Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

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Free Wi-Fi Users Ignore Terms and Conditions and Get Pranked

An Internet company in Manchester, England called Purple decided recently to prove that consumers access free wi-fi services carelessly by not spending the time to click and read the terms and conditions of its use.

Purple terms

The company pranked users for a period of two weeks by tucking a “Community Service Clause” into their public wi-fi terms.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The user may be be required, at Purple’s discretion, to carry out 1,000 hours of community service. This may include the following:

• Cleansing local parks of animal waste
• Providing hugs to stray cats and dogs
• Manually relieving sewer blockages
• Cleaning portable lavatories at local festivals and events
• Painting snail shells to brighten up their existence
• Scraping chewing gum off the streets

So how many consumers using their free wi-fi services clicked the “accept” button despite being potentially being required shovel poop out of blocked pipes? A staggering 22,000 people! And how many people caught the catch? Exactly one!

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Now Here’s a Juicy Story…

There’s an old joke about how cheap chicken soup is actually made. They merely dunk a whole chicken in a pot of water, then immediately remove it and dunk it into the next pot. That’s the feeling we get with Juicy Juice’s 100% juice called Orange Tangerine.

Daniel T. wrote to Mouse Print* saying that he was looking to buy tangerine juice, but the closest he could find was this product:

Juicy Juice

Like any good consumer (who reads Consumer World or Mouse Print*), he checked the ingredients statement and got quite a surprise.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Juicy Juice ingredients

Rather than find orange juice and tangerine juice at the top of the list, he found three other juices comprised a majority of the juices in the bottle: apple, pear, and grape.

So how much actual orange juice and tangerine juice is in the product? We asked the manufacturer, Harvest Hill Beverage Company, which did not respond.

It turns out that the FDA has specific rules about juices where the product name and/or depiction of the fruit shown is not the primary ingredient.

*MOUSE PRINT:

(d) In a diluted multiple-juice beverage or blend of single-strength juices where one or more, but not all, of the juices are named on the label other than in the ingredient statement, and where the named juice is not the predominant juice, the common or usual name for the product shall:

(1) Indicate that the named juice is present as a flavor or flavoring (e.g., “Raspcranberry”; raspberry and cranberry flavored juice drink); or

(2) Include the amount of the named juice, declared in a 5- percent range

In plain English this says that in this case the maker cannot call this product “Orange Tangerine” because they are not the main ingredients, other juices are. The company would have to call it “Orange Tangerine flavored juice” or specifically declare the percentages of orange juice and tangerine juice in the bottle.

What the manufacturer did instead is include a fine print disclosure at the bottom of the front label:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Juicy Juice disclosure

Does that hard to read disclosure meet the requirements of the law? Not in our view, because it was not incorporated into the product name which simply is “Orange Tangerine.” And because “Orange Tangerine” is in close proximity to the words “100% juice,” consumers are likely to believe the bottle only contains orange and tangerine juice.

As it turns out, we are not the only ones to come to this conclusion. Back in 2009, the Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to Nestle, the company that manufactured Juicy Juice at the time, making that very point and calling the product “misbranded” as a result:

Additionally, we have reviewed the labeling of your Nestle Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine and Nestle Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Grape products. These products are misbranded under section 403(a)(1) of the Act [21 USC 343(a)(1)] because their labels are misleading. The label of the Orange Tangerine product is designed to imply that the product is 100% orange/tangerine juice, and the label of the Grape product is designed to imply that product is 100% grape juice. The principal display panels identify the products as “Orange Tangerine” and “Grape,” respectively, in large, bold lettering outlined in black; however, neither orange/tangerine juice nor grape juice is the predominant juice in the products.The statements “All Natural-100% Juice” in close proximity to the words “Orange Tangerine”or “Grape” and vignettes of oranges or grapes also may lead consumers to believe that the products are 100% orange/tangerine juice or 100% grape juice when, in fact, they are not. The separate statement at the base of the respective principal display panels, “Flavored juice blend from concentrate with other natural flavors & added ingredients,” appears in a smaller font and white print on a colored background. The manner in which the latter statement is presented makes it less conspicuous and prominent than the other label statements and vignettes and therefore less likely to be read or understood by consumers at the time of purchase.

We don’t know the result of the warning letter, and the current owners of Juicy Juice (Harvest Hill Beverage Company) did not respond to our two inquiries concerning the labeling issue. We do know that the labeling has not changed much since 2009.

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Report: Amazon Still Promoting Phony Discounts

For years, Amazon has often used the “manufacturer’s suggested list price (MSRP)” as a reference price for many products to be able to claim that Amazon’s current selling price would save shoppers a huge sum of money. Savvy consumers know that very few items ever sell at full MSRP, so any savings claimed compared to that number are likely to be fictitious. We have previously shown you crazy examples where Amazon even used inflated reference prices to facilitate their 80% and 90% off claimed discounts in some cases.

Almost exactly a year ago, we reported that Amazon apparently had discovered consumer religion and was dropping many of its phony comparisons to list prices. The change was likely a result of several lawsuits about their deceptive pricing practices.

More recently, Consumer Watchdog, a California advocacy group, noticed that Amazon was now advertising discounts from “was” prices (such as “Was $49.99” “Now 39.99” “Save 20%”). Sometimes the comparison just showed a price with a line through it, without explanation of what that comparative price actually represented.

So, like any good consumer group, they decided to conduct a survey. In June, they checked 1,005 items to see if Amazon’s new way of making price comparisons was less deceptive than the old way. They used a website called The Tractor, which maintains price histories for items sold by Amazon. In this way, they could see if the claimed “was” price was ever really charged by Amazon. See their full report.

The key findings included:

  • Amazon displayed reference prices on 46 percent of the products surveyed.
  • 61 percent of all reference prices were higher than any observed price charged by Amazon in the recent past (defined as 90 days).
  • In nearly four in ten cases, Amazon never appeared to charge the previous price from which it claimed to be discounting. It was entirely fictitious.
  • 83 percent of crossed-out prices on sale items exceeded the highest historical price in Tractor’s records. On average, they were double the highest price Amazon had charged previously.

    • Here are some specific examples from their study:

    *MOUSE PRINT:

    Hammermill paper

    According to the study, you really were not saving almost 50% on this paper. Rather than $17.78 being the regular price for this paper at Amazon just prior to the sale as some might believe, there were only four periods lasting no longer than a day or two when that was the actual price in the past year at Amazon. Neat trick, huh? As a matter of law in Massachusetts, for example, advertising regulations require that an item be offered at regular price for 14 consecutive days first before it is discounted. And then it needs to be at full regular price for about 36% of the time if the seller is going to continue to make a comparison to the “regular” price. (There are other rules that can apply here too.)

    *MOUSE PRINT:

    Amazon leather bag

    There was only six months-worth of price history on this item, but during that time, the most that Amazon charged was $26 — nowhere near the crossed out price of $149.99.

    Federal Trade Commission guidelines state:

    “If the former price is the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time, it provides a legitimate basis for the advertising of a price comparison…. If, on the other hand, the former price being advertised is not bona fide but fictitious – for example, where an artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction – the “bargain” being advertised is a false one…”

    It is sad that a seller like Amazon, with its tens of millions of customers, seemingly continues to resort to using these deceptive pricing practices.