Year: 2012

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$500 Off Watches and Sunglasses?

Red Star US Airways’ inflight magazine had an unusual advertisement offering a free $500 prepaid giftcard good toward the purchase of watches and sunglasses. MrConsumer thought that they must sell really expensive products to be offering $500 off for nothing.

It turns out that some fine print on the back of the card explains their little trick:

*MOUSE PRINT:

With your PREPAID gift card code, you’ll receive $500 of suggested retail and sale price products! You pay only a 9% Service Fee for your selections. Service Fee includes: First Class delivery, customer service, order processing, labor, materials, goods, profit, marketing, free exchange & full refund programs. Fee is based on suggested retail price of the product and is separate from your Gift Card. Some products carry a minimum Service Fee.

In other words, it says they will charge you a fee to cover the cost of the watch or sunglasses.

On their website, there were a number of watches like this:

watch

The fine print next to the watch explains some unusual terms like “proposed price”, indicating that they plan in the future to sell this watch for $90. Sure. And the sale price is now $54.00. Sure. (You don’t even pay the sale price because you have a giftcard, remember, but the giftcard does not apply to the service fee.) You only pay a $12.90 “service fee.”

Poking around online, MrConsumer found some similar watches of the same (not so) famous brand, “Passion Time”, selling for not $90, not $54, not even $12.90.

watch

So basically, all this stuff about giftcards, and $90 prices, and $54 prices seems like nothing more than smoke and mirrors for a company selling cheap watches.

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Here We Downsize Again – Part 2 (2012)

As prices for raw ingredients go up, package sizes go down. Here are a few of the latest examples of products which have been downsized.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Maxwell House

The really big container went from 34.5 ounces (270 cups) down to 30.6 ounces (240 cups) — a loss of 30 cups-worth per container. Thanks to Mouse Print* reader Karl K. for the tip.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker has downsized many of their cake mixes from the familiar 18.25 ounces to only 15.25 ounces. Funny thing, however, the package still says it makes two eight-inch rounds, but the nutrition label says there are only 10 servings in the new package rather than the old 12. Thanks to Terry for the lead on Betty Crocker.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nathan's

Old reliable Nathan’s, the best-tasting frankfurter you can buy (says MrConsumer), still gives you eight “bigger than a bun” hot dogs in a package, but each one has gotten skinnier. The pound package is now just 14 ounces.

As with most cases of downsized products, you are paying the same price, but getting less. That is a sneaky way to essentially raise prices.

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“Up to” Savings Claims Mislead Many

Advertisers are very fond of promoting the best case scenario in advertisements, such as sale ads that say “Save up to 50% on sofas” or “Sofas as low as $199”.

The careful reader will or should recognize this trick that not all sofas are discounted 50% or priced at $199. But what about the average person who is exposed to advertising? Do they only recall the 50% savings claim rather than the “up to” part of the claim?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wanted to know, so they commissioned a study to out. Over 350 people were shown one of the three ads below, and asked about what they recalled.

The first ad makes an “up to 47%” savings claim. The second makes a straight 47% claim. And the third makes an “up to 47%” savings but with a fine print disclosure that the average savings are 25%.

*MOUSE PRINT:

When asked what the ad said about how much you would save on heating and cooling bills with these windows,

Ad 1 (with “up to” claim): 46% said they would save “47%” and only 26% said “up to” 47%

Ad 2: 58% said they would save “47%”

Ad 3 (with “up to” claim and disclaimer): 37% said they would save 47% and 30% said “up to” 47%

The study suggests that many consumers are blind to fine print disclosures, and that the use of “up to” claims misleads sizeable numbers of consumers. This certainly appears to support the notion that sellers should not be allowed to use either “up to” claims nor to put clarifications in fine print footnotes.

Massachusetts law, for example, does not allow “up to” claims in advertising. The ad must state both the smallest discount and largest discount in equal size type (such as “save 10 – 50%”), and at least 10-percent of the items being offered for sale must be available at the biggest discount offered.

Not a bad model to follow in the other 49 states.