FAQ's
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Internet class
FAQ's
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FAQ's
FORUMS
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FORUM
Log in and let us know you thoughts and experience's about deceptive advertising and offer your solutions.
Desperate to sell?
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DESPERATE TO SELL
A lot of inquires as to "What are the pro's and cons about the "we buy ugly homes", "we sell your home", "Sell it fast" etc.
There are no "Pros". These companies will pay, at most, 50 cents on the dollar. If you really need to sell your home fast it is best to avoid these companies.
Here is a solid suggestion: (1) Avoid Realtors. The fees add up to thousands of dollars. The average home selling for $100,000 will cost the owner around $6000.00 (6% average).
(2) Hire a lawyer and make sure the lawyer is a Real Estate Lawyer. Also make sure the attornes does not charge you a comission but a flat rate. If the attorney is any good they will have experience and know what to charge. Avoid attorneys who will charge by the hour. Doing the paper work is not worth thousands of dollars. (3) Establish the selling price by going to your local court house and ask for a "real estate card". This is usually free of charge. Determine the selling price of other homes from the "real estate card" and price it below market value (remember you are looking for a quick sale). The attorney can recommend a title company. The title company will do the majority of paper work for a reasonable fee. Ask your attorney lots of questions.
(4) Use caution when showing your property. Any Real Estate site has good information you can use for a quick sale.
(5) Do not wate time on individuals who are "pre approved". Remember "pre-approved or pre-qualified means just that. They are approved to be approved only. Invest your time on someone who is approved.
Advertise in the papers and on the internet. If you must use a realtor, do some background checking on the agent and the company. One of the best ways to determine a good realtor is to call their cell phone after hours. No answer no service. Keep this in mind, it is the buyer who will pay the realtor fee, not the seller (see who pays the fee's on this site.)
Identity Theft
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Identity Theft
Identity Theft is not "Identity Fraud". There is a major difference. Generally speaking, Identity Theft is when someone uses your social security number along with other identifying documents such as a drivers license, work entry cards, address etc.
Identity fraud is when someone uses your credit card to make a purchase without your knowledge or permission.
This is important to know, especially when a policy is assigned to you as in "payment packing" (see our dictionary) from banks or mortgage companies or if you are intending to purchase a policy on your own.
It is a phenomenon how people react to Identity Theft. They either begin running to credit report companies such as “FICO score report” or Get Pre Qualified. Com or any of the many other fraudulent companies out there. These companies are related to one another and will not be able to do the “victim” any good at all. Plus these companies will cost more money than they are worth. According to Federal Law, the consumer is allowed one free credit report per year. There are three reporting companies. They are (1) Experian, (2) Equifax (3) Trans
Identity Theft protection is generally not an insurance policy but is suppose to act as a buffer, protection from being a victim. A good policy will stop the crime where other policiy's take action after the crime has been committed. There are banks who issue policy's such as "First Indiana Bank" when you open a checking account and it is underwritten by "member companies of American International Group, Inc. and they call it "insurance". There are scores of people who spend needless amounts of money to companies who make false claim’s and persuade the consume to check daily on their credit activity. This is absurd.
It would be much better to have a solid reputable company protect your personal information and give warning BEFORE the crime is committed.
This site does not allow paid advertising. We can however recommend a superb company that guarantees to protect your information; in fact this company puts its money where its mouth is. It is without a doubt the best company in business. Their ‘terms and conditions are favorable as is their privacy policy, and they back their word with a 1,000,000.00 dollar’s. If their system is violated and you suffer a loss while under their protection they will pay you back every cent of your loss, including time loss from work, attorneys etc.
They will charge you $10 a month for their service.
The site is
Quickie-101
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Quickie-101
False Advertising is the use of deliberately flase 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 Comission a United States administrative agency to prohibit"unfair and deceptive acts or practices in commerce" 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. All commercial acts may be deceptive, not just advertising, but noncommercial activity such as advertising for plitical candidates is not subject to prosecution under the FTC Act. The 50 states have similar statutes, which generall ae very similar to that of the FTC and in many cases copied so closely that they ae known as "Little FTC Acts. "While the terms "false" and "deceptive" ae esssentially 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 the 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.
PRICING-BASED METHODS
In the
REBATES
Rebates were originally intended to pass savings directly from the manufacturer to the consumer. However in the
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 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
Introductory offers
An introductory offer is an offer for an ongoing service which is only 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” 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 than 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
Introductory offers are also very common for cable TV; satellite TV, VoIP, and Internet services, especially those with 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 terns or location terms to increase the perceived value of a product. An example would be advertising “Maine lobsters” when in fact the lobster are from the Pacific ocean, or Vidalia onions which are from Texas instead of near Vidalia, Georgia. These can also be considered infringements 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 ad the Federal Trade comission found the logo to be deceptive and it can no loner be used.
ADVERTISING THE MAXIMUM
Internet services providers may advertise their services as offering “up to 256 kbps”, whereas on average use it could be just 20 kbps. The use of “up to” in the description protects the 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, deterioration 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. Canned tuna ay also be labeled with a weight that includes the water or vegetable oil, tough these are almost always drained off and are therefore useless.
In other cases, packages 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 s\ate is printed, but not the date of production).
The other form of information required is the Net Weigh (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 code instead has 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.