Sucker's Game

From a radio set in Washington blared the excited voice of an announcer: "Yes, it's brand new! Some are still in their packages and the price is so low you won't believe your ears . . . Brand-new famous-name sewing machines . . . for the fantastic price of only $18 . . . Call now!" Over the air from many another radio and TV station around the U.S., other excited announcers offered similar "bargains"--which almost always turned out to be fakes. To admen and reputable retailers, this popular form of electronic huckstering is known as "bait advertising." Says Denver's Better Business Bureau Director Dan Bell: "The greatest single cause of consumer distrust of advertising today is the widespread use of bait tactics . . . It has been termed a national scandal in business."

The scandal has reached such proportions that Congress is considering an investigation of the hucksters who promise phony bargains over the air. Last week in Los Angeles, seven shady TV pitchmen were charged with fraud. In New York, Attorney General Jacob Javits asked the state legislature for power to ask injunctions against bait advertisers.

Selling by Underselling. Though the bait advertisers' products differ, their methods are the same. Each offers an item at a ridiculously low price as a come-on, to get into the prospect's home or get the housewife into his store. Then the salesman tries to switch the prospect to a high-priced model. For example, in Cleveland last week, a housewife answered a TV ad for "a brand-new Free-Westinghouse* sewing machine for $50." When the friendly salesman turned on the machine, it made so much racket she thought it would scare her children. When she complained, the salesman readily agreed, but he just happened to have a better machine in his car. The new machine (labeled "American Home" but actually a Japanese-made machine) sewed smoothly, had a set of attachments. The regular price, said the salesman, was $129.50, but the housewife could have it for $89.

Since bait advertisers calculate that one housewife in three will buy the high-priced model, the pattern is repeated daily in thousands of U.S. homes. In Seattle, vacuum cleaners are popular bait. Radio station KOL advertised a rebuilt vacuum cleaner for $8.95, but a demonstration showed that it lacked the suction to extinguish a match, and the salesman switched to a $120 cleaner.

Frames & Freezers. Another scheme is the contest portrait. Any radio listener who identifies a "mystery tune" (usually something as well known as The Star-Spangled Banner) receives a coupon to buy "a $14 photograph" for $1. At the studio the prospect is pressured into buying a frame ($2.95 extra), tinting ($6 extra), and perhaps a whole set of pictures. In Chicago, bait advertisers plug a food-freezer plan. By buying in large quantities from a "co-op," the prospect supposedly saves enough to pay off the cost of a freezer. But, says Chicago's Better Business Bureau: "The savings to the consumer through the food-freezer plans are no greater than if the consumer bought his freezer through regular retail channels and stocked it . . . in chain and independent stores."

Although the nation's Better Business Bureaus and legitimate advertisers are battling the baiters, they have found it hard to make fraud charges stick so long as the sharpie actually has a cheap product for sale. Radio and television stations have been slow to ban bait ads, say that it is impossible to check every advertiser. One of the best ways to end bait advertising was used by Denver's Better Business Bureau. It hired a man with a sandwich board ("Don't get hooked by phony wholesale offers") to parade outside the advertiser's store and warn customers not to go in. It worked: the dealer closed up.

* No kin to Westinghouse Electric Corp., which does not make sewing machines.

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