Dumbest of This Week's 5 Dumbest: Karma Comes for the Kardashian Kard
NEW YORK (
) -- The fall of the Kardashian Kard was considered the dumbest thing on Wall Street this week by readers of
TheStreet
.
As of late Friday, about 39% of the readers who
took our poll
thought that the
was a particularly bad idea.
In early November a small community banking outfit in St. Paul, Minn., called University Bank issued the card under the
MasterCard
(MA) - Get Report
network. The prepaid card was intended to appeal to viewers of the reality series
Keeping Up With The Kardashians
, which showcases Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian and family.
Within a few weeks, the card was pulled off the market as critics, such as Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, protested the card's high fees.
The Kardashian Kard entailed an activation fee close to $100, a purchase fee around $10 and monthly fees of around $8. There was also a $1 fee every time a user added money to the card and a $6 cost to cancel it.
With approximately 26% of votes,
Verizon
(VZ) - Get Report
planning to launch of its 4G wireless network without any equipped phones or entry-level prices has been voted the second-dumbest thing on Wall Street this week.
Verizon is set to launch its long-anticipated 4G wireless network on Sunday
. The company calls it "the world's largest" LTE network, which is short for long term evolution, not "lite" mobile technology.
However, subscribers will have to purchase $99 wireless modems to connect their computers to a data-only network at what Verizon claims is up to 10 times the speed of its 3G service.
Verizon's monthly charge for the service will start at $50 for 5 gigabytes of use and rises to $80 for 10 gigabytes. Any data use beyond that is an additional $10 per gigabyte.
The news that management at a
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
in Wisconsin put a 100-year old in charge of checking receipts at the store's exit was considered dumb by 21% of voters.
Last Friday,
a frustrated shopper pushed the 100-year-old greeter aside
causing her to fall and hit her head.
The greeter ended up in the hospital, and the customer was arrested.
Over 7% of voters found it dumb that
Amazon
(AMZN) - Get Report
forced WikiLeaks to remove its site from its servers.
Amazon's decision to boot WikiLeaks
apparently came after Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and his staff asked Amazon on Tuesday for an explanation for why it was hosting WikiLeaks. By Wednesday morning Amazon had ceased hosting the site.
"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free -- fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe," the whistleblower Web site posted to its
on Wednesday afternoon.
Almost 7% of voters think that
Electronic Arts
(EA) - Get Report
CEO John Riccitiello threatening to drop Tiger Woods for losing is dumb.
"This is no threat against Tiger," Riccitiello said at a media summit in New York on Thursday. "We're with him because he has the promise of being the world's best golfer. We have no plans to move away from him, but it's a business relationship on the basis of we make the best golf game and he's the best golfer. Both of those things need to be true in the long run for the partnership to make sense.
Riccitiello and EA Sports didn't seem too concerned with Woods' past scandals. However, for Riccitiello, going 12 tournaments without winning is apparently unacceptable.
-- Written by Theresa McCabe in Boston.
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Disclosure: TheStreet's editorial policy prohibits staff editors and reporters from holding positions in any individual stocks.