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Don’t Let the Pill Bottle Quantity Fool You

When you see the number of pills in a bottle, along with the strength, you reasonably assume that is what will be inside. So a bottle of 100 aspirin that says 325 milligrams should be just that.

Last year we showed you examples of calcium supplements that didn’t meet that expectation. Now we turn to a similar issue with with these CVS melatonin gummies.

CVS Melatonin Gummies

Here the label clearly says there are 60 gummies in the bottle and it notes the strength as 10 mg. in two places on the front label.

*MOUSE PRINT:

CVS back of label

The dosing instructions on the back say you have to take two gummies in order to get the 10 mg. promised on the front of the label. So in essence, if you thought this bottle would last you two months, it will only be good for one month.

Another CVS melatonin gummy product makes a slightly different representation on the front saying this product is 10 mg. per serving. While a slight improvement, shoppers still could be easily misled.

10 mg per serving

What do you think… shouldn’t the strength of the medication displayed on the front of the bottle be what you get in each pill, capsule, or gummy inside?

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Verizon to Refund $100-Mil for Hidden Fees

Verizon Wireless has tentatively settled a class action lawsuit that alleged the company advertised a price for cell plans but then jacked-up consumers’ bills with hidden administrative charges.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The complaint specifically alleges:

The Administrative Charge is not disclosed to customers either before or when they agree to purchase wireless service from Verizon, and in fact the Administrative Charge is never adequately or honestly disclosed to customers.

The current amount of the Administrative Charge is $3.30 per line per month—a more than 8X increase from the original amount of the Charge [40 cents].

The first time Verizon customers can possibly learn about the existence of the Administrative Charge, or the amount of the Charge, is on the customer bills… [but] Verizon’s paper bills fail to mention the Administrative Charge at all, stating instead that a customer should “[c]heck your online bill for all surcharges, taxes and gov fees.”

[F]or years, Verizon explicitly and falsely stated on its monthly bills that the Administrative-Charge is a surcharge imposed on subscribers to “cover the costs that are billed to us by federal, state or local governments.”

For its part, Verizon has denied the claims, but says it has changed the way it describes those fees.

Verizon customers who purchased postpaid cell or data plans from the company between January 1, 2016 and November 8, 2023 are eligible to share in the $100-million proposed settlement. The maximum payment is $100, but that could be reduced based on how many consumers file claims and for how long they were a customer.

Claims must be filed by April 15, 2024 at the settlement website. Most customers were just notified via postcard of their eligibility to file a claim and were given a notice ID and confirmation code to enter on the website. If you did not receive that, here is the official claim form.

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Kohl’s Sued for Exaggerated Savings Claims

Kohl's bargainRecently, a Wisconsin consumer sued Kohl’s for deceptive pricing practices alleging that the retailer inflated it’s regular and original prices on price tags and in advertising to make the savings they promised seem greater than they really were. The complaint also alleges that in many cases the goods rarely or ever sold for the so-called “regular” or “original” prices.

The consumer’s lawyer tracked Kohl’s prices for a 15-month time period, and found over 9,000 products on its website were on sale more than half the time. And…

*MOUSE PRINT:

… some products were perpetually on sale for as many as 90 days out of every 90-day window. In short, the data shows that Kohl’s turns the concept of a “sale” on its head: for the vast majority of products, the so-called “sale” price is the regular and normal price, while the higher advertised “Regular” or “Original” comparison price is the temporary and unusual exception.

MrConsumer says so what else is new? Twenty years ago, he tracked the prices of 20 items at Kohl’s for 103 consecutive days, and found that 55-percent of items rarely if ever sold for the so-called regular or original price. And one-out-of-four items was always on sale and never sold at full price, not even for one day.

Years later, we exposed the ambiguous definitions of regular or original prices used by Kohl’s back in 2006 and spotlighted a similar lawsuit to the current one against the company in 2013.

Nonetheless, we as consumers, should all continue to be outraged that companies use deceptive practices like this year after year, and no one has gotten them to conform to the law.

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