Dangerous toymaker "Irwin Mainway," as played by Dan Aykroyd in the SNL sketch.

In the Alpine tradition, St. Nicholas rewards good children with Christmas presents while his menacing and bestial sidekick, Krampus, punishes the naughty by abducting them or beating them…

If you missed my Saturday column, it’s about an online lingerie retailer that is having a tough time filling its orders. Here’s the lede:

Consumers shopping for a bawdy Halloween costume - or leather and latex lingerie for more everyday wear…

In Saturday’s Savvy Consumer column, I wrote that a trade group representing firms selling extended auto-service contracts will soon begin auditing and evaluating its members,  and then giving its imprimatur to those companies that demonstrate consumer-friendly business practices.

The Vehicle Protection…

Updated at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept 1 to include response from AT&T.

Some St. Louis area consumers say they’re being forced to pay hundreds of dollars in satellite-cancellation fees because AT&T is giving consumers bad information about the company’s U-Verse package and…

If you missed it, Saturday’s Savvy Consumer column gave a bit of background on the fight that’s brewing in Washington over a proposed federal agency to regulate the financial-services industry, including banks and credit card companies.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank,…

If you missed Saturday’s Savvy Consumer column, it took a look at third-party billing and phone-bill cramming. Not familiar with cramming? Here’s a bit of the column:

According to the Federal Communications Commission, cramming is the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading…

If you missed Saturday’s Savvy Consumer column, it was about whether many of the products that claim to repel and kill mosquitoes are worth the money.

Have you had any success with any  non-traditional, “natural” repellants like essential oil of clove,…

If you missed Saturday’s paper, I wrote my weekly column about the LifeSmarts national championships currently going on downtown. The competition, which is sponsored by the National Consumers League, is a quiz tournament for high-school students.

The 30 teams competing already survived state-championship…

Here’s tomorrow’s Savvy Consumer column, which appears weekly in Saturday’s Post-Dispatch:

When David Eilering and Carla Thompson booked the Bevo Mill for their October 2009 wedding reception, they never feared for its future. The restaurant was a landmark, not some fly-by-night…