- Hey, guess what.
Companies are ripping you off every day
and I'm not talking about little obscure companies.
I'm talking about the biggest ones
that you use all the time.
Ever watch Netflix or drink Starbucks?
Hmm, keep watching.
Here are 10 ways companies are secretly ripping you off
every day.
Number 10 is brand name versus generic medication.
Research released by the Mayo Clinic on June 13, 2013
showed roughly 70% of all Americans
are on some type of prescription drug.
In case you didn't know,
the drug industry is a very profitable business,
especially when you opt to purchase the name brand medicine
over the generic one.
But why do so many of us pay double or even triple
the cost of generic for a fancier named one?
Well companies would like you to believe
that your need to spend more
comes from their need to spend more
on research and marketing of newer drugs
as they bring them to the market.
However, switching to generic brands has saved people
in the United States over a trillion dollars
over the last decade.
On top of that generics are, according to the FDA,
almost the exact same as name brand versions
as it must have the same concentration
of active medicinal ingredients.
So next time you have a headache, don't take Advil.
Take Adveal, the Russian substitute.
Okay don't take that.
That sounds shady.
But you get the idea.
Number nine are thicker beer glasses.
A number of restaurants have swapped
their traditional pint glasses for a much thicker version
with much shorter insides than outsides.
If you haven't noticed that's completely understandable
since the glass makers have used tricks in the design
to deceive you into thinking you're still getting
a full pint's worth of 473 milliliters.
The truth is you're more likely getting around 414.
Additionally bartenders are often advised
to leave a minimum height of froth at the top of your glass.
And what's most annoying about this
is that the price of alcohol is always increasing
and the public has overall accepted this.
But to up the charge for a pint of beer
and decrease the amount that you're getting is pretty low.
The only thing that's increasing is the amount
that you're getting ripped off!
So next time you're at a bar or restaurant
and they give it to you in a thick mug,
it's not cause it keeps it colder.
It's cause they're trying to rip you off.
Remember that.
Number eight are cinemas not changing lenses.
With the rising costs of movie tickets and concessions
it's kind of hard not to see the rip offs
in a cinema-going experience.
But the surprising cheat here
comes from the movie viewing experience itself.
A large number of theaters these days show 3-D movies
in the same theaters that you can watch a 2-D movie in.
The projectors aren't switched to allow this
but the lenses are supposed to be.
And guess what, cheaper theaters refuse to swap out
a 3-D lens when a 2-D movie is about to be shown
due to the amount that it costs to swap the lenses
and the large amount of time that it takes to do so.
The 3-D film's polarization effects the lens
so when a 2-D movie is shown,
it appears dampened and much darker,
often by as much as 85%.
So if you're ever watching a brand new movie
and wonder why it looks so bleak, now you know why.
Greediness.
Number seven is microwave popcorn.
Mmm, this popcorn is so good!
Yeah, you like that Little Timmy?
That's the taste of you getting ripped off.
In 1981 a convenience was unveiled
that brought the movie theater's most treat
into people's homes.
Today pretty much every grocery store
carries multiple brands of microwave popcorn.
But even though it's widely available,
that doesn't make it a bargain
by any stretch of the imagination.
First off a package of popping corn,
that you'd normally need a clunky popcorn maker to pop,
on average costs less than half for the same amount
that you get in the microwave version.
But you can still use the microwave by using a paper bag
and folding over the top several times.
A little melted butter and it's just like the instant stuff.
And secondly instant popcorn is often far more unhealthy.
Yeah, that's right.
I just ruined your favorite home treat for a lot of y'all.
Believe it or not, many brands use a toxic chemical
in their popcorn called perfluorooctanoic,
that can cause infertility and cancer,
on the inside of the bags.
And who wants to eat that?
To be clear, I'm saying this chemical is on the inside
of the bag, that can rub off on the popcorn.
I'm not expecting any of you to actually eat the bag.
And if you are, you're gonna getta sick!
Number six is air in ice cream.
Here's an experiment for you.
Fill a shot glass with ice cream and let it melt.
What you'll find is that the melted version
takes up a lot less of the glass
than the frozen ice cream did.
Why?
Because of all of the air in it.
Although it's true that air, or overrun,
is required for ice cream to be, well, ice cream,
there is a point where it becomes excessive.
Matt's about to ruin ice cream for ya!
Manufacturers must use air to keep the product soft
but while real, authentic ice only requires
around 25% of it to consist of overrun,
most of these companies choose to use a much higher number,
many surpassing 100%.
So the law stepped in and declared
that only 50% of an ice cream product can be made up of air.
So to get around this law,
instead of reducing the amount of overrun,
the company started labeling the product
something else other than ice cream.
They started calling it frozen dairy dessert.
So if you're ever at the grocery store
and you're looking for ice cream
and it says frozen dairy dessert, stay away from it.
They're trying to rip you off.
Number five is bottled water.
Okay, a lot of you probably already suspected this
but allow me to confirm it for you.
In the United States well over 61 trillion calories
have been cut from the average person's diet
due to the ever increasing popularity of bottled water.
However, not only are around 80% of those bottles
finding their way into landfills
but the actual water you're consuming
could very well be a rip off.
While many huge corporations, including Coke and Pepsi,
seem to be doubling down on the varieties
of bottled water that they offer,
that healthier option may actually be the exact same water
that flows freely from your kitchen faucet.
Or what's worse, it could actually be less healthy
due to the deteriorating plastic and additives.
On average customers pay over 300 times for bottled water
what they'd pay for just drinking tap water
that they can get at home.
Now this doesn't apply everywhere
but in most places it's better
just to get a refillable water bottle
than to keep buying it from convenience stores.
Just make sure you do your research about where you live
before you drink the tap water
cause I don't want any of you coming back to this video
a leaving a comment saying oh my God, I pooped my pants,
in all caps.
That's gonna happen now no matter what, isn't it?
Number four is chicken plumping.
It's a finger-licking rip off!
Since the early 1970s poultry farmers and producers
have been using a technique that they claim
makes their meats juicier and tastier
but what they're really doing is ripping you off.
The process is called plumping
and it involves injecting water into the meat
so that its weight is increased.
A saltwater solution containing a bonding agent
is injected through multiple needles
so the sodium enters the muscles.
The bonding agent then goes to work
making sure that the water and salt don't seep out
when temperatures change,
or when the meat moves around during transport.
The thing is the meat is weighed and priced
after the solution is injected.
Which means that when you buy some chicken
at your local supermarket
you're not paying for just the meat, but for saltwater.
Nothing like paying $8 a kilogram
for chicken water, am I right?
(coughs) Rip off. (clucks)
Number three is air in chip bags.
Oh yes, if you've ever eaten a bag of chips
and you've ever suspected this,
allow me to confirm it for you.
We've all torn open a bag of potato chips
only to find more empty, greasy air than chips.
According to Lays and other chip companies
that emptiness is left there for a good reason.
The process in which that space I made
is called slack-fill
and it's done so that chips can move around
inside the packaging during the shipping process,
so that they're not crushed when moving side to side
or forced into small boxes, et cetera.
To try to counter this seemingly misleading issues
the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act was passed
at the Federal level back in 1966,
which said that companies had to properly label
the net weight of what was actually inside.
But many companies today still rely on consumer's inability
to properly judge how much should be in a bag,
and under-fill them.
So technically potato chip companies
are abiding by the law
but often the labeling of the weight is so small
that they hope you don't notice it
or they're just assuming you're too dumb to figure it out.
I know that's not gonna stop you guys
from eating potato chips but at least now you're informed.
Number two is Netflix throttles your speed.
Yes, the company that brought you Stranger Things
that you've been binge watching for the last three days,
I see you,
they're purposely making it more difficult to do so.
And it's kind of counterintuitive.
It's actually because they don't want you to stop watching.
The logic behind it is this.
If Netflix throttles down you streaming speed and quality
you'll use less data
and won't blame them for higher data costs
that come from your cell phone and internet provider.
Meaning that you're more likely
to not cancel your Netflix subscription.
They literally rip you off in an effort to help you.
Netflix openly admitted this practice in March of 2016
saying that they'd actually been doing it for five years,
as statistics showed that it was working.
They believe their users prefer low quality
and longer loading times
to having no Netflix until the next billing cycle.
So technically they're ripping you off
by giving you less HD than you're paying for
but people seem to want it.
I don't know, I'll leave that one up to you guys.
And number one is Starbucks under-fills.
While some places increase prices
and decrease product sizes,
others rely on their employees to shortchange customers.
At many Starbucks locations baristas are told
to always leave space at the top of a cup
instead of filling it to the brim.
In other restaurants a fill line was introduced
so that baristas wouldn't even be aware
that they were ripping off their customers.
Well guess what, Starbucks actually does both,
putting in a fill line lower than it needs to be
and they tell their servers to leave at least a quarter inch
of space at the top of each hot beverage.
One study revealed the coffee chain powerhouse
was actually serving around 25% less coffee
than the cups advertised that they could hold.
Starbucks of course had a long list of reasons
why they give less product than they promise to customers
but a lot of people are ticked off about this.
Well we only filled it half-way
because people don't like full cups of coffee.
Okay, bye!
So that was 10 ways that companies
are secretly ripping you off every day.
And if you guys enjoyed this
remember to give it a big thumbs up.
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Because I release new videos like this all the time.
Thank you guys for watching
and I'll see you in the next video.
I'm gonna go get a coffee.
Not at Starbucks!