100k cash drop in AKL - but fake or real money!

Forums › Off topic › 100k cash drop in AKL - but fake or real money!

Batman

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#280276 5-Dec-2020 17:07

Did they actually throw out 100k cash as advertised?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/absolutely-disgusted-auckland-crowd-outraged-after-safety-warehouse-100k-cash-drop/GJKR4UKI4WYGM5IUWVPDX27JNU/

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freitasm

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#2616740 5-Dec-2020 18:06

People are stupid.

Kyanar

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#2617671 7-Dec-2020 16:34

rb99:

Accountable for what ?

Is there an advertisement that doesn't do that ?

Not if people realise, as someone mentioned on page one of this thread - if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Maybe, just occasionally, its the fault of the people in the stampede.

While "if it's too good to be true, it usually is" does apply, if a New Zealand business makes a claim prominently in their promotional materials, people have a legal right to be able to assume that the claim can be taken at face value. Burying things in fine print or weasel words like "in value" like this business did is potentially illegal. They advertised, prominently, a $100k live cash giveaway. By law, people have a right to expect that this means there is a $100k live cash giveaway. Not vouchers.

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#2617990 8-Dec-2020 10:25

Oblivian:

It also has his initial claims which have since got a bit muddy.

"It was $100,000 in real money, and the fake money discounts on top - I think that was 40,000 notes [coupons] that were printed," he said.

If I was giving away vouchers, I'd know damn well whether 20,000 or 40,000 were printed. So weasel words "I think" are needed to allow a falsehood to be stated and subsequently denied if anyone calls him on it. (Dare I say it, but this is a typical Trump tactic).

If it was $100k in real money, there would be more than one or two people who got $5 or $20 or $50. If there was a couple of thousand people there, then on average *every* person should have got $50 (plus a couple of hundred vouchers). For every $5 winner, there's must be a $95 winner somewhere. For every $0 loser (and there seemed to be an awful lot of them), there ought to be a $100 winner.

$100K in $5 notes would be 20K notes. For perspective, paper is about 0.1mm thick, so assume the same for banknotes, even though they're polymer, so $100K is a stack of $5 notes 2m tall. And another stack 4m tall of fake notes. That's an awful lot of paper. Looking at the spud guns or whatever they were that the notes were launched with, I'd be surprised if you could launch more than 1,000 notes in one shot. So there would have to be 60 or more shots to launch all the claimed paper. Say a minute to reload, so an hour of raining paper if there's only one gun (I only saw one on the news).

A $5 note is 135x69mm = .009315sqm, so 200K fake notes (we'll assume the real ones were all pocketed) would cover 1863sqm. Aotea Square is 4,500 sqm, so about 40% of it should have been covered with fake notes. Maybe 20% since some of the paper would land on other paper. I didn't see that in the news.

freitasm

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#2774445 8-Sep-2021 13:02

From Commerce Commission:

Greenback Ecommerce Limited trading as The Safety Warehouse (TSW) has been warned by the Commerce Commission for engaging in conduct that it considers was liable to mislead and likely to have breached the Fair Trading Act in its promotion of “The Drop” event held in Aotea Square, Auckland, on 5 December 2020.

In the Commission’s view TSW’s promotion of the event on social media platforms and its website was liable to mislead consumers by creating the impression that $100,000 in cash would be given away at the event, when in fact only a total of $3,600 of money was given away.

TSW encouraged consumers to sign up to attend the free event by promoting “The Drop” using phrases such as, “THE DROP $100K CASH GIVEAWAY”, “We’re dropping $100,000 in value from the sky in Aotea Square at 12pm on Saturday the 5th. Yes, ACTUAL MONEY will be flying from the sky” and “The Drop – 100K Live Cash Giveaway – Auckland”.

Around 1,600 people attended “The Drop” event. The Commission spoke to people who went to the event who said they were disappointed to discover that most of what was being given away was vouchers in the form of lookalike $5 notes when, as a result of the advertising they viewed, they were under the impression that $100,000 cash would be given away.

Commerce Commission Chair Anna Rawlings said, “Businesses have a responsibility to be upfront and clear about what they’re offering – they must not tell half-truths or provide information that is liable to mislead consumers. They should think carefully about how consumers will interpret the claims they make and what consumers will likely understand about them – even when it is done as part of a one-off publicity event which is free to attend”.

The Commission is satisfied that this was a one-off event and TSW has confirmed it does not intend to run this type of event in the future.

The warning letter has been published on the Commission’s case register.

Background

Warning letter
A warning explains the Commission’s opinion that the conduct at issue is likely to have breached the law. It is not a finding of non-compliance – only the Courts can decide whether a breach of the law has occurred.

The purpose of a warning letter is to inform the recipient of the Commission’s view that there has likely been a breach of the law, to suggest a change in the recipient’s behaviour and to encourage future compliance with the law.

The relevant law
Section 11 of the Fair Trading Act prohibits conduct in trade liable to mislead the public as to
the nature, characteristics, suitability for a purpose, or quantity of services.