Zaf’s Blog

I’m getting sick of hearing of companies that are deliberately misleading consumers, sometimes to dangerous results, and getting away with it. When a company is caught, they issue an immediate appology, and move on, all is forgiven. The government agencies responsible for protecting consumers issue a press release, and consider the matter closed. “We caught them, they’re sorry they lied to all of you lot, and they promise not to do it again”. Its getting tiresome.

The latest is the Sunscreen debacle. Numerous companies have been advertising their products as having “all day protection”, stating that one application will protect you from sun burn and skin cancer for the entire day. Consumers have, until now, been left to discover the hard way that that is very very wrong.

Even the Commerce Comission itself said that this was unacceptable:

Commission chairwoman Paula Rebstock said “Consumers should not have to find out the hard way, through sunburn and skin damage, that a sunscreen doesn’t provide the protection claimed. The onus is on manufacturers and distributors to ensure the claims made on their products about SPF are accurate.”

But the commerce commission congratulated them on being caught

Commission chairwoman Paula Rebstock said she was very pleased the companies had responded in a responsible manner.

Consider the consequence of what these companies have done: They have lied to consumers, knowingly and willfully, and caused an untold and impossible to calculate number of sunburns, which as we all know from the recent advertising campaign, leads to skin cancer later in life.