Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Subway’s “No Tuna” in Their Tuna Sandwiches Saga Nears an End

It has been going on for nearly two-and-half years already. Two California consumers claimed there was no tuna in Subway’s tuna sandwiches.

The case generated headlines worldwide.

Subway Tuna Headlines

We’ve written six stories about the case. First the consumer claimed there was no tuna in their subs, then her lawyers said it wasn’t 100-percent tuna, and on and on. The lawyers filed and withdrew complaint after complaint, changing their theory of the case.

The company got a huge black eye because of these cases, and probably suffered significant reputational damage and lost sales.

Now, on April 20, 2023, the consumer sought to voluntarily dismiss the case.

But guess what? Subway said not so fast. In essence, because the consumer and her lawyers put the company through the wringer even after having been provided with documentation pinpointing the place where the tuna is captured to how it’s packaged, Subway’s lawyers are seeking sanctions against the consumer’s lawyers.

They say the suit should have been dropped long ago, and way before the company had to spend over $600,000 in legal fees to defend itself. The six consumer lawyers filed various pleadings, they say, to extend the lawsuit “motivated by the prospect that Subway might simply pay a windfall settlement.”

For their part, the consumer’s lawyers countered that the consumer is withdrawing her complaint because of health issues. They went on to say:

Plaintiff filed her complaints with a good faith, non-frivolous basis based on testing and evidence that there was something amiss with respect to the meat product defendants were selling as ‘tuna.’

MrConsumer has always thought the case was a little fishy because of the questionable test results the consumer’s lawyers claimed to have. Now, finally, the case should come to a conclusion after an August hearing.

Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Wanna Bet These Ads Are Misleading?

More and more states are allowing betting on sporting events, and that has resulted in a huge increase in advertising promotions by betting site operators. And nothing attracts gamblers more than offers of free money.

But some of these ads can be misleading and that has led to a series of class action lawsuits against Caesars Sportsbook for ads like this:

Caesars Sportsbook $1250 offer

The lawsuit contends:

… if a new user places a $1,000 “risk-free” or “free” first bet at Caesars Sportsbook, that person is required to deposit and wager $1,000 in real dollars with the website. If the bet is successful, the winnings are paid out as usual. If the bet loses, however, the customer is credited with the amount lost, not in cash, but in bet credits that can only be used on the Caesars Sportsbook and that expire in just 14 days.

So basically an offer like this only replaces the money you lose with their own funny money but doesn’t allow you to withdraw it. That is not clearly explained in the ads and thus forms the basis for these lawsuits.

One Ohio state gambling official explained the issue this way:

*MOUSE PRINT:

“If something is claiming to be free or risk-free, then it has to absolutely not require the patron to incur any loss or risk their own money,” Matthew Schuler, executive director of Ohio’s Casino Control Commission, said in a recent interview. “Disclosing the risks within the terms and conditions isn’t good enough,” he added.

The parent company of Caesars Sportsbook a couple of weeks ago asked a judge to either dismiss one of the cases or require the plaintiff to go to arbitration as the terms and conditions provided when she signed up for the promotion. The judge has not ruled on that motion yet.

The misleading nature of these promotions is not limited to Caesars. Here is a promotion from FanDuel, another sportsbook, with Rob Gronkowski promising that new customers will “get up to $3,000 back if they don’t win their first bet.”


At the end of the commercial the announcer repeats that customers will “get up to $3,000 back if you don’t win your first bet.”

*MOUSE PRINT:

The unspoken part of the claim is that the money back is in the form of “bonus bets” — merchandise credit, if you will, that cannot be withdrawn. It must be used in 14 days. All that is only stated onscreen, and not all in readable-size type.

But it gets worse. Let’s say you’ve earned $100 in bonus bets and you bet that whole $100 on a sporting event. Lucky you, your bet wins $150. When you go to withdrawn your $150, you may discover that all you really won is $50 because they substract the value of the wager you made using the house’s money. [We confirmed this with a FanDuel spokesperson.]

*MOUSE PRINT:

*After your bet settles (and if it wins), you’ll get to pocket all of the winnings but the initial bonus bet portion of your wager will not be returned to your wallet.” -FanDuel website

As with everything else we spotlight in Mouse Print*, you’ve always got to read the fine print.

Note: Comments submitted Wednesday and afterwards will be delayed in posting.

Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Are Zesta Saltines Being Short-Weighted?

Zesta saltinesThe internet has been buzzing about Zesta saltine crackers of all things (and so has reader J.C.). Some purchasers discovered when they opened the familiar one-pound boxes that the sleeves of crackers inside were as much as two inches shorter than normal.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Zesta inside boxes

What’s going on here? Both boxes still say 16 ounces. Are they short-weighting customers by putting far less in each box than the one pound that is supposed to be inside? We got out our trusty digital scale to find out.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Zesta box weight

Both boxes, the one with full stacks on the left and the one with short stacks on the right both weigh the same — one pound three ounces. How is this possible because there seemed to be so much less in short stack box?

So, we examined some (but not all) the sleeves of crackers to count how many were in each sleeve. Surely the short sleeves had to have many fewer crackers, right?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Zesta stacks weight

Not really. The box with the full sleeves had between 37 and 39 crackers per sleeve, while the short sleeves in the other box had between 35 and 39 crackers. And the shortest sleeve still weighed the expected four ounces. (Okay, let’s not quibble about the weight the plastic wrap.)

So we ask again — what is going on here? Is each cracker thinner but somehow more dense? A spokesperson for Kellogg’s didn’t shed much light on what actually happened, saying:

Zesta crackers are packaged by weight and not volume. Normal baking processes may lead to crackers with different thickness, so the number of crackers may vary from package to package.

It appears that this mystery will remain unsolved.