The Company

LuLaRoe said in a statement that its success “has made us the target of orchestrated competitive attacks and predatory litigation,” but that the company does take lawsuits filed against it seriously. “We have not been served with the recent complaints, but from what we have seen in media reports, the allegations are baseless, factually inaccurate and misinformed,” the company stated to the Press-Enterprise.

Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Amazon has become a licensed pharmaceutical wholesaler in 12 states, with a pending application in a thirteenth. To ship drugs directly to consumers, competing with large pharmacy benefit managers and mail-order pharmacies like Caremark or Express Scripts, Amazon would also need to be licensed as a pharmacy in each state to which it shipped drugs.

The facilities listed on the applications are distribution centers in Indiana. One industry analyst observed to the Post-Dispatch that Amazon may be building its own pharmacy capabilities, or could acquire an existing pharmacy, as it did when it acquired Whole Foods to bolster the grocery business that it had been building for years.

The Post-Dispatch was able to confirm through public records that Amazon has been approved as a pharmaceutical wholesaler in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, and Tennessee. An application in Maine is still pending.

The names on applications are people who previously worked in the medical supplies and mail-order pharmacy industry, according to LinkedIn.

Amazon declined to comment to the Post-Dispatch, calling the clues “rumors and speculation.”

The team, a man and a woman, only try to disguise themselves in one image released to the public. Police believe that they may have traveled from out of town, and may be part of a larger skimming ring, they told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The skimmer installations were first discovered on Sept. 23 when someone (we don’t know whether it was a customer or an employee) alerted the cops to a skimming device on an exterior ATM at the City County Credit Union.

More devices were found in the following days, but police can’t be sure that they have them all. The local sheriff’s department shared tips that are useful for everyone. The sheriff’s department recommends inspecting ATMs before you begin a transaction.

“If it looks suspicious, don’t use the ATM and go inside the bank,” a sergeant with the sheriff’s department told the Star-Tribune. Alert the bank if you see something on the machine’s exterior that doesn’t look right.

We also recommend sticking to the same few ATMs when you’re at home so you’re more likely to notice parts stuck on or other oddities. It’s also a good idea to poke and pull at pieces of the device, making sure that there isn’t a false front, an extra card reader, or a pinhole camera attached to the front of the machine. Cover your hand while entering your PIN in case there’s a hidden camera.

Skimmers can also be completely invisible, which is why it’s important to keep an eye on your bank statements and immediately report any suspicious transactions.

The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office posted a Tweet with images of the suspects, but it’s the last picture, where the suspect is wearing a creepy cracked baby doll mask while fiddling with a drive-up ATM, that startles the entire Consumerist team every time that we look at it.

READ MORE:
Here’s A Gas Pump Skimmer That Texts Victims’ Card Data To Crooks
Here’s A Snap-On Bluetooth Skimmer Spotted Out In The Wild
Let’s Watch Some Promotional Videos From Makers Of ATM Skimmers
Here’s What You’ll Find Inside A Real ATM Skimmer Found In Indonesia
6 Things We Learned About Bluetooth ATM Skimmers In Mexico
Would You Have Spotted This Skimmer Found On An ATM In Mexico?
Watch Suspected Scammers Install And Harvest Data From ATM Skimmers
Tiny Bluetooth Card Skimmers Will Make You Hug Your Debit Card
A Visual 3-Step Guide To Detecting ATM Skimmers

“The underlying business remains incredibly weak,” one industry analyst told Bloomberg News.

AB InBev considers Budweiser a “premium” brand within its portfolio, compared to lower-prestige brands like Busch. While the brands’ marketing campaigns are successful in that people are paying attention to them, actual sales of the beer aren’t increasing.

“Budweiser’s ‘American Summer’ campaign and the return of the ‘America’ packaging contributed to upward trends in brand health and led to Budweiser becoming the leading brand in the industry in ad awareness and consideration growth in 3Q17,” the company wrote about its American business in its quarterly earnings report [PDF].

What’s conspicuously missing there is any sales increase in exchange for all of that marketing — because the market shares for Budweiser and Bud Lite are falling. The company also blamed some poor sales performance on hurricanes in Florida and in Texas that presumably disrupted residents’ beer drinking briefly, but temporary disasters aren’t the issue. Customers’ distaste for Budweiser is.

Budweiser is hoping for a sales boost from a limited-edition release of a pre-Prohibition recipe later this year, and is investing $2 billion in trying to increase sales. Customers are already aware of the brand: Have they just rejected the beer itself?

Maybe the craft brewers who are trying to raise a few hundred billion through crowdfunding to buy AB InBev will have some fresh marketing and product ideas. The campaign has already received nearly $3 million in pledges — only $212.997 billion to go!