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Google Ran An Illegal Lottery — And We Got Them to Stop

Last Wednesday evening, Google sent out an email to Google Assistant customers announcing a sweepstakes to win a free Google Home Max speaker.

Google email

To get your chance to win, you had to either buy a 2-pack of Google Home Minis smart speakers yourself (or anything else from the Google store), or get a friend to buy two using a special link that would secure your entry. At the bottom of the offer was a terms and conditions link with the contest rules.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Despite the rules saying multiple times “no purchase necessary” to enter the sweepstakes, they provided no free means of entry. You or someone else had to make a purchase for a chance to win. And that makes this an illegal lottery, against federal law and the gambling laws of virtually every state. “Paying a price for the chance of a prize” is the classic definition of a lottery. To convert an illegal lottery into a legal sweepstakes, the promoter must always include a free means of entry.

But Google didn’t do that.

We wrote to their PR folks about 12 hours after their email was sent, contacting both Google and its parent company, Alphabet, pointing out the problem and asking how they were going to remedy it. By that evening Google sent out a new email to customers entitled “Update to Home Max Sweepstakes.”

Google Revised Email

Miraculously, all mentions of a purchase being necessary disappeared from the promotion. And the sweepstakes rules were changed to include an additional alternate means of free entry.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Google updated sweepstakes rules

Did Google or Alphabet reply to our email, or even send a note of appreciation for getting them out of potential legal hot water? Nope.

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This Smartphone is Waterproof, Right?

To tease the introduction of its new smartphone, OnePlus is running this new commercial touting how waterproof they are:



Rather than go through an expensive internationally recognized test to determine the degree to which its phones resist water and dust penetration (an “IP rating”), the company just drops its phones in a bucket of water.

There’s just one problem with their cheap method to convey that their phones are waterproof or water-resistant. It’s in the fine print that you probably can’t read in the commercial.

*MOUSE PRINT:

OnePlus fine print

With a disclaimer that small, and only on the screen for three seconds, no wonder you can’t read it. It says:

Products not IP certified. Water resistant under optimal test conditions. OnePlus makes no guarantees regarding water/liquid resistance. Water/liquid damage not covered under product warranty.

Then why the heck, OnePlus, are you representing visually that your phones can be safely dunked in water? (The company never replied to our inquiry.)

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How Much Cereal is Really in This Box?

Jack K. was very disappointed by a recent purchase of cereal he made for Passover. He felt shortchanged by this Cheerios-like product called Crispy-O’s from Gefen for which he paid a hefty price – $5.59.

Crispy O's

To his surprise, when he opened the 10-inch high box, he found only a tiny bag inside and lot of dead airspace.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Crispy O's inside of box

When manufacturers over-package a product creating empty space inside that has no function other than to make consumers think they are getting more for their money than they really are, that is called slack fill, and it’s illegal under federal law (and the law of some states). It is not illegal if the empty space is needed because of settling of the product, or because the machinery to fill the package requires it, or the space is needed to protect the product (such as the cushioning pillow created by large potato chips bags).

To add insult to injury, when Jack poured out the cereal for breakfast, he only got two-bowls-worth. Stunned by the revelation, Jack’s wife measured the contents of a fresh box, and only got about 4 cups out of it. But the nutrition facts label said the box was supposed to contain seven cups.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Gefen Nutrition Facts

We brought this matter to the company’s attention. Their response:

“Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. After further investigation it was determined that there was a misprint on the serving size. It should have said that the 25g is a half/ cup. All WEIGHTS stated on the package are correct. Please be assured that this printing error will be corrected before we produce product for next season.”

This suggests that this big box only contains about three and a half cups of cereal. We wrote back to Kayco, the maker of the product, pointing out that the fix for the problem was not changing the serving size to half a cup because that would violate federal law. Under FDA rules the serving size “is the amount of food customarily consumed (i.e., typically eaten) in one sitting for that food.” No adult eats just half a cup of a Cheerios-like cereal for breakfast. In fact, according to General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, the serving size for that cereal is one cup for adults and three-quarters of a cup for a child under the age of four.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Cheerios nutrition facts

The company did not write back to us after we pointed out that their planned fix was probably not kosher.

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