• What’s up with the size of toblerones?
How can flights be overbooked?
Here’s 15 ways companies have been tricking you without you even knowing.
15 – A legal lie • Some sweeteners are sold as zero calorie
but how is this possible?
Unless opening the packet is a mini workout, how can food have no calories?
Well, American law allows any food portion that’s under 5 calories to be labelled as
zero.
• Subway used a similar tactic when someone pointed out their 6-inch sub was not 6 inches.
They said that “6 inch” was the name of the sandwich, not its measurements.
Women have been aware of this tactic for thousands of years.
14 – Change the size • No company likes to put up its price but
this is the only way to make more money on a product, right?
• Well, a lot of things you buy now might not be as big as the ones you got in the past.
A few millilitres here, a few grams there, many of your favourite snacks have been slimming
down.
• Toblerone fans in the UK were shocked to find the famous chocolate mountains were
now spread much further apart, thanks to the rising costs of Brexit.
13 – Drop the symbol • Have you ever noticed how in many restaurants,
especially the fancier ones, they just write a number next to the dish?
You know that the 19 means 19 Dollars or Euros or Yen, but they don’t actually put the
currency symbol • Well, a study from Cornell university
found that this makes us spend 8% more on our dinner.
We’re idiots, basically.
12 – Ingredients • Coffee gives you cancer and gluten makes
you left handed; it’s hard to keep up with what the new food enemy is.
• So, companies have realised that, rather than change their recipe every time an ingredient
gets bad press, it’s much easier to just give it some other name.
• Sugar is the classic example.
It can be listed as sugar, fructose, agave nectar, panocha, diatase, dextrose, labiflabum.
We even made that last one up, not that anyone would notice.
11 – Locked in • Companies don’t just want your business
once, they want you to keep crawling back to them like a desperate ex.
This is easy enough for consumables like bread or toilet paper, but no one is going out and
buying a new phone every week.
• To get round this, companies love to make their product as incompatible as possible
so any upgrade, repair or accessory has to come through them.
They also make it very complicated for you to transfer any data, software or hardware
to another product.
• Apple are obviously the dark masters of locking you in.
It won’t be long before you need i-ears and i-tongue just to use the phone.
10 – Overbooking • As we learnt from the big United Airlines
scandal, buying a seat on a plane does not necessarily mean that you fly.
The airlines know that we are a useless and disorganised bunch and some people will always
oversleep, get lost or just decided they really like the airport bar.
• How much they overbook is actually calculated separately for each flight based on a lot
of data like local traffic, the weather, and the connecting flights.
• Hotels also do this.
If too many guest do turn up, they just send them off to another hotel, rather than making
them share.
• “Sorry Mr and Mrs Jones, you’re now splitting the honeymoon suit with Brad and
Steve” 9 – Sell your data
• When Silicon Valley first started growing, many people wondered how these companies would
make money.
• But data turned out to be an incredibly valuable commodity to advertisers and marketers.
So, just having simple questions on sign up, like your age, address, and a few interests,
gave these companies something to sell, even if their site or app was free.
• And sure, they tell you, but the fine print is veeeerrry small.
8 – Auto renewal • Nine times out of ten, if you get a free
trial of a gym or a streaming site or a food box, then you’ll have to give your credit
card details too.
• The companies will say that it will make your life easier because they’re confident
you will love the product.
But really, it’s because you have the memory of a drunk goldfish with a head injury and
you’ll pass the cancelation deadline before you’re realised what you’ve done.
Some of your yearly subscriptions will probably live longer than you will.
7 – Loss leading • Occasionally you’ll pick up an item,
especially in a supermarket, and think “they can’t be making money on this”.
And they’re not, they’re actually losing money.
• These are called loss leaders and they use them just to get you into the store.
• In the UK, the final Harry Potter book was being sold at well under its wholesale
price.
For supermarkets, it got excited kids in the store and for big book chains, it was like
a drug dealer getting children hooked on the high of reading, knowing they’d come back
for more sweet sweet words.
6 – Supermarket algorithm • Supermarkets are master of psychology.
Those rewards cards they offer are not to keep you loyal, but actually to gather data
on what you buy.
They then take information from the surrounding area, such as job type, income, immigration,
family size.
• Now, they can use an algorithm to design the perfect layout for the store and where
each product should be placed.
It’s game over the moment you walk in the door.
5 – Illusion of choice • Supermarkets also offer you the illusion
of choice when it comes to brands.
Those huge colourful aisles look like they offer every option under the sun, but it’s
all made by the same people.
• For many common items, such as beer, chocolate and cereal, over 80% of the options are owned
by just three or four companies.
• And it’s not just food.
Luxottica are an Italian eyewear company who make all the glasses for Oakley, RayBan, Armani,
Versace and many others.
4 – Price fixing • If you don’t like a price, you can always
go buy from a competitor.
However, sometimes a whole industry gets together, meets in a shadowy basement, and decides to
bump up all their prices.
• There have been numerous cases of price fixing.
In 2007, four of the biggest flat glass makers in Europe were fined almost half a billion
euros for bumping up their window, door and mirror prices.
3 – Tax avoidance • Taxes for businesses vary wildly around
the world.
The UAE has the highest of 55%, while Uzbekistan is the lowest at 7.5%
• Companies love to build complicated networks of businesses and subsidiaries around the
world, so they can legally avoid as much tax as possible.
They also write off a huge amount of expenses so they can claim they made no profit
• In 2014, Facebook paid just $43,000 tax in New Zealand, despite an estimated $6 million
in revenue 2 – Make to break
• Your granddad probably likes to tell you that things were better in his day.
And when it comes to quality products, he’s probably right.
Many companies built their reputation on reliability, like with German cars and Japanese electronics.
• But in the past, if something broke, you could get it fixed by any mechanic or electrician.
Now, it’s cheaper and easier to just get a new one or an upgrade, since you’d need
a specialist in each product to know what to fix.
• So, reliability is for suckers, sorry grandad.
1 – Confusing choice • As consumers we think we want choice but
the reality is that most of us are pretty lazy.
Did you really check through every available phone plan to find yours?
Did you search every insurance site for the best deal?
No, you checked two, bought the second one and went for your third nap of the day.
• And confusion helps companies reduce competition.
If you don’t really understand what you’re buying, it’s hard to persuade you to make
the effort to change.
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