Week of June 26, 2023
(see last week)
Consumer World Original
Nearly a dozen supermarket chains owned by Albertsons are running a $6-million sweepstakes until August. They advertise you get an entry for every $10 you spend in the store. That would be illegal unless they also offer a no-purchase-necessary means of playing the game which they do. We challenge you, however, to figure out that method, which they have hidden and made so complicated as to dissuade nonpurchasers from even entering the sweepstakes.
That is our Mouse Print* story this week.
At first blush, you might have been surprised to hear that the FTC sued Amazon last week over "dark patterns" -- alleged sneaky practices they use to get sign-ups and limit cancellations of Amazon's $139 Prime memberships. Fortune Magazine went through the FTC complaint and the Amazon website and took screenshots of six examples of practices being called into question. You can decide how horrible or not these examples are.
In an innovative move, United Airlines announced when your flight is delayed more than three hours by the fault of the airline, it will now automatically send a food voucher to your phone. And when you would otherwise be forced to stay overnight at the airport, they'll push out a hotel voucher to you. This is designed to cut down on long waits to talk to a customer service person at the airport or on the phone.
[Ignore ad at beginning] QR codes are those new-fangled barcodes that seem to be popping up everywhere. They're on parking meters, signs, and in advertisements. When you point your smartphone at one, it typically takes you to a website. The problem is that crooks know these are popular so they place phony QR stickers over the real ones sometimes. That will take the innocent consumer to a rogue website.
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