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Avis: $30 Off Your Next Rental?

Mouse Print* reader Marc D. recently got a mail offer promising $30 off his next Avis rental if he would give them his email address.

Avis $30 offer

What he didn’t realize until after he received his $30 coupon was the offer was really $30 off a weekly rental.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Avis coupon

Since Marc’s “next rental” was not going to be a weekly one, he felt hoodwinked.

Mouse Print* wrote to Avis, asking what happened, and whether they would honor the no-strings-attached $30 offer for those who received the original offer.

“As a result of a printing error, the promotional insert did not specify that the offer was for a “weekly” rental. However, “weekly” is mentioned in several other places, including the outer envelope (see attached), the website/page where the customer provides his/her information to redeem the offer (www.avis.com/email) and the subsequent email offer. The erroneous promotional inserts have been discarded. New inserts have been printed and are currently being used.” — Avis spokesperson.

Fair enough, the disclosure WAS on the webpage where consumers had to sign-up, but was not on the offer sheet they received by mail. Some consumer protection advertising rules, however, state that the subsequent disclosure of the actual terms of an offer does not diminish the deceptive nature of the original offer that did not disclose those terms.

And what will Avis do for consumers who felt mislead about this offer?

“The $30 offer is being accepted on weekly rentals.” — Avis spokesperson.

In other words, nothing.

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Here We Downsize Again – Part 3 (2012)

Last week, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer covered the issue of downsized grocery products spotlighting those discovered by MrConsumer and Mouse Print* readers (see their pictures). Click the picture below to view the video:

ABC World News

Here are some more examples:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Raisin Bran

Kellogg’s recently reduced the sizes of its raisin bran cereal. In this case, it went from 15 oz. to 13.7 oz., but miraculously, it still has two scoops of raisins. (They must be using smaller scoops.)

*MOUSE PRINT:

Kashi

Kashi Strawberry Fields cereal recently downsized from 10.4 ounces to 10.3 ounces. Big deal, you say. But wait, there’s more, as Ron Popeil would say. A quick look at the nutrition label reveals that the old box gave you nine one-cup servings of cereal, but the new one only gives you five cups. What happened? They reformulated the product by adding more whole grains. That made the flakes denser and heavier. And they are still charging $4.59 a box even though you are getting over 40% fewer servings. Thanks to Jenn Z. for the tip on Kashi.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Pillsbury

Duncan Hines

Both Pillsbury and Duncan Hines followed Betty Crocker’s lead (which we reported on here) and downsized their 18.25 ounce cake mixes. They still claim to make 24 cupcakes and the same size cakes, but as our Pillsbury test on ABC revealed, there was barely enough batter for 21.

As the price for raw materials and transportation continues to go up, manufacturers will continue to downsize their products. It is up to us to catch their packaging shenanigans, because they certainly are not going to tell us “look smaller size” or “look, sneaky price increase.”

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Capri Sun Tropical Punch: All Natural*

Capri Sun FrontSummer is a great time for drinking a refreshing fruit punch. This one, CapriSun “All Natural” Tropical Punch, looks particularly good because the front of the package shows pineapple, orange, bananas and strawberries. The back of the box shows additional fruit: apple, pear, raspberry, cherries, grapes, and lemon. With all that fruit and being “all natural”, this drink is bound to be both nutritious and delicious.

 *MOUSE PRINT: Surprisingly, the ingredients listing indicates that this punch only contains two fruit juices. “INGREDIENTS: water, high fructose corn syrup, pear and pineapple juice concentrates, citric acid, natural flavor.”

capri sun ingredients

The label also reveals that the product only contains “10% fruit juice” and is a “tropical punch flavored juice drink blend.” (It is never a good sign when a product is labeled “juice drink.” And with all that natural water and natural sugar syrup there is hardly room for juice anyway.)

So, where’s the banana, orange, strawberry, raspberry, grape, cherry, apple and lemon that are pictured on the box? Kraft, the maker of this product, responded to an email inquiring as to what specific fruit extracts were contained in this product under the term “natural flavor” by saying the “fruits contained in Tropical Punch … orange, strawberry, banana, pear and pineapple.” 

So maybe the company just forgot to include the raspberry, grape, cherry, apple and lemon pictured on the box?

[Note: the packaging shown is not the current version of this product.]

 

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