Major brands are downsizing servings while charging the same price without telling you.

From cereal to cookies, paper towels to peanut butter, you can find it in supermarkets everywhere: Some of the most trusted brands getting smaller, the price tag not so much. "It's a very sneaky way to raise the price of a product," said consumer crusader Edgar Dworsky, who runs the website, consumerworld.com.

One tactic: the "optical illusion." Dworsky showed us two boxes of Apple Jacks side by side. Back in 2008 the product went from 11 ounces to 8.7 ounces, but from the front, the two boxes appeared the same; only when they were turned to the side did it become apparent that one was "much narrower," according to Dworsky. "That's one of the tricks of the trade," he said.

Dworsky also showed us two 8-giant-roll packs of Bounty paper towels that looked almost identical. But one had 72 sheets per roll, the other only 66 sheets per roll. "You think you're getting the same thing, but you're really losing like, two-thirds of a roll," he said.

Then there's the old "hollow the bottom" technique. "Here's Skippy peanut butter," Dworsky said. "The old one was 18 ounces, but now it's only 16.3. How did they do it? They hollowed out the bottom of the container." It looks the same, he said, but when Skippy downsized the product in 2008, they didn't drop the price.

Dworsky said "new and improved" is another common ploy. "They just downsized Chips Deluxe," he said. "Here's the new package." The words "New Look!" appeared up in one corner.

"They're diverting your attention up to the top, right-hand corner," Dworsky said. "You should be looking at the bottom corner, where you see you're getting almost two ounces less."


[link to www.today.com]

Last Edited by KickAzCarlin on 05/21/2014 11:08 PM