Packaged air, raised bottoms and diluting the drinks with water - these are just some of the tricks that manufacturers apply, and such abuses are becoming more frequent, reports ARD.
Many manufacturers deceive their customers with the contents - the packages of a number of products contain a smaller amount for the same price. Or even higher.
In Germany, the Consumer Center in Hamburg has been monitoring fraudulent packaging in stores for years. Its experts are currently registering record high values of this type of fraud, the publication states.
Less, but for more money
Here is an example: a type of chips from the manufacturer Lays now contains only 75 grams in the package, instead of 95 grams as before. However, the price is the same - 1.99 euros per pack. This represents an increase of 27%. According to Armin Falet from the Consumer Center, many consumers do not even know that they are buying a smaller quantity for the same money. Although the new packaging is smaller in size, this becomes apparent only when directly compared to the previous size, the German publication states.
Another example ARD gives with Listerine mouthwash. The quantity has been reduced from 600 to 500 milliliters, and the price has even increased - from 4.45 euros to 4.95 euros. This represents a hidden price increase of more than 33%, according to the Consumer Center. However, on the shelf in the store, the change is hardly noticeable, because the bottle still looks the same - only in its lower part it is slightly thinner. This was done deliberately in order to mislead buyers," Armin Falet, quoted by ARD, claims.
Less content instead of a higher price
Such "tricks" are applied to almost all types of products - from margarine, through yogurt, to chocolates. "One thinks that there are always 500 grams in one package of margarine. And I was among them, until I recently found out that the new package contains only 400 grams, but the price is the same," says an unnamed buyer for ARD.
Ina Bockholt from "Varentest" - an organization that monitors the quality of goods and products - regularly checks for hidden price increases. Her explanation for the phenomenon: manufacturers prefer to reduce content rather than visibly increase prices. "Many consumers have price thresholds. For example, they don't want to pay more than one euro for pasta," she says.
For other products, this threshold may be 1.99 or 2.99 euros. Reducing the content helps producers not exceed these price thresholds and still maintain or even increase their profit margin, explains ARD. The media adds that if you buy a certain product regularly, this trick alone can cost you several hundred euros more per year.
Another trick that manufacturers use is the quality of the ingredients. In this case, the price and the contents of the package remain unchanged, but the manufacturer saves on valuable ingredients of the product, thereby reducing its quality. This works especially well with fruit juices.
Armin Fallet from the Consumer Center in Hamburg also gives such an example - with fruit juice from the company Granini, in which the amount of orange juice is reduced by half. "This is no longer 100% orange juice, but fruit nectar to which water and sugar have been added to bring it to taste,", the expert points out.
Caution: air in packages
The third trick is with packaged air. Apparently a package offers a normal amount of some product as it is large in size. However, there is actually less content in it than the client suggests. Whether it's muesli, chips or nutritional supplements, in most cases such outer packaging does not violate any law.
The rule is that a package should not suggest that it contains more. But there are many exceptions that allow this to happen, the Consumer Center emphasizes. So, for example, many cosmetics manufacturers use raised bottoms of the packages, and the cream box, for example, is significantly smaller than the package in which it is sold, ARD also writes.