Year: 2014

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Tropicana Farmstand Fruit/Veggie Juice Surprises

  Tropicana has a new juice on the market called Farmstand. It is a “100% fruit and vegetable juice” which the company says provides one serving of fruit and one serving of vegetables in every eight-ounce glass.

It comes in such luscious-sounding flavors as Peach Mango, Strawberry Banana, and Pomegranate Blueberry.

Tropicana Farmstand

When looking at the ingredients statement, it may come as a surprise that there is not a lot of strawberry or banana in the product above.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Tropicana Farmstand

Besides water, the primary ingredient is sweet potato juice. Sweet potato juice? Yep. And it has more grape, apple and carrot juice than either strawberry or banana.

Tropicana’s other two Farmstand varieties also are composed primarily of water and sweet potato juice, with the product’s named fruits way down the list of ingredients.

For all MrConsumer knows, these juices are wonderfully tasty compared to the V8s of the world. But funny how the primary ingredient — sweet potato — is almost hidden and not clearly identifiable on both the product label and in their display advertising.

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Burger King’s Satisfries’ Fat and Calorie Reduction Claims Unsatisfrying

  With great fanfare, Burger King recently introduced “Satisfries” — a new crinkle-cut french fry that it claims is much lower in fat and calories:


Satisfries

And they are also running commercials making the same claims:



If you look a little closer, you will see there is one tiny asterisk after the 40% less fat claim, and two asterisks after the 30% less [sic] calories claim. The fine print in the commercial is virtually unreadable.

*MOUSE PRINT:

BK disclaimer

They are not actually comparing the new Satisfries to their own regular fries as most people would believe, but rather to McDonald’s regular fries.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Burger King
BK fries nutrition

McDonald’s
Mcd's Fries

While Burger King’s claims are roughly mathematically correct when you compare equal size portions of their Satisfries to McDonald’s regular fries, BK’s claims exaggerate the calorie and fat reductions when you compare the actual sizes of products you can buy in each restaurant.

Comparing the actual smallest portion you can buy of BK’s Satisfries, which weighs 87 grams, with McDonald’s small size fries which weighs only 71 grams, the BK Satisfries has 27% less fat (not 40% less) and 17% fewer calories (not 30%).

But how do Satisfries compare to BK’s own regular fries, since most people hearing the claim will believe that is the comparison being made?

When you compare the smallest size of BK’s Satisfries (87 grams) with their own virtually equal-sized regular fries (89 grams), Satisfies are only 20% less fatty (not the 40% seemingly claimed), and have 21% fewer calories, not 30%.

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On Time Delivery Guaranty Gotchas

  UPS, and to a lesser extent Federal Express, got black eyes this past holiday season when thousands of packages were left undelivered in time for Christmas.

Some retailers like Amazon, Kohl’s, and Walmart promised to make peace with their customers by variously offering shipping refunds, gift cards, or complete refunds. But what about UPS and FEDEX themselves?

Both companies have on-time guarantees.

For UPS, air shipments are guaranteed throughout the holiday season. But, if you used UPS Ground service, they have conveniently excluded the two weeks before Christmas:

*MOUSE PRINT:

UPS guarantee

Federal Express on the other hand, appears to have left their full money back guarantee intact.

FEDEX guarantee

For overnight deliveries, their policy is generous:

“FedEx offers a money-back guarantee for every U.S. shipment. You may request a refund or credit of your shipping charges if we miss our published (or quoted, as in the case of FedEx SameDay®) delivery time by even 60 seconds.”

Wow, even if they are only a minute late you get back your money. Wow, again.

In small type, however, the customer is referred to Fedex’s “terms and conditions” and ground tariff. For both overnight express and ground services, their money back policy begins this way:

*MOUSE PRINT:

“We offer a money-back guarantee for our services. This guarantee can be suspended, modified or revoked at our sole discretion without prior notice to you.” [emphasis added]

So they have this great policy, but tuck into the fine print that they can suspend it at will. Nice, huh?

Sure enough, FEDEX created a special holiday money back guarantee . For FEDEX Ground shipments, they invoked that weasel clause just when it might be needed most.

*MOUSE PRINT:

“The money-back guarantee for FedEx Ground® and FedEx Home Delivery® services will be suspended temporarily for packages tendered during the 14 calendar days before Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013 (Wednesday, Dec. 11, through Tuesday, Dec. 24).”

And for FEDEX express services, they give themselves an extra 90 minutes to make on-time deliveries, just like UPS.

The company issued a statement after the big media uproar about packages being delivered late (primarily by UPS), saying:

“Every single package is important to us, and we will continue to work directly with customers to address any isolated incidents.”

The bottom line is that these companies have tried to absolve themselves of on-time delivery responsibilities, and have been relatively silent about how they would make good for disappointed shoppers.