One again we bring you a round-up of products, offers, and advertisements that are real head-scratchers or just too-good-to-be-true.
| Example #1 |
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Shoppers are attracted to bonus offers on grocery products and manufacturers know it. Sometimes, however, what looks like a special deal on a product is nothing but a mathematics lesson only indicating that a particular package is X% larger than a smaller one, as we have previously reported.
The latest arithmetic lesson comes from Campbell’s but apparently the math wizards there never quite mastered long division.
*MOUSE PRINT:
Here, the same 15.2 ounce can of tomato soup is compared to the regular 10.75 one, but the company can’t seem to decide how much more you are actually getting in the bigger can. Thanks for nothing, Campbell’s.
| Example #2 |
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Recently Shaw’s Supermarkets seemed to offer a great deal in their “Just for U” coupon section – $5 off a $5 purchase.
*MOUSE PRINT:
It only looked like $5 off a $5 purchase. The zero after the $5 purchase requirement was truncated and only visible when viewing the details of the coupon’s requirements. Thanks for nothing, Shaw’s.
| Example #3 |
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Macy’s had advertised a great price on men’s Dockers pants – only $9.95.
*MOUSE PRINT:
But, when clicking on the $9.95 offer, the price quadrupled to over $40.
Thanks for nothing, Macy’s.
If you find a questionable product label or advertisement suitable for the Thanks for Nothing series, please submit it to: Edgar (at symbol) MousePrint.org .
Honest to goodness, how is some of this legal?
Especially things like the Macy’s and Campbells ones? At least the Shaw one it is easier to believe it wasn’t intended to be truncated, but the other two are really egregious.
Well Joel the Macy’s one is bad but could have a bad pricing input / glitch but still should have never happened in the first place
The Shaw’s one is a bad typo for sure.
The Campbells one is a total joke. If a company as big as them can’t get the math right I just do not know what to say here.
Well, Shaw’s is at least giving you $5 off $50, so that’s 10%. Not exactly nothing, but I do agree this has become a habit with Home Depot’s Garden Club leading the pack The Macy’s sale was from last September, it looks like, but that is another increasing phenomenon with stores advertising a sale price on the search page only to get hit with a higher price on the product page. I’ve caught that at many online retailers. Chalk that up to the dynamic pricing gimmick
A supermarket–don’t remember which–has an item priced at 83 cents, but doesn’t sell well, so they put up for “sale”, at 10 for $10, and it sells well, because nobody is paying attention. Frequent occurrence.
I’ll have to remember to report this the next time I see it. I’ve seen supermarket items like that Campbell’s one that say “35% More”, then when I look for the mouseprint it says, “Than our next smallest size”. Well, duh.