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Nissan Cars Can’t Snowboard…Duh

  Car manufacturers love to put important details about their vehicles and offers in minuscule fine print in their television commercials. And Nissan is no exception.

Just in case you couldn’t read the tiny disclaimer in two recent Nissan commercials, we’ve captured it for you.

Commercial #1: Nissan Sentra

This ad shows Nissan cars gliding effortlessly over banks of snow the way a snowboarder would.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nissan snowboarding

And just in case you can’t read that, and to prevent a misimpression, Nissan has an important warning for viewers. You should not try snowboarding in your car because “cars can’t snowboard.”

Commercial #2: Nissan Leaf

This ad shows Nissan cars rolling backwards out of a trailer truck while going full speed on a highway.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nissan Leaf

So, just in case you thought you could buy a Nissan Leaf, put it on a truck, and roll backwards out of it at 60 miles an hour, the company advises viewers not to try it because you are watching a “fantasy.”

Commercial #3: Mazda

Not to be outdone, in the opening scene of a Mazda commercial about safety, they show a man who has been set on fire and provide the standard fine print warning: do not attempt.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Mazda do not attempt

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Hey Costco, Where’s the Fine Print?

  It may sound odd for a consumer advocate to ask a company to provide more fine print, but that is exactly what MrConsumer had hoped Costco would do.

Costco has had Tempur-pedic memory foam mattresses on sale for the past several weeks, and seemingly only making them available on its website. It is hard enough making the right decision about a mattress when you can actually try out several in the store. Imagine trying to buy one online almost blindly. That’s why having detailed specifications can help the prospective buyer make a more informed decision.

On Costco’s website, there are four different models of Tempur-pedic mattresses ranging in price from $1399 to $1899. MrConsumer wondered what the difference was between them. So might any purchaser, right? So he clicked the “compare” button on each to create a handy chart to find out.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Costco Tempur-pedic

That was helpful, wasn’t it? Every column has the identical description. The product page for each does have more information, but is mostly marketing mumbo jumbo like “TEMPUR® support layer: A thick TEMPUR® support layer provides body aligning support,” and “millions of individually adjusting TEMPUR® cells that adapt and conform to your unique shape and body weight.” And descriptions similar if not identical to this appear for all the mattresses.

Memory foam mattress shoppers should be given easy access to details like the firmness, overall thickness, composition of each layer, and how thick and dense each one is. A memory foam mattress is not all memory foam. The bottom six or seven inches is often a high density foam that does not have the conforming qualities of memory foam. It is simply a base. That’s why knowing how thick the actual memory foam layers are is so important.

Costco has buried some of this information or just not provided it.

And wouldn’t it be nice if the product names could be referenced at the manufacturer’s website and at competitors’ stores. Just to try find the Tempur-Contour-Select at Tempurpedic.com, for example.

Incidentally, if you think that clicking the specifications tab will reveal everything you need to know, think again. All four beds just say this:

Tempur specs

So, Costco, if you are actually interested in selling mattresses, give us some real data to work with and not useless comparison charts.

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Shussh, Don’t Say That in Front of the Kids Smart TV

Samsung Smart TV Smart TVs are getting smarter. And maybe too smart for our own good.

Originally, smart televisions had the ability to display Internet websites because you could switch to a crude built-in browser. Now they can make recommendations of what you might like to watch, and can even understand voice commands.

But, there is potentially a dark side to this technology. A look at Samsung’s privacy policy supplement for smart televisions contains some unexpected surprises.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. [color emphasis added]

So if you enable voice commands, what you say is captured and is sent to a processing company on the Internet. Be sure not to discuss how you plan to cheat the IRS or commit murder when the TV is on, lest your plans become evidence that could be subpoenaed.

And if you’re watching some steamy pay-per-view movies, Samsung may be tracking your viewing based on what functions you have enabled on the TV.

*MOUSE PRINT:

…if you enable the collection of information about video streams viewed on your SmartTV, we may collect that information and additional information about the network, channels, and programs that you view through the SmartTV.

This data collection is supposedly only used to provide you with a better viewing experience, but who knows what really happens to all that data. And if you opt into “SyncPlus,” advertisers are told what you are watching so they can target ads and offers specifically to you.

So this is the future of television… the big screen that you’re watching is also watching (and listening) to you.

After last week’s brouhaha, Samsung clarified its Smart TV policy, saying:

If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.) that converts your interactive voice commands to text and to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Samsung will collect your interactive voice commands only when you make a specific search request to the Smart TV by clicking the activation button either on the remote control or on your screen and speaking into the microphone on the remote control.

Is that an improvement?

And now Samsung Smart TV owners are complaining that the company is inserting advertisements in the consumer’s own content or content they paid for.

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