Most people have no idea when their newspaper or magazine subscription is set to run out. So when you get a bill in the mail like this, it must be time to renew, right?
People around the country have been receiving bills like this:
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Not so fast. The back of the invoice says the following.
*MOUSE PRINT:
“This is a magazine subscription offer, not a bill or invoice. You are under no obligation to either buy a magazine or renew at this time.”
And despite the appearance of this “bill,” the front bottom left hand corner says in small letters “RENEWAL OFFER – NOT A BILL.”
If it looks like a duck, it’s a duck, no matter what the fine print says. That’s the opinion of the Federal Trade Commission which recently filed a lawsuit against a web of companies for sending out these notices to subscribers of newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Seattle Times, The Denver Post, and over 350 others.
The notices claim that that the price is one of the lowest available rates and is authorized by the publisher. In fact, the FTC alleges the defendants do not have the publishers’ authorization and they charge up to 40 percent more than the newspapers typically charge. Purchasers often overpaid, got the wrong publication, and had difficulty getting refunds.
Since May, Walmart has been quietly discontinuing its price match guarantee (“Ad Match”) in hundreds of stores nationwide. This is a marked change from a policy the company promoted for years in TV commercials like this:
When one goes online to Walmart.com these days to read their terms of their policies, this is all they say about matching prices in stores:
*MOUSE PRINT:
Check with your local store for additional details on the price match policy.
Walmart spokesperson John Forrest Ales told us recently that “more than 200 but less than 1000” stores are affected nationwide. He said that in place of the price guarantee, they are instituting “long term rollbacks.” That means that thousands of items, mostly groceries and consumables, are going to have lower everyday prices, with no set expiration date. Large blue signs are being posted in stores where Ad Match is no longer available.
from WhatsYourDeal
How can you get around the discontinuation of their price match policy? You can still use their Ad Match app to scan your store receipt and automatically be entitled to any lower prices the app can find. Secondly, their price match policy still applies to purchases at Walmart.com and stores not participating in the new lower prices campaign.
Recently, Lowe’s began advertising what appeared to be a great sale on major appliances — 20% off. Here is the advertisement that ran during the 60 Minutes broadcast last week:
Click play button.
Seems pretty straightforward and unambiguous, right?
Oh, but then there’s some hard to read fine print (and our video quality doesn’t help matters). So, here is a close-up:
*MOUSE PRINT:
And if you still can’t read that, here is what it says:
“Valid 8/10 – 8/23. Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Amana, GE, LG, Samsung, Frigidaire, Electrolux and Bosch brands limited to a maximum 10% discount, unless otherwise shown. See store for more details and more exclusions. US only.”
Huh? First we’re seemingly told that the only restriction on getting 20% off appliances is that they have to sell for over $395. Then we learn that virtually all the most popular appliance brands are excluded from the 20% off sale and are only 10% off?
Incidentally, the online disclaimer lists additional brands that don’t qualify for any discount at all off the regular price:
*MOUSE PRINT:
So what brands are the full 20% off? For common major appliances, the Lowe’s website for a Massachusetts store only lists these additional brands: Haier, Hotpoint, Premier, Sharp, and Tappan. All of them that displayed the regular Lowe’s price (not MSRP) showed only a 10% off discount. Interestingly, despite the ad’s disclaimer, some models of the excluded brands were indeed at least 20% off.
According to enforcement policy of the Federal Trade Commission it is actually considered an unfair or deceptive practice for the big print to giveth and the little print to taketh away:
Advertisements often contain fine-print footnotes or video superscripts that attempt to disclaim, limit, modify, or explain claims made elsewhere in the ad. Advertisers cannot use fine print to contradict other statements in an ad or to clear up misimpressions the ad would otherwise leave.
Last Monday morning, Consumer World contacted the Lowe’s headquarters about these issues and to also ask if they would pull or revise the advertisement. It was not until Wednesday afternoon that we got the news that the company saw the light and yanked the ad. They said “there was a misstep in the editing process” and would modify it by adding “up to 20% off” in the headline. We suggested that that still would not fully remedy the problem, so some additional suggestions were made.
By Friday, true to their word, Lowe’s added the words “up to” to the commercial but did not take any of the other suggestions offered:
Consumers watching TV have a right to be told the straight poop about any offer and not have to freeze the picture to read almost unreadable fine print. As noted in the press release we issued last week about this matter, we have filed complaints with the FTC, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office.
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