Cancellation

The pitch from the door-to-door salesman sounded appealing: a deal to lock in a lower electricity rate with Constellation Energy Group and get a better gas price with Constellation's BGE Home for the next 12 months. But Baltimore County resident Michelle Breau says she soon discovered the deal offered by the Constellation vendor wasn't all that she believes she was promised. Feeling deceived, Breau says, she tried to get out of the contract within the three-day cancellation window guaranteed by state law, but found it wasn't easy.

The deadline is about three weeks away for homeowners to request a free, independent review of foreclosure actions that were in process during 2009 or 2010. The program, Independent Foreclosure Review, was set up last year by the U.S. Treasury Department. It applies to mortgages that were serviced by one of 27 companies and went into foreclosure during a two-year period when foreclosure processes were under a cloud of suspicion. The program stems from orders issued by the Treasury to “14 large residential mortgage servicers and two third-party vendors,” according to a statement from the Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland is warning that Commerce Energy representatives are using "strong-arm tactics" when going door-to-door selling residential electric services in some neighborhoods. "According to complaints, sales representatives visit the same house repeatedly even after being asked to leave, not solicit, not come back or even when told the resident is ill," the BBB said Thursday in a release. The group suggests consumers screen solicitors at their front doors.

In a 1998 letter from his former boss, David George was promised health insurance for the rest of his life. In a letter in May, the same boss told him those benefits will be yanked at the end of August. For George, a former employee of Schmidt Baking Co. in Fullerton, the company's move to terminate health care benefits for him and 66 other retirees has left him and others angry - at the bakery and his union - and grasping for options. The situation has grown so touchy that the company felt compelled to craft another letter telling retirees that the Aug. 31 deadline will be extended while Schmidt seeks less costly health benefits for them, an official said yesterday.

Families looking for a cheap getaway, friends looking to do a little duty-free shopping and couples celebrating over some drinks and gambling returned Sunday morning from a two-night stay on the Chesapeake Bay, after embarking on a Carnival Cruise Line deal spurred by Hurricane Sandy. The sold-out cruise, called the "cruise to nowhere," hosted many residents from the areas - Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania - along the eastern seaboard that were spared from the worst of the hurricane-turned-superstorm's wrath, many of whom said the convenience of hopping on Interstate 95 was a draw to the deal.

If your art or cultural event has been postponed or rescheduled because of snow, send an e-mail to sun.features@baltsun.com, and we'll try to get the word out. Please include the phrase "Event Change" in the subject line.

Every morning after her alarm goes off, Rhodessa Bender gets up, makes the bed and reaches for the telephone. "I call the weather and decide what I'm going to put on for the day," she said. "The weather" is Verizon's telephone weather line, 936-1212. Since the days of rotary dials in the 1930s, it has been providing telephone users with the local temperature and forecast. And even today it comes not from robots, but from real people with names and, some say, personality. But on June 1, they're going to fall silent in the Maryland and Washington area codes, along with the phone company's dial-in time service — 844-1212.

Major closings and cancellations Government and schools • Liberal leave policy is in effect for state employees beginning at 6 a.m. to the end of the day shift. Emergency essential employees should report as scheduled. Liberal leave is also in effect for the General Assembly. • Area schools are closed. • Baltimore City trash and recycling pickup will resume Tuesday. Citizen Drop-Off Centers will reopen today. • Federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., area are open under a delayed arrival/unscheduled leave policy.