Internet

Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Honestly, Could They Make the Disclosure Any Smaller?

 While watching TV the other night, MrConsumer saw a tiny disclosure at the end of a baby products commercial for The Honest Company. (That’s really their name.) It went by so quickly, and was so small and faint in color, it was very hard to read:

The Honest Company
Click ad to see commercial.

Here is what it says about their “free” trial.

*MOUSE PRINT:

*Only $5.95 for shipping and handling. You’ll be automatically enrolled in our monthly service. Cancel the service at anytime.

Their website gives more details.

*MOUSE PRINT:

*With your Discovery Kit, you’ll be enrolled as a member of The Honest Company. You have 7 days following receipt of your Discovery Kit to cancel your membership at any time, for any reason. We will remind you about your membership options. If you choose to not cancel, you’ll be charged $79.95 /month for the Diapers & Wipes Bundle, $35.95/month for the Essentials Bundle, or $39.95/month for your Health & Wellness Bundle (plus shipping & handling).

Basically, this company founded by actress Jessica Alba offers (among other things) a book-of-the-month-type service for baby supplies, shampoo and detergent, and vitamins. You will keep getting automatic deliveries every month, starting after seven days following receipt of your samples unless you cancel.

While their website makes clear that this is a monthly plan with monthly charges for these packages of goods, why do their TV commercials hide that fact particularly when they call themselves The Honest Company? Their television ad also seems to run counter to what their statement of principles claims:

Create a Culture of Honesty

We are serious about honesty – both as it applies to the integrity of our relationships and in being true to you. And, it’s a standard we encourage throughout our staff, stakeholders, and customers. But, that’s just the beginning. In all we do, we want to make each day a little more fulfilling, inspired, and downright better.

Mouse Print* asked the company twice to comment about their use of such a small disclosure and on this seeming contradiction of their corporate philosophy. We are still waiting for their response and will post it here… honestly.

Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

When Good Rebates Go Bad, Part 2

 At the beginning of July, we told you about a major rebate snafu at Newegg.com (see original story). In short, Newegg advertised a crazy low price (after rebate) for a reconditioned Samsung HDTV. The form for the $30 rebate, however, listed an incorrect UPC code for this television, which would likely mean that all consumers who bought the TV would have their rebate submissions denied.

MrConsumer swung into action, writing to the PR folks at Newegg, hoping that they would notify the rebate fulfillment house of the error so as to avoid the inevitable rebate denials that would follow. Newegg stepped up to the plate, and sent reassuring emails to all purchasers of this TV that their rebate would be honored despite the fact that the UPC code on their box didn’t match the number requested on the rebate form.

End of story.

In true Ronald Reagan “trust but verify” mode, MrConsumer submitted the rebate form, managing somehow to remove the huge UPS sticker the Newegg shipping department had placed over the TV’s actual UPC code. As expected, that UPC code did not match what was stated on the rebate form.

Several weeks later, the rebate fulfillment house sent MrConsumer an email entitled “Newegg Eligibility Confirmation.” Good news, right? Not so fast.

The email said that my submission had been processed and that I should receive their “response” by September 17. What do you mean “response,” don’t you mean your “check” was mailed? A call to the rebate fulfillment house revealed that the rebate had been rejected because the UPC submitted did not match the UPC requested on the rebate form. No kidding, but that was supposed to have been fixed, right? Not.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Newegg rejection

The customer service person at the rebate fulfillment house said she is getting calls like this every day, and instructing people to call Newegg because they will send out the correct UPC for resubmission. Both a call and a chat session with Newegg customer service was met with shrugs, with them not knowing anything about sending out a correct UPC. Enough.

MrConsumer emailed the PR guy at Newegg, explaining the situation, noting that Mouse Print* was going to do a follow-up story on the company failing to live up to its promised correction. Apparently that email sent shock waves throughout the company. By the end of the business day, Newegg explained what happened in a most candid way, and outlined how it was going to fix the problem, and put in place procedures to prevent its recurrence:

Your note really shook us up and we pulled together a number of teams to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Here is our plan of action and how we plan to never let this kind of thing slip through again. As always, we do appreciate your notes. Customer satisfaction is something we proclaim, so when we fall short, we like to know about it and get it resolved. In today’s process, we learned there was a critical communication gap between our product managers and our customer service team that led to this problem. Once we understood the problem (a technical way in which rebate codes get passed from product managers to customer service reps so the reps can validate them), which cut off about a third of the certificates that were being given to customer service–we set about making good for our customers and then updating our process so it doesn’t happen again. Here is our plan.

1. We learned that 3 rebate periods needed to be adjusted
* 5/20-6/8 $30
* 6/20-6/23 $30
* 7/4-7/21 $40

2. We will check the following for those periods
* Submitted rebate
* If rebate submitted with wrong UPC, honor rebate and notify customer of processing.

3. In the event that no rebate was submitted
* For those customers who have not submitted a rebate, we will contact them and have them submit it with the UPC code that they have.
* For those customer who state the shipping label is covering the UPC code or do not have a UPC code, we will honor the rebate either as a Newegg GC or credit back to original payment

We will make sure that all denied customers get their rebate.

Now to make sure this never happens again, our customer service team has set up a meeting with our product management team to review the proper application of rebates and how to make sure they appear in the customer service agents’ validation work flow.

This outline of steps is being put into action now. We are crafting the email being sent and it should go out this week. The new process and meetings should also take place this week. I will keep you posted on our progress.

Wow. In reply, we thanked Newegg for their swift action, but gently pointed out other related lapses they hadn’t acknowledged. We urged the company to incentivize their customer service agents to spot and report problems raised by individual consumer complaints that might be affecting other customers. That way a global solution could be implemented, and complaints reduced.

Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Is it a News Story or Is it an Advertisement?

 Every day, MrConsumer scours the Internet to find the 25 or so stories that we feature in Consumer World each week. And it should come as no surprise that Google News is a primary source. Last week, when searching for news stories one day, this was what Google News presented:

Google result

The very first result looked like a great story to bring to the attention of Consumer World readers — “10 Ways You’re Throwing Money Away Daily.” Upon clicking the link, one is brought to that story on the LA Times website:

latimessmall1
Click on picture to expand to full size,
click resulting picture if necessary to enlarge,
and scroll to the top.

It is a very long story offering all these tips, with appropriate graphics for each one. Tip #3 caught our eye, suggesting that money could be saved on eyewear by purchasing a vision plan:

eye tip

The link presented in the tip takes the reader to VSP — Vision Service Plan — where it purports to show dramatic savings on a pair of eyeglasses. And one can enroll in the plan right there.

Pretty clearly, this whole long story providing savings tips had a single purpose — to drive readers to this insurance plan. But it was a news story, right?

Scrolling back to the top of the page, the secret is revealed:

*MOUSE PRINT:

disclaimer

There it is. “Advertisement” in tiny letters (actual size). Did you catch it when you first looked at the full graphic above? Do you think that most people caught it?

This whole “story” that went on and on, page down after page down about eight times, was actually an ad, and not editorial content presented by the LA Times. This is called “native advertising” where the content is made to fit it more with the surrounding content on a webpage and appear less like an advertisement.

We wrote to the LA Times and explained how something like this could mislead readers. We asked some very pointed questions about this manner of presenting advertising with such a small disclaimer, how it wound up in Google as a news story, and if they were going to try to fix the problem. They responded:

“…the advertisement in question is clearly labeled as such and the only path for readers to find that content was intended to be via an latimes.com panel that is also clearly labeled as advertising. However, your inquiry brought our attention to the fact that although this ad – and others of the same ilk – is not included in our News SiteMap and the page has “noindex nofollow” directives, there appears to be a technical glitch with Google News. We are working with Google to find out why the content is indexed incorrectly and have the issue fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime, we have removed the advertisement from our site to eradicate potential for further confusion.” — V.P. Communications, Los Angeles Times

While we are gratified that the paper acted so quickly to remove the advertisement, they seem not to have a problem with such a small disclaimer at the top. We hope they will reconsider that position, and if they continue to display advertisements that look identical to news stories, that they will take further steps to more clearly identify and differentiate that kind of content.