My old employer – The Hartford Courant – on the day it celebrates its founder, again publishes a full-page ad that boosts its revenues at the expense of its readers.
I wonder how the management explains how it can claim be a friend to consumers with its daily consumer tips and then run ads that it knows are false and knows it is helping to rip off its readers.
This is not the first time I have written about the Mira-cool swamp coolers and The Courant is one of many papers across the country that carry the ads from a company that has many other full-page marketing campaigns for other products in similar misleading ads. You can check out the firm’s Better Business Bureau report here which lists government actions taken as the result of other deceptive marketing campaigns.
I have had more than 70 comments on my original story on these coolers from all over the country, the vast majority thanking me for warning them before they bought them, others wishing they had read my column first. One person wrote that she bought 6 of them to help poor Latin Americans.
MIRA-COOL
The good news here folks that the units only do cost pennies a day.
The bad news is, that of course nothing is free (other than free samples at grocery stores) and the unit may help keep a dog cool if it sits right next to it, but otherwise save your money. Its a swamp cooler. And what that means is that it has ice storage on the bottom and a fan blows across the ice. You can duplicate it by blowing a fan over a bowl of ice.
If you read all the fine print, you will discover that you have to order TWO MIRA-COOL units to get one of them “Free” and you pay shipping on both. So the total cost is $298 for the two units plus $98 to ship them.
So, save some real money and stay cool by purchasing a real air conditioner.
Incredible!!! Where is the FTC when you need them??? The New London Day is running the same ad in its Saturday publication. Pathetic. I’ll contact the publication and the attorney general. I’m sure it will not make a bit of difference. As they say, “A sucker is born every day”.
The Des Moines Register ran this deceptive ad (which looks like an article) today. I hope none of my senior citizen friends buy this thing.
We ordered this unit the sunday this ad was shown in the paper, Cancelled it on that Monday, And they told us it was already put in shipping and wil be shipped, we told them no to ship it and cancell the order they refused because it was already being shipped. So UPS was going to delivery and we could refuse it. Next day we spoke to our UPS driver told him of the problem, and would refuse them at the dock. UPS tag shows they were sent back , and these scammers are saying they rec’d 1 unit back not both. we have been tring to get our money back for a month. Matter of Fact we are on the phone with them, its always perma hold .
Do not buy this garbage, and if you do and need to contact them good luck