Misleading shelf-edge advertising

parsi

(OR: What the large print giveth the small print taketh away)

I was in the Waterstones Cork store this afternoon and was delighted to see that every shelf in the travel Section had big yellow shelf labels proudly proclaiming

"3 for 2 on all Travel Guides" - big black letters with ALL marked in white.

Great I thought...so I go looking at the Paris Section and find a nice guide "Paris - Directions" (Lonely Planet). Lo and behold it doesn't have a sticker on it. Surely a mistake I say and look at the other copies - no stickers there either. So I try the spiral Paris Guide (AA I think). No luck here either.

What's going on I ask myself - the signs say 3 for 2 on ALL travel guides. So I look closely at the signs and see what I had originally thought was a trail of ants is actually the small print which says that the offer only applies to stickered stock.

So in big letters we have "3 for 2 on ALL travel guides" and in miniscule letters that would shame the most rapacious insurance company we have "applies to stickered stock only".

Why not rephrase the sign to something like "3 for 2 on SELECTED items" and be done with it rather than being so obscure..?

MadsL

Make a complaint to the ODCA.

http://www.odca.ie/cfmdocs/c_query/ad_documents2.cfm

They have a phone line 402 5555 (01 area), 1890 220 229 (outside 01 area)
and will follow up. Call back in two weeks to see what the outcome was...

parsi

Thanks. !

I had forgotten about them and had just sent to the ASAI in whom I hold very little faith (they always seem to deal with the same number of complaints per quarter) and don't deal with false ads on websites (eg Ryanair)

parsi

And here is the response from our watchdogs:

Dear Mr. ******

Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning a special '3 for 2' offer in
Waterstones.

The role of the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA) is to
give information and guidance to consumers on their statutory rights. ODCA
does not intervene or become involved in individual issues or disputes
between consumers and sellers of goods or services providers.

Unfortunately the special offer you described in your e-mail would not be
seen as misleading because they offer did state that it referred to the
books with the stickers on the covers. And regards to the size of print,
there is no height requirement for such print.

Thank you for contacting the office and I you find this information useful.

Yours sincerely,




Jason Kiernan
PA to the Director
Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs