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Can You Really Trade In Any iPhone, and Get an iPhone 15 Pro, iPad, & Apple Watch Free?

Anyone with a television has no doubt seen Verizon Wireless’ latest commercial for their big holiday giveaway:



Wow — what a great promotion. Simply trade in an iPhone in any condition, and get an iPhone 15 Pro, an iPad, and an Apple Watch SE … “All on us.” To me, that means for free.

If you could read the fine print, which you can’t because it is only on the screen for about eight seconds and is virtually illegible, you would think you were reading the details of a completely different offer. It is summarized below.

*MOUSE PRINT:

This is what the offer actually requires:

1. Trade in an iPhone.

2. Sign up for the “Unlimited Ultimate” cell plan – their most expensive plan – on a new line of service.

3. Buy the iPhone 15 Pro now for $999.99.

4. Buy the iPad now for $459.99.

5. Buy a plan for the iPad (price not stated).

6. Buy the Apple Watch now for $459.99.

7. Buy a plan for the Apple Watch (price not stated).

8. Over the next three years, get a rebate for those purchases credited to your bill at the rate of 1/36th of the purchase price per month.

Does that sound anything like the way the announcer described the offer?

Consumers should be able to watch a commercial and completely understand the offer that is being made. The details spoken in the ad should match the details in the fine print. I would even advocate that each mode (visually and orally) should independently fully present an accurate representation of the offer being made.

We asked Verizon why they didn’t orally disclose the true requirements of the offer, nor make the onscreen version large enough to read easily and on the screen longer. The company did not reply by publication time.

From watching and listening to this advertisement alone, would you have understood what requirements had to be met in order to participate in the giveaway?

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Beware Fake Retail Look-Alike Websites

We are in peak shopping season now and that means scammers are working overtime to steal your hard-earned money.

One technique being used by some crooks is to take out Facebook ads using the genuine front page of a retailer’s circular like this spotted by Trend Micro:

Fake Big Lots ad

When you click that ad or the “shop now” button you are taken to a site that looks like Big Lots.

Big Lots fake website

Scroll down the ad.

*MOUSE PRINT:

In fact, it brought you to BigLotsClearances.com — a site made to look like the real Big Lots site. And if you scroll through some of bargains being advertised, the prices are impossibly low. An electric motor bike for thirty bucks – 90% off? And a canister of Tide Pods less than three dollars? We should be so lucky.

Before you click any Facebook ad, try to determine what URL you are going to be directed to by hovering over the clickable area with your mouse. Beware of look-alike/sound-alike website names. And if the deals on the actual website are simply too good to be true, get off that website quickly just in case it is booby-trapped with a virus.

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FTC: Amazon Had a Secret Tool to Drive Up Prices

AmazonThe FTC and 17 states recently sued Amazon for using its monopolistic power to the detriment of its third party sellers, competitors, and customers.

Amazon uses a number of tactics to punish its own third-party sellers who offer lower prices outside of Amazon.

According to the complaint, the sanctions Amazon levies on sellers vary and can include:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Amazon knocks these sellers out of the all important “Buy Box,” the display from which a shopper can “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” … Nearly 98% of Amazon sales are made through the Buy Box and, as Amazon internally recognizes, eliminating a seller from the Buy Box causes that seller’s sales to “tank.”

Another form of punishment is to bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.

If a competitor lowers a price, Amazon often lowers its price to the penny to instantly blunt the competitor’s advantage.

Part of its plan to keep prices high involved a covert strategy called “Project Nessie” which the FTC says resulted in Amazon pocketing more than a billion dollars from American’s pocketbooks.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Project Nessie predicted the likelihood that the online store or stores offering the lowest price for a given product would follow an Amazon price increase. Armed with these predictions, [Amazon] increased products’ prices when those price hikes were most likely to be followed [by the competitor]. After Amazon successfully induced the other online store to raise its price, Amazon continued to sell the product at the now-inflated price.

Project Nessie generated enormous profits for Amazon even though its higher prices caused Amazon’s unit sales to decrease. But in 2019 when regulators started snooping around, the company put Project Nessie on hold.

This will be a long, complicated case, and it is anyone’s guess how it turns out and if shoppers ultimately will see lower prices in the marketplace as a result of real competition.