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Cool, so to summarize the fine: - The size is so small it is essentially meaningless to the company. - Customers who were tricked receive nothing. - The FTC
by bequanna 2y ago
Cool, so to summarize the fine:
- The size is so small it is essentially meaningless to the company.
- Customers who were tricked receive nothing.
- The FTC has more play money to continue bureaucratic empire building and create more do-nothing jobs.
- pylua 2y agoAs a lay person, and not a lawyer, I'm not sure how this is not considered large scale fraudulent misrepresentation. It seems like the fines are extremely light, and there is no real accountability. In the very least, they should be required to offer refunds to all people who bought those products.
- deadbabe 2y agoWhat exactly have customers lost by buying something that wasn’t actually made in America?
- sosodev 2y agoWhat do companies gain by pretending that their product is made in America?
- glimshe 2y agoMany people in the US will pay more for a product made in the US. I'm one of these people.
- calderknight 2y agoA USA made product
- coolhand2120 2y agoFaith in the system
- QU0507 2y ago[flagged]
- CivBase 2y agoThe funds and impetus to buy something that was made in America. I don't know how you'd quantify that as a function of the product's price, but they figured out a way to put a price tag on emotional damage so I'm sure someone can figute it out.
- fragmede 2y agojobs
- _heimdall 2y agoSome customers do actually make purchasing decisions to support products made in their home country. Buying a product falsely labeled as Made in the USA tricks the customer into supporting a product or business that they would otherwise have wanted to avoid supporting. Said differently, the customer lost the freedom to support a product actually made in the US while simultaneously supporting something they didn't mean to.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoWell it’s certainly an abstract loss, so saying “what exactly” is slightly unfair as the abstract loss cannot be exactly quantified. But probably the simplest answer is that the customers may have paid less if they knew it was not made in the USA, and so they have lost money. So perhaps a class action lawsuit will be filed. I guess loss of money is concrete enough. More abstractly the people may have hoped to support the work of their fellow countrymen, and would instead have been undercutting them with overseas labor. That loss is not financial, but in the way the US works perhaps some monetary value could be conjured for this as well. Or perhaps that loss is considered equal to the amount they overpaid for the product. In any case I think I’ve convinced myself that the customers should receive some financial compensation and the company should be required to clearly notify people of what they have done, to scrub any goodwill they earned that could have led to an increase in future purchases at the store.
- thaumasiotes 2y agohttps://satwcomic.com/my-little-pony https://satwcomic.com/my-little-pony
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoI’ve read the comic but I’m very curious to learn more about how you feel it relates here. I guess the biggest thing I’m taking away from your comic is that maybe the people from Denmark don’t care much about some religious diet restrictions, and I’m not seeing how that relates to this story.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoLearning that what you thought was beef was in fact pork and horse is the same injury as learning that what you thought was Made in the U.S.A. wasn't. Judging by the actual response, it's not something that rises to the level of requiring compensation, because the injury is imaginary.
- 2y ago
- rabuse 2y agoIt's called fraud. That word used to mean something.
- zitterbewegung 2y agoWe prosecute companies for false advertisement so why would this be any different? People sometimes buy products for a indicator that says made in the USA
- nytesky 2y agoThe article lists a teen marketed mattress as one of the “made in USA” products actually made in china. After the last decade of lead contamination and other toxic products from China, I would imagine some parents are wary of a product they spend close proximity to for 10 hours every night for years. https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/china-has-a-history-of-selling-dangerous-products-to-us-consumers-13063992 https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/china-has-a-history-of-sel...
- bpfrh 2y agoI would argue that if they bought a more expensive product because of the label "made in usa" then they lost the difference between what they would have paid for the cheaper product and what they paid for the product labelled "made in usa".
- CivBase 2y agoDo FTC fines go to the FTC budget?
- whoknowsidont 2y agoI love how instead of being mad at example #4012 about American companies profiting from fraudulent activity, you spend effort blaming the organization punishing them. This is a _civil_ penalty and its the largest one to date for violating a previous order and agreement about Williams-Sonoma stopping fraudulent use of "Made in USA." More severe penalties would have ultimately required the matter to be handled directly by other government entities. In fact the DOJ themselves could have handed out harsher penalties or pursued company executives for perjury. The FTC did what they were able to do and instead of saying "it'd be better if the FTC had more authority and discretion in what punishes to give." you just throw snark at them and not at the political party that continually has made every government institution's teeth dull :^).
- nathanaldensr 2y agoThey're both to blame, which I'm sure GP would've clarified if you had asked them. Stop seeing in false dichotomies.
- rootusrootus 2y agoOnly about half of everyone believes both sides are bad. This puts the average somewhere in the correct direction, at least.
- bequanna 2y agoIf the FTC is this impotent and toothless, why do they even exist?
- akira2501 2y agoPure FUD. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/recent-ftc-cases-resulting-refunds/how-ftc-provides-refunds https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/recent-ftc-cases-resulting-r...
- bequanna 2y ago28 cases resulted in payments in 2022. This is a joke. You may as well round that down to zero.
- akira2501 2y ago28 cases resulting in $392 million returned, to 1.9 million people, with $10.4 million going to the treasury, and $6.9 million for costs. "More than 90% of the $392 million that the FTC returned to consumers came from cases resolved before the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, which stripped the FTC of its ability to recover redress for consumers pursuant to Section 13(b) of the FTC Act. By comparison, in the four years preceding AMG, the FTC returned more than $11 billion to consumers using its Section 13(b) authority." Source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/ftc-issues-annual-report-refunds-consumers-agency-returned-392m-2022 https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/... What always baffles me, is, everyone here is a consumer. You may imagine you'll one day be a business that has to deal with regulatory burden created by the FTC, but you'd still be a consumer. You can argue they're not efficient, or effective, or politically motivated, but complaining that they exist and do their congressionally mandated job is amazing to me.