Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your False Advertising shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the False Advertising offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of False Advertising at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a False Advertising? Wrong! If the False Advertising is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about False Advertising then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling False Advertising? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about False Advertising and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your False Advertising wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your False Advertising then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the False Advertising site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about False Advertising, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your False Advertising, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
False advertising is the use of deliberately false statements or deception in advertising, in order to gain a commercial advantage. As advertising has the potential to persuade people into commercial transactions that they might otherwise avoid, many governments around the world use regulations to control false, deceptive or misleading advertising.
False advertising regulations in the United States
Advertising is regulated by the authority of the
Federal Trade Commission, a candana administrative agency, to prohibit "unfair and deceptive acts or practices in commerce."15 U.S.C. §45 (United States Code, chapter 15, section 45). While it makes laymen's sense to assume that being deceptive is being unfair, deceptiveness in practice has been treated separately by the FTC, leaving unfairness to refer only to other types.Richards, Jef I.,
Deceptive Advertising, Erlbaum (1990), at p. 20.All commercial acts may be deceptive, not just advertising, but noncommercial activity such as advertising for political candidates is not subject to prosecution under the FTC Act. The 50 states have similar statutes, which generally are very similar to that of the FTC and in many cases copied so closely that they are known as "Little FTC Acts." While the terms "false" and "deceptive" are essentially the same for most, being deceptive is not the same as producing deception. What is illegal is the potential to deceive, which is interpreted to occur when consumers see the advertising to be stating to them, explicitly or implicitly, a claim that they may not realize is false and material. The latter means that the claim, if relied on for making a purchasing decision, is likely to be harmful by adversely affecting that decision. Evidence must be obtained for what consumers saw the ad saying, and for the materiality of that, and for the true facts about the advertised item, but no evidence is required that actual deception occurred, or that reliance occurred, or that the advertiser intended to deceive or knew that the claim was false.
The goal is prevention rather than punishment, reflecting the purpose of civil law in setting things right rather than that of criminal law. The typical sanction is to order the advertiser to stop its illegal acts, or to include disclosure of additional information that serves to avoid the chance of deception, but there are no fines or prison time except for the infrequent instances when an advertiser refuses to stop despite being ordered to do so.Richards,
id;
Policy Statement on Deception, 103 FTC Decisions 110 (1984), appendix to
Cliffdale Associates; originally a letter from FTC Chairman James C. Miller to Rep. John D. Dingell (Oct. 14, 1983). For the history of changing from deception to deceptiveness as the standard, see Preston, Ivan L.,
The Great American Blow-Up: Puffery in Advertising and Selling, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, revised ed. (1996), at Ch. 8.
Pricing-based methods
In the UK, most price based methods of false advertising are prohibited and strictly regulated. Hence, the methods detailed below are rarely encountered and used only by the most disreputable operators.
Rebates
Rebate (marketing)s were originally intended to pass
savings directly from the manufacturer to the consumer. However in the U.S. they have become probably the biggest way to trick shoppers into paying more than the advertised price. Stores advertise a "sale" price and note only in the fine print that it is not the price at which it is actually sold for, but instead an "after rebate" price, which also fails to include
sales tax. Many rebate fulfillment companies have been accused of intentionally reneging on obligations to return money to the customers.
Inflated price comparison
In comparing a sale price to a "regular" price for the same product, advertisers can inflate the "regular" price in the order to create the impression that the sale price is very low. The intent is obviously to mislead consumers into thinking that they are saving money by purchasing the "on-sale" item or service. Some clothing stores in particular have essentially every item on "sale", and some grocery stores advertise "savings" over their regular prices for those using
loyalty cards.
In the United Kingdom, under the Sale of Goods Act, any item in a sale must have been sold at the non-sale price for at least 28 consecutive days. Many companies sidestep this requirement by selling items at very high prices in a single store (often in expensive parts of London) for 28 days, before selling the items at the "sale" price in their other stores.
Introductory offers
An introductory offer is an offer for an ongoing service which is valid for a certain
introduction period. After this period, the price or terms of the agreement change, often without further notice to any consumers which have accepted the initial offer. This differs from bait and switch because the terms or "bait (luring substance)" are in fact actually delivered (making it only deceptive rather than inherently false), but the switch still occurs later on.
The most common form of this is
credit cards, which offer low interest rates to start and then rise greatly afterward. Enormous increases in rates are often triggered by a single late or
overdraft, in addition to the enormous fees for the late or overdraft. Credit card companies have been criticized in the U.S. for luring
college and
university students with these offers and then making huge
profits from the fees and rates after the students get themselves into debt.
Introductory offers are also very common for
cable TV,
satellite TV, VoIP, and
Internet services, especially those with
Product bundling. The
intent is to get the consumer used to receiving the service before the price goes up, so that they will continue on as customers with a much higher
profit margin for the
service provider.
Other deceptive methods
Misrepresentations
Utilizing words such as descriptive terms or location terms to increase the perceived value of a product. An example would be advertising "Maine
American lobsters" when in fact the
spiny lobster are from the
Pacific ocean, or Vidalia onions which are from
Texas instead of near
Vidalia, Georgia. These can also be considered
trademark infringement of
trademarks in many cases. Another example is the United Egg Producers' "Animal Care Certified" logo on egg cartons which misled consumers by conveying a higher level of animal care than was actually the case. Both the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission found the logo to be deceptive and it can no longer be used.
Advertising the maximum
Internet service providers may advertise their service as offering "up to 256 kbit/s", whereas on average use it could be just 20 kbit/s. The use of "up to" in the description protects them legally, while raising false hopes in the customers. Further, in the fine print it is mentioned that this includes both the download and upload speeds, deteriorating the customer's usage experience even more.
Fillers and oversized packaging
Some products are sold with
fillers, which increase the legal weight of the product with something that costs the producer very little compared to what the consumer thinks that he or she is buying.
Food is an example of this, where chicken meat is injected with broth or even
brine, or
TV dinners are filled with gravy or other sauce instead of
meat. Canning tuna may also be labeled with a weight that includes the
water or vegetable oil, though these are almost always
drained off and are therefore useless.
In other cases, packagings are under-filled, simply leaving empty space at the top, in products such as coffee cans which cannot be seen into until being purchased and opened at home. Particularly deceptive is when the same size of packaging is used for less product than it used to. This deceives consumers into continuing to buy the product, which they expect to have the same amount it always has. To evade legal problems, the label is changed to reflect the actual new amount, but this is essentially fine print which anyone is unlikely to notice.
A similar problem in Christmas lights and other light strings is that the length of each set seems to get shorter each year despite containing the same number of lights. The length of the set is given in small print while the number of lights is in large print.
Non-existence of required information
It is mandatory in most countries to have a date of expiry in products. Many countries enforce that a 'normal' food and beverage 'must' expire within 6 months or 1 year. However, some products, intentionally code the manufactured date and not the expiry date or the reverse (where the expiry date is printed but not the date of production).
The other form of information required is the net weight (which means, the actual weight of the product without the weight or size of packaging and fillers) of the product.
Many products also lack the country of manufacture and instead have the country forwarding the product. Some products have a list of countries permitted to sell the product but have no information of the country of origin.
References
es:Publicidad engañosa
False advertising is the use of deliberately false statements or deception in advertising, in order to gain a commercial advantage. As advertising has the potential to persuade people into commercial transactions that they might otherwise avoid, many governments around the world use regulations to control false, deceptive or misleading advertising.
False advertising regulations in the United States
Advertising is regulated by the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, a candana administrative agency, to prohibit "unfair and deceptive acts or practices in commerce."15 U.S.C. §45 (United States Code, chapter 15, section 45). While it makes laymen's sense to assume that being deceptive is being unfair, deceptiveness in practice has been treated separately by the FTC, leaving unfairness to refer only to other types.Richards, Jef I.,
Deceptive Advertising, Erlbaum (1990), at p. 20.All commercial acts may be deceptive, not just advertising, but noncommercial activity such as advertising for political candidates is not subject to prosecution under the FTC Act. The 50 states have similar statutes, which generally are very similar to that of the FTC and in many cases copied so closely that they are known as "Little FTC Acts." While the terms "false" and "deceptive" are essentially the same for most, being deceptive is not the same as producing deception. What is illegal is the potential to deceive, which is interpreted to occur when consumers see the advertising to be stating to them, explicitly or implicitly, a claim that they may not realize is false and material. The latter means that the claim, if relied on for making a purchasing decision, is likely to be harmful by adversely affecting that decision. Evidence must be obtained for what consumers saw the ad saying, and for the materiality of that, and for the true facts about the advertised item, but no evidence is required that actual deception occurred, or that reliance occurred, or that the advertiser intended to deceive or knew that the claim was false.
The goal is prevention rather than punishment, reflecting the purpose of civil law in setting things right rather than that of criminal law. The typical sanction is to order the advertiser to stop its illegal acts, or to include disclosure of additional information that serves to avoid the chance of deception, but there are no fines or prison time except for the infrequent instances when an advertiser refuses to stop despite being ordered to do so.Richards,
id;
Policy Statement on Deception, 103 FTC Decisions 110 (1984), appendix to
Cliffdale Associates; originally a letter from FTC Chairman James C. Miller to Rep. John D. Dingell (Oct. 14, 1983). For the history of changing from deception to deceptiveness as the standard, see Preston, Ivan L.,
The Great American Blow-Up: Puffery in Advertising and Selling, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, revised ed. (1996), at Ch. 8.
Pricing-based methods
In the UK, most price based methods of false advertising are prohibited and strictly regulated. Hence, the methods detailed below are rarely encountered and used only by the most disreputable operators.
Rebates
Rebate (marketing)s were originally intended to pass
savings directly from the manufacturer to the consumer. However in the U.S. they have become probably the biggest way to trick shoppers into paying more than the advertised price. Stores advertise a "sale" price and note only in the fine print that it is not the price at which it is actually sold for, but instead an "after rebate" price, which also fails to include sales tax. Many rebate fulfillment companies have been accused of intentionally reneging on obligations to return money to the customers.
Inflated price comparison
In comparing a sale price to a "regular" price for the same product, advertisers can inflate the "regular" price in the order to create the impression that the sale price is very low. The intent is obviously to mislead consumers into thinking that they are saving money by purchasing the "on-sale" item or service. Some clothing stores in particular have essentially every item on "sale", and some grocery stores advertise "savings" over their regular prices for those using
loyalty cards.
In the United Kingdom, under the Sale of Goods Act, any item in a sale must have been sold at the non-sale price for at least 28 consecutive days. Many companies sidestep this requirement by selling items at very high prices in a single store (often in expensive parts of London) for 28 days, before selling the items at the "sale" price in their other stores.
Introductory offers
An introductory offer is an offer for an ongoing service which is valid for a certain
introduction period. After this period, the price or terms of the agreement change, often without further notice to any consumers which have accepted the initial offer. This differs from
bait and switch because the terms or "bait (luring substance)" are in fact actually delivered (making it only deceptive rather than inherently false), but the switch still occurs later on.
The most common form of this is credit cards, which offer low interest rates to start and then rise greatly afterward. Enormous increases in rates are often triggered by a single
late or overdraft, in addition to the enormous fees for the late or overdraft. Credit card companies have been criticized in the U.S. for luring college and university
students with these offers and then making huge
profits from the fees and rates after the students get themselves into
debt.
Introductory offers are also very common for cable TV,
satellite TV,
VoIP, and Internet services, especially those with
Product bundling. The
intent is to get the consumer used to receiving the service before the price goes up, so that they will continue on as customers with a much higher profit margin for the service provider.
Other deceptive methods
Misrepresentations
Utilizing words such as descriptive terms or location terms to increase the perceived value of a product. An example would be advertising "Maine
American lobsters" when in fact the
spiny lobster are from the Pacific ocean, or Vidalia onions which are from Texas instead of near Vidalia, Georgia. These can also be considered trademark infringement of trademarks in many cases. Another example is the United Egg Producers' "Animal Care Certified" logo on egg cartons which misled consumers by conveying a higher level of animal care than was actually the case. Both the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission found the logo to be deceptive and it can no longer be used.
Advertising the maximum
Internet service providers may advertise their service as offering "up to 256 kbit/s", whereas on average use it could be just 20 kbit/s. The use of "up to" in the description protects them legally, while raising false hopes in the customers. Further, in the fine print it is mentioned that this includes both the download and upload speeds, deteriorating the customer's usage experience even more.
Fillers and oversized packaging
Some products are sold with fillers, which increase the legal weight of the product with something that costs the producer very little compared to what the consumer thinks that he or she is buying. Food is an example of this, where chicken meat is injected with
broth or even
brine, or TV dinners are filled with gravy or other sauce instead of
meat. Canning
tuna may also be labeled with a weight that includes the
water or vegetable oil, though these are almost always drained off and are therefore useless.
In other cases, packagings are under-filled, simply leaving empty space at the top, in products such as
coffee cans which cannot be seen into until being purchased and opened at home. Particularly deceptive is when the same size of packaging is used for less product than it used to. This deceives consumers into continuing to buy the product, which they expect to have the same amount it always has. To evade legal problems, the label is changed to reflect the actual new amount, but this is essentially fine print which anyone is unlikely to notice.
A similar problem in Christmas lights and other light strings is that the length of each set seems to get shorter each year despite containing the same number of lights. The length of the set is given in small print while the number of lights is in large print.
Non-existence of required information
It is mandatory in most countries to have a date of expiry in products. Many countries enforce that a 'normal' food and beverage 'must' expire within 6 months or 1 year. However, some products, intentionally code the manufactured date and not the expiry date or the reverse (where the expiry date is printed but not the date of production).
The other form of information required is the net weight (which means, the actual weight of the product without the weight or size of packaging and fillers) of the product.
Many products also lack the country of manufacture and instead have the country forwarding the product. Some products have a list of countries permitted to sell the product but have no information of the country of origin.
References
es:Publicidad engañosa
False advertising - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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false advertising - false-advertising
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About False Advertising
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Incentivisation or False Advertising? at iconcertina blog
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Verizon sues Alltel over homicidal guinea pig | The Register
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KELLY UPSET BY FALSE ADVERTISING
Read the news story - KELLY UPSET BY FALSE ADVERTISING - online at Contactmusic.com - News updated throughout the day - 1077765
Kate Moss mascara ads banned after complaints her lashes were false ...
Mascara ads showing Kate Moss sporting 'traffic stopping' eyelashes have been banned after complaints that the supermodel's lashes were false. The ads for Rimmel said that the ...
