The Shopping Avenger discovers an upstart competitor, trashes U-Haul, and gets dissed by Eddie Bauer.

When you're a superhero, no one ever cuts you a break.

The Shopping Avenger knew it was only a matter of time before some sort of Avenger manqué would try to seize the scepter of consumer advocacy for his own pathetic self. After all, given the fabulous success and worldwide renown (and healthy self-regard) of the Shopping Avenger, why wouldn't some cheap hustler follow him on the path of glory he has single-handedly hacked through the jungle of corporate malfeasance and customer dissatisfaction?

So now comes a publication calling itself Consumer Reports, a sad spectacle of faux-Shopping Avengerness. Consumer Reports is published by a group calling itself the "Consumers Union," which claims to have been founded in 1936. The Shopping Avenger laughs at this claim, because the Shopping Avenger knows that he himself is the originator of American consumer advocacy, back in 1999, or possibly 1998.

The Shopping Avenger is contemplating vengeance. First he considered going around licking copies of Consumer Reports hoping to infect its readers with the flu. This plan was rejected, however, when the Shopping Avenger realized where he worked.

The Shopping Avenger instead has retained the legal services of David Boies to protect his franchise against these usurpers. Boies, who has not been informed of his new—and biggest—role yet, should scare Consumer Reports folks right out of business.

Which is where they deserve to be. These people have it all backward. The apparent MO of Consumer Reports is to test products and services so shoppers will know what works and what doesn't—before they spend money. This stands in contrast to the Shopping Avenger's MO, which is to seek immediate gratification by buying goods and services that sound great but that he doesn't know one goddamn thing about, and then, when the aforementioned goods break or the aforementioned services falter, to piss and moan to you, the Shopping Avenger's loyal readers.

The Shopping Avenger admits that the sudden appearance of Consumer Reports has left him in a deep funk. He is also in a deep funk because one of the companies he most admires, Eddie Bauer, has totally wigged-out on one of the Shopping Avenger's loyal readers.

The Shopping Avenger will get to Eddie Bauer in a second, but first, a certifiable Shopping Avenger scoop: The Shopping Avenger has discovered the terrible truth about his great nemesis, his bête noire, the thorn in his side, the pebble in his shoe, the dastardly, bastardly devil of do-it-yourself furniture movers everywhere, U-Haul International. (For those of you tiring of Shopping Avenger's obsession with U-Haul, the Shopping Avenger promises that this will be the last installment of the U-Haul chronicles—unless U-Haul pisses him off again.)

I n a letter to the Shopping Avenger, one Shawn Battagler, an upstanding young American who for four years worked as a customer service representative for U-Haul in Missouri, confirms everything the Shopping Avenger has said (and said, and said) about U-Haul in this long jihad. Most noteworthy: his unequivocal assertion that customer service reps were never allowed to turn down a reservation, even if they didn't have a truck to rent.

"Employees are admonished that they would lose their jobs if they turned down a reservation for the upcoming weekend, even if the weekend was so overbooked that that the region was several hundred trucks short. People would wait several days for their trucks," Battagler says by way of introduction.