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After prosecution by the state attorney general's office, a Denver judge ruled that May D&F has indulged in deceptive advertising.
The deception apparently went like this: Megaglobal
Corp. puts a manufacturer's suggested retail price
of $39.95 on its widgets. May D&F, however, generally
sells widgets for $31.95. Then the department store runs
ads that say Next three days only. Hurry down right now
and buy widgets while they're only $29.95, a big savings of
$10 from the ticketed list price of $39.95.
In the view of the court and of the attorney general, that's deception, because you're not really saving a big $10 off the $39.95 list price. Instead, you're saving a mere $2 off the $31.95 usual price.
I have trouble believing that even Colorado voters need protection from such trifling misdirection, but if our attorney general really wants to go after misleading advertising, here are some other deceptive phrases he should investigate and prosecute.
· Industrial bank deposits insured by the
State of Colorado.
It is insurance -- if you don't mind waiting two or three years at first to find out whether you'll get your money at all, and another three or four years to get the money. Any private insurer whose performance differed so much from its advertising claims would be haled into court; where's the attorney general on this one?
· Runs on any IBM PC, XT, AT or 100 percent
compatible.
First, of course, you have to redo all your
system configuration files, which you've spent months
tailoring so that your existing software functions.
Consequently, none of your other programs works quite
right after you install the new one. Then you discover that
you thought runs
meant that the program processes
words or crunches numbers, whereas the software company's
definition of runs
is that the program will be
loaded by the computer, so that it can start trashing your
hard disk in mysterious ways.
· Your pizza delivered in 30 minutes or your
money back.
But when you call from a town that is 140 miles from the
nearest heartburn franchise, they explain that they really
didn't mean you
when they said your pizza.
If
that is honest advertising, then the Vatican will soon
propose P.T. Barnum for sainthood.
· Opens July 5 at theaters everywhere.
I
see this sort of deceptive advertising often on TV,
especially in the summer when they're hyping the seasonal
blockbuster.
This phrase is no more truthful than No new
taxes.
I'm sure the Unique Theater here does its best,
but in fact, the movie that opens everywhere
on July
5 will not appear in Salida and other remote locations
until Christmas or later. Often it's a close contest among
the theater, the video rental shop, HBO, and even
late-night Channel 2 as to where the movie will first
appear here.
A normal person would obviously interpret
everywhere
to mean everywhere -- even backwaters
like Salida. Where's the attorney general, and why isn't he
doing battle against the deceivers of Hollywood and the
networks, now that he's cracking down on misleading
advertising?
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