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The guys discuss the recent settlement concerning deceptive tactics of a company involved with as seen on tv ads. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for your listening pleasure. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: I’m Matt Staub. That was very serious today. NASIR: I wanted to make sure that everyone knew I was on my game today. This is serious business. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about a more serious topic in the last 162 or 161 episodes, if you’re counting this one or not. We have to address it in a respectful way, obviously, so we’re going to try to do that today. MATT: Sorry. I’m watching the video that corresponds to what we’re talking about today. NASIR: I think that’s a good intro. Maybe just see if people recognize this really quick here. One second. AD: You want to keep warm when you’re feeling chilled, but you don’t want to raise your heating bill. Blankets are okay, but they can slip and slide, and when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside. Now, there’s the Snuggie! The blanket that has sleeves! The new Snuggie blankets are here! “Watching a show on TV in my Snuggie, happy that my hands are free in my Snuggie, I’m just as warm as can be in my Snuggie, I love my Snuggie! That’s right!” NASIR: I don’t know if you could hear that, Matt. MATT: I could, yeah. So, in a shocking turn of events, it seems like these deals, the As Seen On TV deals are kind of too good to be true pricewise which I never would have expected. It’s like, “Oh, you want one for $19.95? How about we’ll give you 25 of them if you order in the next two minutes?” or something. So, basically, there’s the Snuggie Magic Mesh Door Cover, Perfect Brownie Pans, and a bunch of other ones that all fall under this Allstar Marketing Group LLC. Well, it turns out they got fined by the FTC. Let’s see. What? Roughly $8 million total – $7.5 million to restitution to customers and another half million to the New York Attorney General’s office for deceiving customers about the cost of its products. So, if anyone’s seen an infomercial before, they always give you the product and then, order within an hour and get another one for free or whatever the deal is which, I think, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one that wasn’t like that, but what they were doing – at least what Allstar Marketing Group was doing – is, you know, when they give you that second product, well, the already kind of high shipping and handling fee is actually going to double. So, basically, they’re just making up for this extra double the amount you get by doubling the shipping and this is the whole deception that was going on with customers and, it turns out, they definitely were deceiving this with this $8 million which $8 million isn’t that much for these companies. NASIR: The actual price of the product jumps from $35.85 – nearly double the advertised price. So, on one hand, it’s like you get buy one, get one free. But then, not only is that not true, it ends up being even more expensive – double what you’re supposed to pay. Very unfair. MATT: Yeah. I mean, it is deceiving but, to me, the customer still has the option of saying no before they pay, right? NASIR: Well, here’s a good point is that they have a 30-day money-back guarantee. MATT: Yeah, I just saw that. NASIR: Of course, that’s less packaging and handling. And, according to the complaint, the FTC says that the consumers that reported the company refused to issue refunds and directed consumers to return their unwanted products at their own expense. So, even that didn’t work. I’m just wondering, like, one of the problems with the FTC is that they will only start enforcing it if it starts to become a big issue – if they get a number of complaints – and that’s because they’re just an organization that has to prioritize between different issues that come across. Now,