Listening to the radio today while doing some yard work, I heard an advertisement for a local car dealer having the standard Labor Day Sale. The announcer was enthusiastically proclaiming "all credit applications accepted". Clearly the dealer wants the car buying public to confuse "accepted" with "approved". I'd imagine any lending institution is willing to "accept" an application to borrow money, but being approved obviously has more stringent guidelines. This got me thinking of some other unethical business practices I've come across. And while our country certainly has more pressing issues to deal with at the moment, these practices should not be legal, as they prey on primarily the poor and uneducated. Here's a few more, feel free to add any others.
I once interviewed an applicant for a job that had previously worked for "Video Professor". Her job was fielding customer complaints. If you watch much TV, you've surely seen the ads, I see them a lot on CNN in the mornings. They advertise that you can get a "free" lesson CD, all you have to do is pay $6.95 for shipping and handling. The catch? they send you 3 CD's, if you don't return 2 of them they charge your credit card for them. The applicant left because she found the company unethical, I hired her on the spot.
In a previous town I lived in, there was a local grocery store that had an unusual method to pricing. They priced everything in the store at cost (supposedly), then when you get to the checkout they simply add 10% to your total bill as their "markup". Two reasons this worked: the people that shopped the store were primarily immigrants with a low level of education and comprehension of the english language. They could, however, read the numbers, so the prices looked good because they weren't able to read the sign that explains the 10% added markup at the register. Secondly, no grocery store can operate on a 10% initial margin. This store, however, was owned by a grocery distributor, so they could simply raise the store's cost, increasing the distributor's markup, and the corporation overall still makes a profit, even if the individual store didn't.
Any others, feel free to add them
-Will
I once interviewed an applicant for a job that had previously worked for "Video Professor". Her job was fielding customer complaints. If you watch much TV, you've surely seen the ads, I see them a lot on CNN in the mornings. They advertise that you can get a "free" lesson CD, all you have to do is pay $6.95 for shipping and handling. The catch? they send you 3 CD's, if you don't return 2 of them they charge your credit card for them. The applicant left because she found the company unethical, I hired her on the spot.
In a previous town I lived in, there was a local grocery store that had an unusual method to pricing. They priced everything in the store at cost (supposedly), then when you get to the checkout they simply add 10% to your total bill as their "markup". Two reasons this worked: the people that shopped the store were primarily immigrants with a low level of education and comprehension of the english language. They could, however, read the numbers, so the prices looked good because they weren't able to read the sign that explains the 10% added markup at the register. Secondly, no grocery store can operate on a 10% initial margin. This store, however, was owned by a grocery distributor, so they could simply raise the store's cost, increasing the distributor's markup, and the corporation overall still makes a profit, even if the individual store didn't.
Any others, feel free to add them
-Will
