Mouse Print* – Page 137 – Exposing the strings and catches buried in the fine print.

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The String Attached to Discover’s Free FICO Score Offer

May 14, 2018 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

This week in Consumer World we featured an offer from Discover to get a free copy of your genuine FICO credit score. Before you sign up, however, you may want to check their privacy policy, which might better be described as their “not much privacy” policy.

*MOUSE PRINT:

First, hats off to Discover for finding an easy way to convey a complex privacy policy without pages and pages of dense text.

But that is where the good news ends. Discover clearly says that at least for a “short time” they are going to market their services to you. But they are also going to share much of your information, like name, email, and your online activity with both their own affiliates and with companies they are not affiliated with. And they are going to share your birth date and social security number with companies that service or market their products.

This all made MrConsumer a little uneasy — an unusual feeling for someone who is generally privacy insensitive.

You have to decide if the reward of a free FICO score is worth the price of your personal information being shared with others.

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Congratulations, You’ve Won (NOTHING) at Car Dealer

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Have you ever noticed the way some car dealers advertise to get you into the showroom? They often promote a variety of sweepstakes with terrific prizes.

One such car dealer in North Carolina recently ran a “$25,000 Monte Carlo Game.” They sent out lottery-like tickets inviting recipients to scratch off the boxes and if they got a match, they would win between $100 and $25,000.

A consumer who got the mailing scratched off the various boxes as shown above, and the second row matched with three 7’s on both sides. It looked like he won $5,000, so he called the dealer and was told to come right down to the showroom. When he got there, there were a whole lot of other people huddled around a prize table that had been set up. The consumer was then told that he had to check the confirmation code on the board to see if it matched, and of course, it did not. He was then given the bad news that he did not win the $5,000. And they pointed to a small asterisked disclosure that said as much:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Our consumer rightly felt that he had been scammed and complained to the state Attoney General and the consumer reporter at the local TV station. WRAL ran a story about the promotion. They spoke to a lawyer representing the car dealer who asserted that the mailing was not misleading, but could have been misunderstood by recipients.

Right now, the North Carolina Attorney General is investigating seven dealerships in the area who are promising everything from cash to new cars.

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Wayfair’s “Way Day” — Deal or Dud Day?

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Playing off of Amazon’s wildly successful “Prime Day” last July, Wayfair.com declared its own holiday savings event last week called “Way Day.” In TV ads, they claimed to offer the lowest prices since Black Friday on that day.

To see if “Way Day” was hyping more discounts than they were actually providing, MrConsumer “randomly” chose 10 items from their various merchandise categories the day before Way Day, April 24, so they could be compared to the discounts offered on the same items the following day. We had no idea which items would be on sale and which would not be.

Wayfair before

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“Way Day” arrived, and here are Wayfair’s prices for the same items during their big sale.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Way Day prices

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Obviously, only checking 10 items is not a scientific, projectable survey. Nonetheless, the results of this spotcheck are interesting. Half the items were the same price or virtually the same price on “Way Day” compared to the day before. For example, the Price Pfister faucet was $82.86 on Way Day compared to $82.99 the day before. The GE dishwasher, however, didn’t even budge a penny from its $803 price.

But there were significant savings on some of the other five items. The pair of lamps dropped from $75 to $60.99. The rug went $277.99 down to $182.06. But the barbecue grill was only $6 less.

In total, the 10 items in our cart were selling for $1923.69 the day before the sale, but dropped to $1773.90 — for a “Way Day” savings total of $150.

So it looks like if one picked and chose carefully on “Way Day” and were familiar with Wayfair’s everyday prices, you could save some real bucks. Otherwise the savings might have only been slim or none.

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