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Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining

Judge Judy certainly has a way with words, and these retailers certainly try to use them to make a lousy deal or non-deal seem beneficial to consumers.

Example #1:

Best Buy recently unveiled a buyback program whereby purchasers of certain electronic equipment can buy a policy that guarantees a certain trade-in value for their new purchase.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Their ad only promotes the best case scenario — up to 50% back. When could you get 50% back?  Only  if you want to get rid of your purchase within six months of purchase. More likely, you may wish to trade your item after a couple of years of ownership. In that case, you will get zero back for your phone or computer, and only “up to 10%” for your TV. In our opinion, most consumers would be crazy to PAY a company to offer you a lousy buyback price or no buy back at all during such a short period of time. Selling the item yourself on eBay or through Craigslist would more likely yield a greater return on your purchase.

Example #2:

Earlier this year, Office Depot promoted TurboTax Deluxe with a free state tax download.

*MOUSE PRINT:

What Office Depot didn’t tell you right there was that they added $10 to the price of TurboTax Federal in order to offer the “free” state download:

Bottomline: they are giving you NOTHING extra for free, they are charging you $10 extra for that supposed free benefit.

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Just $19.99 — “Don’t Let the [Low] Price Fool You”

January is the time when many people resolve to lose some of the holiday pounds, and get back in shape. Mouse Print* reader Ronald O. saw a commercial offering a cheap solution –  a set of workout DVDs for “just $19.99”.

The announcer said this is a set of 10 DVDs for “just $19.99” … “but don’t the price fool you.”

When our consumer checked the order form online, he got a big surprise.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Sure, it is $19.99 … times two!

In some spots of the website it says the price is $19.99, and in other spots it says the price is “two easy payments of $19.99.”

When the company was asked the question… so what’s the real price… they said $19.99 plus $6.99 shipping. And several days after this call was made, the website appeared to drop the “two easy payments” language.

You can decide whether to exercise your right to deal with these people or not.

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90% Off Groceries at Amazon? Ho, Ho, No!

[Note: the next Mouse Print* posting will be January 3.]

MrConsumer recently came across a website that helps people find deeply discounted items on Amazon. What a great idea.

When checking what items in Amazon’s grocery department were supposedly 90% off, Mouse Print* found some startling savings claims.

They claim savings of 93%, yet they are still charging over $1.50 for each regular size pack of gum. How is that possible?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Amazon claims the list price for those 12 packs of gum is a whopping $284.52 — that’s $23.71 for a single package! Was this gum previously chewed by Elvis, thus accounting for its premium price? The full price for one pack of Trident Layers is $1.49 (at Kmart), so 12 packs should be about $17.88 full price, not almost $285. Clearly something is not right here. Is this an isolated incident? Unfortunately no. Item after item listed in the 90% off section had grossly exaggerated list prices that bear no relation to real world regular prices.

Twelve packages of gummy bears marked right on the package “2 for $1” list for $6, not $95 as Amazon claims. A two pound can of Folgers coffee is not $146 anywhere, just over a pound of Pringles doesn’t list for the $159 the site claimed, and less than six pounds of Twizzlers doesn’t have a value of over $271.

How could Amazon put such exaggerated list prices on its site in order to claim savings of over 90%? We asked Amazon’s PR department to comment, but no response was received. Miraculously, however, two weeks after contacting them, the exaggerated regular prices of most of these and other groceries disappeared.

Of course, this doesn’t explain why Amazon’s 90% off page for groceries still shows more than 300 items most of which are not actually 90% off.

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If you find examples of hard goods, such as electronics, cameras, or appliances with a stated list price on Amazon that is higher than the actual suggested list price, please send those examples to Mouse Print* ( edgar [at symbol] mouseprint.org ). Thanks.