Retail

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Infomercial Pricing: Just Pay $10 + P&S

DepilSilk We have all seen infomercials like this: pay just $10 and we will send you a bottle of this wonderful stuff.

But wait, there’s more. If you order in the next X minutes, we’ll double your order absolutely free. Pay just $10 (and then the announcer mumbles… “plus separate processing and handling”).

But wait, there’s more. If you order right now we’ll send you a luxurious satin bathrobe and hair wrap absolutely free (just pay processing and handling).

“You get it all for only $10.”

Oh, really?

Even looking at the company’s website where you place orders, it was unclear how much the total order would be, since all the shipping and handling charges were not spelled out.

Even the company’s telephone order taker had to take out his calculator to figure it out.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Advertised price: $10
P&H first bottle: $6.99
P&H free bottle: $6.99
P&H robe/turban: $9.99
TOTAL PRICE: $33.97

That’s a far cry from “just $10”.

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The World’s Shortest Return Policy

If you buy an app from the Android Market to put on your cellphone or tablet, you do have return rights in some cases. This is helpful if the app does not work, is not compatible with your device, or it is not what you expected.

There is, however, a very unusual catch.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Returning apps

Refund policy

You have 15 minutes from the time of download to return an application [color highlighting added] purchased through Android Market for a full refund. You may only return a given application once; if you subsequently purchase the same app again, you may not return it a second time.

How to return an app:

From Android Market on your phone, visit the My apps page, and select the application you’d like to return.

•Applications that are eligible for return are marked with a ‘Uninstall & Refund’ button. Please note that after the 15 minute return period has expired, all sales are final.

From a practical standpoint, it is almost impossible to fully test some apps in such a short period of time, so your return rights are for the most part illusory. Even if you could fully test an app in 15 minutes, it might take that long to figure out the procedure to request a refund because you probably never paid attention to that when you first purchased the app.

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Who Knew Cookies Could be Nutritious?

Last week a commercial for a new product Whonu? cookies began airing nationally. It basically contends that its cookies are a healthy choice for consumers.

On their website, but a little less so in the commercial, the company makes an array of nutrition claims comparing itself not only to oatmeal and milk, but also to the vitamins in blueberries, spinach, carrot juice, tomato juice, cottage cheese, and fruit:


*MOUSE PRINT: Those little asterisks lead to a fine print disclosure on the website, and a similar one in the TV commercial, which is visible for only three seconds:

So, you have to eat three cookies to get the nutrition they claim. However, when looking at the nutrition label for their Oreo-like cookies, one discovers that it contains only three grams of fiber, not four, as one would find in a serving of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats. And all the other vitamins and minerals are mostly in the 10% range (with a few up to 30%) of one’s daily requirement.

The bigger problem in our view is not quibbling over the claims referring to one cookie or three cookies, or the amount of fiber. Rather, it would be an unfortunate result to have people think they could eat these cookies as a substitute for all the healthy foods they compared them to, which obviously, as a whole, provide much more nutrition than these vitamin-spiked snacks.