Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Store: Wal-Mart
Accusation: Overcharging California customers by marking items at one price, but scanning them at a
higher price at the register.
Result: After the California Attorney General's office filed suit,
Wal-Mart settled, agreeing to give customers $3 back every time it happened, unless the item cost less than that, in which case it would be free.
Lisa Poole, AP
Getty Images North America
BlackVoices.com
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Store: Midas
Accusation:California filed a $222 million lawsuit against the owner of 22 Midas Muffler shops after uncover agents discovered in which consumers were charged for unneeded repairs, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced. Click through to see more stores that got caught cheating.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Store: CVS
Accusation:California caught the chain with expired merchandise on the shelf. The result? CVS must give $2 coupons to anyone finding more expired items. This isn't the first store caught doing something shady (or even the first time CVS was caught doing the same thing). See more Gotcha Moments by clicking through.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Store: Kmart
Accusation:Marketed paper products as biodegradable that aren't actually biodegradable. The result? Kmart settled the case with the Federal Trade commission. This isn't the first time KMart was caught.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
KMart's Previous Gotcha:Kmart, Ashley, and World Market< were accused of deceptive furniture labeling -- wood that wasn"t wood and leather that wasn"t leather -- in an on-camera investigation by Good Morning America The result? Kmart said full product descriptions were available online, Ashley defended its wording as a description of color only, and World Market acknowledged that a quarter of its supposedly leather chairs were actually synthetic, and it pulled them from sale.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Sears Holdings Management Corp., the parent company of Sears and Kmart, settled a case to stop enticing customers to sign up for a software that spies on them. It must also instruct customers how to uninstall the software that monitored their spending across the web, even on sites that are supposed to be secure, and destroy the data that was collected. The Federal Trade Commission brought the case against the Sears Holdings.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Quizno's Sub Shop has an online video ad showing two girls simulating a porn video by sharing a sub sandwich. The online ad, "2 Girls, 1 Sub," takes its name from a notoriously heinous movie trailer, for a fetish film, which shows women eating their own feces. Critics have pointed out that the Quiznos video, starring Playboy Playmate Hiromi Oshima, is basically comparing the sandwiches to "poop."
This is Quizno's second porn-themed ad to come out in recent months.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
If you are dining out -- and many of us still are these days, despite the economy -- make sure to check your bill carefully for extra charges that might creep on there.
Call it the airline a la carte approach, as many restaurants are apparently sneaking in charges for bread, tap water, takeout boxes and mandatory tips. The New York Post found all of these items added to bills on an investigative mission that the paper undertook recently.
For more on advertisers caught misleading consumers, click through our gallery of Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Blockbuster was found guilty of charging customers higher than the advertised prices on scanned items by district attorneys of Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Blockbuster owes $237,750 in penalties, and $62,250 in costs, and is further prohibited from charging amounts greater than the advertised price.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
A regulatory organization for the advertising industry demanded that Wrigley change its misleading packaging and advertising for Eclipse gum. The ads for Eclipse say that the gum's natural ingredient - magnolia bark extract - kills germs that cause bad breath. This has not been proven and the National Advertising Division Council of Better Business Bureaus asks that Wrigley clarify this in its ads.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Store:Chase Bank
Accusation: In late March, the bank rescinded a $10 monthly fee it had imposed for several months on hundreds of thousands of credit card accounts, after New York's attorney general decried the practice as a bait-and-switch for customers seeking low interest rates.
Results:The settlement could save customers $22 million over the next year.
Gotcha Moments of Retail Shame
Breast Cancer Patient Allegedly Fired TWICE While Seeking…
Judy A. Smith: Ask Judy: 'I Didn't Go To School For This'
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the author of the new book 'Black American Money.' To have Dr. Boyce's commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here. 
Comments: (24)
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By: George Dollar on 6/11/2010 12:20AM
What about the minority farmers that were discriminated against by the USDA.
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By: Dianne on 6/10/2010 11:04AM
Angela and what?, I'm going along with Obama and Holder on this one to criminally prosecute the company Constitutionally. Now that Corporate entity has "a Voice", according to "the Supremes", why not?
Besides the company played us back in the Bush administration which would raise the price and then BP would play the "good guy role" against the Bush "bad guy" by temporarily lowering the price.
This was during the period when Hugo Chavez was offering free heating oil to senior citizens in the colder climates of the U.S. (as well as eye surgery to correct the disability of old age). Hugo was figuratively swimming in Venezuelan oil but aware that he was elected in a country with an odd history (as in any number of South American countries that suffered under the senior Bush term of leadership at CIA , which offered an open system of open borders among S.A.nations for military police who receiving training at Fort Benning, Georgia's School of the Americas). It seems while GHW Bush,sr. was a young man in the US Airforce, European war criminals were transported,pre-end of war as well as post-war, from that Continent to our hemisphere's Southern Continent. Avoiding prosecution for racist war-crimes, they had new opportunities to begin a new life.
By the time that Hugo Chavez came to power, there was a reactionary White front to the possibility that the Indian population (as well as Blacks, as I've known a few from there back in the late 1950s who emigrated to NYC)might need to be curtailed in their political aspirations. There was a well-educated group within the White European population of the younger generation who was either in college or college educated who could assume leadership positions if feted and cosseted along. I was certainly informed of this happening in other S.A. locations by residents, as early as 2007, following the many visits of the younger Bush during his first term of his administration to visit heads of State in various South American countries to flattter them with his attention. After all a previous Clinton administration had initiated a favorable trade policy in NAFTA that could be offered to expand upon by the following but oppositional government who proceeded to dump chemicals for agricultural use that cannot be used in the US but was discarded where you have predominantly native Indian agricultural workers in S.A. One catch, the produce is shipped back to us to consume in the U.S. I reside in an area that is having its own reactionary Republican fit to their loss that began with an awareness that there might be an Obama challenge. That vegetation from S.A. is consequently all we get locally of certain varieties in season because that party just doesn't give,"a rat's ass" (is I believe,the expression).
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By: Mike S. on 6/11/2010 3:35PM
I wonder if this writer has researched how many employees of BP and the rest of the oil industry, (drillers, rig services) are black.
Here in Southern California there are multiple oil refineries (including BP)and since I meet them regularly through a different industry, I find a large percentage are black (35%?)with families who in turn support stores in their neighborhoods.
Those who desire boycotts as their solution only hurt thir cause in the long run.
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By: Mike on 6/15/2010 11:59AM
Why on earth would boycotting BP stations be a good idea? The BP stations are owned by private citizens, people like us, why the hell are we torturing them?
I think this is a stupid move by Jesse Jackson. It shows that he does not consider all of the rections to his actions nd the subsequent actions of those who are stupid enough to follow his shallow lead.
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