Look-alike packaging, as in `Yeast Extract/Marmite or Beefy Drink/Bovril', can certaily be misleading, wrong assumptions of Similarity are easily made and the wrong product taken off the Shelf. On the other hand, totally different packaging of Similar products can make price comparisons difficult, aS when packs are cuboid and cylinder, expressed in ml or gmS, imperial or metric, and So on.
Ideally, for me, the product must have a markedly different name, and the packaging Should appear markedly different, through use of colour or packaging design and use of materials, but without total disguise.
MrS Sonya Hawkins (Croydon and District Consumer Group).
Much as I agree with moat of what Alec Samuels says about today's trading practices (page eleven, last issue, No 203) I take issue with two points he made:
Perhaps Alec. Samuels should be advocating wider knowledge of those who use better trading practices. Perhaps, also this is Something that NfCG can do through your columns.
[Alec says that Cynthia is making exactly the point he wished to make and certainly advocates the wider knowledge of those who use better trading practices - Ed.]
Your reference to billboards in "How Times Change" reminds me of Ogden Nash's verse:
I think that I shall never see,
a billboard lovely as a tree.
In fact, unless the billboards fall,
ill never see the trees at all!
Keep up the good work.
In view of the hardship being suffered by the tourist industry on account of the foot and mouth epidemic it is with some diffidence that I write this letter. Nevertheless the issue I wish to raise involves a matter of principle, concerning which I should appreciate your opinion.
Last October my wife and I were touring the Cotswolds. On having lunch in a restaurant in the village of Broadway, I requested a glass of tap water, as is my custom. To my astonishment this was refused on the grounds, apparently, that they needed to sell bottled water in order to maintain an adequate profit margin. This was the first time in my 74 years that I have been refused a glass of tap water.
Since that incident I have been in extensive and continuing correspondence with tourist boards, the BBC, and Several other organisations. While all are sympathetic, it appears that there is no legal obligation on a restaurant to provide tap water.
Given that nothing in life is free, I would have no objection in principle to paying a nominal sum, say five pence, for a small jug of tap water. But, legal though it may be to deny water which is literally `on tap' at almost no cost, and force customers to buy bottled water is, in my view, unethical and certainly inhospitable.
I have only just become aware of your Federation, and should be very interested to know whether you or any of your members have a view on this issue.
Yours faithfully,
I have found your Federation after searching on the Internet for someone who I could make a complaint to about a company and its failure to deliver a promise that it had made. I have decided to join your consumer group and I have just written the cheque and addressed the envelope.
I am really annoyed however about a bathroom company and the newspaper which was carrying its advertisement.
In 1996 I saw an advert in an evening paper that was promoting the bathroom company. The advert was celebrating the anniversary of this company and offering customers their money-back on any bathroom that they purchased before a certain date. The money was to be refunded five years later. Customers were issued with a cheque for the full amount. I have the cheque in front of me. The address of the company on the cheque is AllState Acceptance Corporation, (uk administration address) FMW, 4th floor, Forum House, 15-18 Lime Street, London EC3M 7AP The amount that I spent is £395 and after recently trying to contact the company concerned I have found out that they do not exist.
I know that there are many others who have been caught out by this bogus offer and I wanted to bring it to someone's attention. I hope that someone in your organisation can make some inquiries and hopefully get some feedback as I have come to a dead end. I look forward to hearing from you. My e-mail address is cynthiafogoe@hotmail.com
Yours Sincerely
[There is a Consumer Group in the area in which Mrs Fogoe lives and I have suggested to her that she gets in touch with them - I suppose the maxim `if an offer seems too good to be true, it usually is' applies here -Ed]
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