So i’m scraping off the final flakes of ice cream from its container and as i’m about to toss it in the trash i notice a small typewritten message on the bottom of the carton. It reads:
“QUALITY GUARANTEED! If you are not completely satisfied with this product, please send us the numbers printed on the bottom of this carton and we will replace this purchase.”
Does this basically entitle me to free ice cream for life if i continue to send in the inferior quality ice cream carton numbers? Will I eventually be forced to appear in court to prove my dissatisfaction? Does pondering the possibilities make me a bad person?
I’m pretty sure it’s a one-time thing. They keep your name on record, so if you complain again, they’ll just say, “You didn’t like it before. Why did you buy it again!?”
I believe that that’s a manufacturer’s guarantee over and above your statutory legal rights - basically, another selling point for them to push. At the end of the day, it’s up to the manufacturer whether to honour it. If you push your luck, the company is not obliged to keep sending you replacements - unless the product really is duff, in which case your legal rights oblige them to act.
unless the product really is duff
…in which case you could end up with a free trip to Duff Gardens, or better yet, the Duff brewery!
I think that line in “Tommy Boy” said it best: “You can take a dump in a box, slap a guarantee on it, and what do you have? A guaranteed piece of shit.”
I explored my cabinets, and I found that most food packaging has a similar guarantee of quality, freshness–what have you. And yes, they will replace it if it’s bad. I once had a package of truly rank beef jerky. They didn’t even question it, and offered to send me another package. I declined, having lost my appetite for that product for life. Instead, they sent me a check for the purchase price.
Of course not, hon. When I read the OP, I immediately thought of how many free groceries I would get if I called each product on its guarantee. It’s quite natural to have greedy thoughts.
I can picture it now: an new show on the Food Network. “Food Court.” We could drag the old judge from “The People’s Court” out of retirement.
Every manufacturer of a food product, I’ve called to complain about a product has always sent me back free coupons to replace their product. I think they want you to give their product another chance and they also want to know what batch of their product might have had problems.
My favorite call was one I made to Pillsbury’s 800 number after their can of pizza dough came out of the can with a big hole in the middle.
The very polite woman on the other end of the phone responded to my tale by saying, “Gosh, I must imagine that you must have felt really bad when you saw what the product looked like? How can I help?”
I don’t know if I would be able to keep up that facade all day long.
Well, except he’s doing that Animal Court thing on Animal Planet. But, we could combine the two, and have him adjudicate cases of bad dog food…