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Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining

Judge Judy certainly has a way with words, and these retailers certainly try to use them to make a lousy deal or non-deal seem beneficial to consumers.

Example #1:

Best Buy recently unveiled a buyback program whereby purchasers of certain electronic equipment can buy a policy that guarantees a certain trade-in value for their new purchase.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Their ad only promotes the best case scenario — up to 50% back. When could you get 50% back?  Only  if you want to get rid of your purchase within six months of purchase. More likely, you may wish to trade your item after a couple of years of ownership. In that case, you will get zero back for your phone or computer, and only “up to 10%” for your TV. In our opinion, most consumers would be crazy to PAY a company to offer you a lousy buyback price or no buy back at all during such a short period of time. Selling the item yourself on eBay or through Craigslist would more likely yield a greater return on your purchase.

Example #2:

Earlier this year, Office Depot promoted TurboTax Deluxe with a free state tax download.

*MOUSE PRINT:

What Office Depot didn’t tell you right there was that they added $10 to the price of TurboTax Federal in order to offer the “free” state download:

Bottomline: they are giving you NOTHING extra for free, they are charging you $10 extra for that supposed free benefit.

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For Once, Good News in Airline Fine Print

It doesn’t happen often, but new fine print in the Delta Airlines frequent flier program, Skymiles, has good news for passengers.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Miles Expiration: Effective January 1, 2011, we eliminated our mileage expiration policy so you can earn and redeem miles without worrying if and when your miles will expire.

Previously, if you didn’t deposit or withdraw miles in your account at least once every 24 months, your miles would expire.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Award Redemption Fees: We no longer charge a fee for Award Ticket redemptions, even last-minute bookings.

Previously, there was no charge for redemptions only if made more than 21 days before departure. From 8-20 days, the fee was $75 USD; from 4-7 days, $100; three days or less, $150.

Hats off to Delta for doing something positive for consumers in their fine print. Now let’s see if the other airlines follow suit.

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United Airlines: #1 On-Time Airline?

United Airlines issued a press release last week proclaiming that it ranked highest for on-time performance among its peers, based on the latest government statistics.

A closer look at the actual report from the Department of Transportation, however, tells a slightly different story.

*MOUSE PRINT:

2010 On-Time Arrivals

United is actually third best for on-time arrivals, because Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines were the actual number and number two ranked airlines.

So how could United claim superiority? One has to go back and look very carefully at exactly how they worded their claim. They actually said:

“United Ranks Highest For On-Time Performance Among Network Peers For 2010”

and then United qualified that even more by saying:

“United Airlines today announced the company was — for the second consecutive year — first in on-time performance for domestic scheduled flights among America’s five largest global carriers* for 2010.”

Last summer we pointed out a similar case when Dish Network claimed to be tops in customer satisfaction (because they cleverly didn’t count the actual number one and number two companies). We said then, and repeat now, that is kind of like Alamo declaring “We are number one (if you don’t count Hertz and Avis)”.

In United’s case, while every word they said was literally true, consumers could still come away with a false impression.

One thing that United didn’t issue a press release about was another statistic the government reported. According to that same study, what United really was number one in for the most recent month (December 2010) was — consumer complaints. They had 1.47 complaints per 100,000 emplanements — the worst record of the 18 air carriers surveyed.

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