Customers

Tipping in a recession is a dilemma. Do you stick with the 18 to 20 percent formula or retreat to 15 percent? Do you skip an appetizer, a glass of wine or a dessert to lower your dining bill and thus your tip? It's a subject that millions of diners and travelers are wrestling with. A lot of people whose income has vanished or shrunk because of layoffs, salary cuts and shrinking fixed incomes have cut back. Instead of going out to dinner every week, they settle for once a month. If they take a trip, they trade down, choosing less-expensive accommodations and restaurants.

THE PROBLEM -- Patrons of the Brooklyn Curtis Bay branch of the U.S. Postal Service, which sits off busy Governor Ritchie Highway in Anne Arundel County, have complained for years about a lack of parking, says Charles Schoenhaar, who alerted Watchdog to the situation. Back in 2005, then-Del. John R. Leopold, who is now the county executive, wrote post office officials on behalf of his disgruntled constituents. THE BACKSTORY -- Watchdog visited the post office on a recent afternoon and witnessed parking mayhem.

ATLANTA -- Nothing gets consumers riled up and griping about their banks more than fees. Get ready to gripe some more. Wachovia has joined a number of other financial institutions, including Bank of America and SunTrust Banks, who charge their customers a monthly fee to download account information through their Quicken or Microsoft Money personal money management software. "This helps us offset some of the costs to our business for managing the access to the account information through the account software," said David Oliver, a Wachovia Corp.

If you could pick up Baltimore and give it a good shake late on a Saturday night, a lot of the odd pieces would wind up at the Papermoon Diner in Remington. Since 1994, when Un Kim and her partner opened the Papermoon, it has become one of the city's most popular after-hours hangouts. They turned this old coffeehouse in the 200 block of W. 29th St. into a child's playhouse where things seem a bit off-kilter. Ceilings are purple. Walls are green. Dozens of action figures, dolls and model planes line the interior.

They enter with equal parts dread and loathing, clutching envelopes and folders, random bills and bits of proof. This is Who I Am. This is Where I Live. If ever there were an exercise in patience, then surely this it where it unfolds, in a drab building known as the Motor Vehicle Administration, where time stretches like a wad of cotton candy - minutes into an hour, one hour into two, or three or more ... Tucked away next to Mondawmin Mall, this is the city's only full-service MVA branch, a building where easy-listening music blends into the background and the bing!

For those who want to see the planet but fret about the harmful environmental effects of driving and flying, a growing list of companies are offering a chance to "offset" the journey. They're called carbon offset programs, and they aim to reduce the threat of global warming that scientists say are caused by greenhouse gases emitted when burning fossil fuels. Using the offset programs, most available online, travelers can calculate how much carbon dioxide their trip produces and pay to generate an equal share of renewable energy such as wind or solar power.

Lucille Ingalls remembers going to work as a teller at an affiliate of Mercantile Bankshares Corp. in Virginia during World War II. She stayed even after the soldiers returned from abroad, rising to the post of senior vice president and watching the banking industry evolve through the dawning of the automated teller machine. J. Donald Henyon, head of Mercantile's affiliate in Laurel for more than a decade, remembers life as a community pillar, firing up the popcorn machine for customers on Saturdays and making it a point to never be seen gambling at the nearby horse tracks.

BlueHippo Funding LLC, a Woodlawn-based company that has sparked consumer complaints nationwide for allegedly overcharging or failing to deliver electronic goods to customers, may face additional lawsuits after a federal appeals court ruling this week. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., dismissed an appeal filed by BlueHippo after a federal judge in Baltimore ruled in March that only customers who had had signed agreements to resolve complaints through arbitration were bound by that process.

The bank that some of Baltimore's best-known captains of industry and finance entrusted with their money for more than 143 years ceased to exist yesterday as PNC Financial Services Group announced it has completed its $6 billion cash and stock purchase of Mercantile Bankshares Corp. In a statement announcing the sale's completion, the Pittsburgh bank said customers of Mercantile and its network of affiliate banks should continue to use Mercantile's services "as usual" in the months leading up to a planned transition to PNC accounts.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. yesterday defended a proposed electricity-deregulation settlement that it endorses during the first day of Maryland Public Service Commission hearings on the proposal.Most of yesterday's session was spent with BGE representatives answering questions by an attorney for the Mid-Atlantic Power Supply Association, a New Jersey-based coalition of power companies that wants to sell electricity in Maryland.The hearings will continue today, and the PSC will convene them again tomorrow if necessary.

WASHINGTON - -Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. officials said a $200 million federal subsidy awarded to the company Tuesday would lower the cost to customers of an ambitious project to provide every household with an advanced "smart meter" that will enable them to better control energy use. BGE plans to install 2 million of the devices between 2010 and 2014 and charge customers for the upgrade. The smart meters would give BGE's residential and commercial customers hour-by-hour information about energy pricing and enable them to cut back at times of peak costs.

Tipping in a recession is a dilemma. Do you stick with the 18 to 20 percent formula or retreat to 15 percent? Do you skip an appetizer, a glass of wine or a dessert to lower your dining bill and thus your tip? It's a subject that millions of diners and travelers are wrestling with. A lot of people whose income has vanished or shrunk because of layoffs, salary cuts and shrinking fixed incomes have cut back. Instead of going out to dinner every week, they settle for once a month. If they take a trip, they trade down, choosing less-expensive accommodations and restaurants.

Age: 19 Years on the job: 3 Salary: $7.75 per hour plus tips How he got started: : Jerome Henry decided to take a job at the Cold Stone Creamery while still attending Patterson High School. His older brother worked there and enjoyed it, so he thought he would give it a try. Once he graduated, the job also allowed him the flexibility to attend a massage therapist program at the Medix School in Towson. Henry recently completed the nine-month program and is preparing to take his certification exam later this year.

Last summer, Shirley Norlem of Annapolis joined 1,000 other Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers in testing new "smart grid" technology that promises to transform the way Marylanders consume - and conserve - energy in our increasingly carbon-constrained world. In exchange for significant rebates on her bill, Ms. Norlem shut down her plasma television, computer and other household electronics on the hottest summer afternoons. The efforts of Ms. Norlem and other participants in the pilot program helped reduce strain on the electric grid, lessening the need for BGE to draw additional power during times of peak demand, when electricity in the wholesale market is most expensive.

The matzo ball soup orders will just have to wait, along with the pastrami sandwiches, the house special "coddies" and the camaraderie that were all parts of the Suburban House Restaurant on Reisterstown Road. A fire there late Wednesday shut down the restaurant and with it a chunk of Pikesville's social life. "This was like the neighborhood 'Cheers'," said Connie Benny, who has been working there as a server for about 10 years. "Everybody knew everybody else. It was like a big social gathering."

Thousands of Maryland residents are in danger of having their utility service terminated because of overdue bills, company representatives said. After thousands of complaints of sky-high bills this winter, the Maryland Public Service Commission ordered five utility companies - BGE, Pepco, Delmarva, Allegheny Power and Washington Gas Light - to work out payment plans with customers before sending turnoff notices. About 50,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric customers successfully began interest-free payment plans, but about 74,000 remained at risk of termination as of Friday, said a company spokesman, Robert Gould.

Shawn Mullins could not withdraw money from his bank this past weekend. That's because his Provident Bank ATM card was denied, and he did not receive a new one from M&T Bank Corp., the Buffalo, N.Y., institution that bought Provident and completed its takeover during the Memorial Day weekend. "I'm a little frustrated because I didn't have access to my money," said Mullins, who stopped by a former Provident branch in Hampden on Wednesday for some help. Still, Mullins, a 13-year Provident customer, said he is willing to give M&T a chance because "you may end up having something better than before."

The face of the mayor looks down from a wall of Kay's Liquor store at Biddle and Milton, on a poster promoting a "neighborhood conversation," an opportunity to "join us to discuss ideas and solutions for tackling Baltimore City's vacant and abandoned properties." Michelle Ha, the owner, promotes activities like this. She urges her customers to go, to listen, to contribute, to make this city, her city, a better place. She not only planned to attend Wednesday's meeting, she spent the previous day at City Hall volunteering to help organize the event.

The more than 120,000 Maryland customers who are behind on their home gas and electric bills will have a chance to work out interest-free payment plans with the state's utilities to avoid service disruptions under a plan approved by state regulators. The Maryland Public Service Commission lifted its temporary ban on service terminations Friday, but it said the utilities must offer plans to give consumers a chance to pay bills. Last month, the PSC ordered utilities to temporarily halt terminations to give regulators a chance to address growing delinquencies among customers grappling with high winter utility bills amid a recession.

Sandy Spring Bancorp Inc. launched a campaign this month to attract customers from nearby rivals acquired by out-of-state banks, even as it faces weaker profits amid the economic slowdown. Sandy Spring's top executive discussed plans to win over customers from Chevy Chase Bank and Provident Bankshares Corp. during a conference call with analysts Tuesday to discuss first-quarter earnings. Capital One Financial Corp. bought Chevy Chase this year; M&T Bank is buying Provident. The Olney-based bank reported that its earnings available to common shareholders dropped to $1 million, or 6 cents per share, mostly because of a $10.6 million loan loss provision related mainly to its real estate development portfolio.