The law is a powerful tool. It plays an important role in having an ordered society. An ordered society is one in which when you order a footlong sandwich at Subway, you get 12 inches.
Is it false advertising to call it a “footlong” when the sandwich is only 11 inches? I don’t know for sure, but I am definitely bringing a ruler with me next time I go to subway.
4 Comments
Zach Barnard posted on January 24, 2013 at 12:50 am
This is a fantastic article!!! The linked “12 inches”, though, isn’t working. What article is this meant to be linked to, Professor Spooner?
Professor SPooner posted on January 24, 2013 at 9:56 am
Here is another link:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/01/subway-sued-over-footlongs-that-came-up-short/
Yujing Cai posted on February 3, 2013 at 8:02 pm
Personally, I don’t really care if my sandwich is a little bit shorter than it should be, as I understand that it can be really hard for the Subway company to monitor every single store and to measure each sandwich. Therefore, as long as the company establish proper rule and appropriate supervision, the dissatisfied consumers should sue individual store instead of the company as a whole. However, it is nice to see how law can serve as a great tool to protect even a very small part of consumer’s interest.
Assylkhan Kaiyrgaliyev posted on February 24, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Every time when I go to Starbucks, I order a tall coffee which supposed to be 12 ounces. However, I am sure that I do not get 12 ounces of coffee. The reason is that the person pouring coffee is not going to be precise. This subway case is somewhat similar. As it says in the article, the sandwiches might not have a similar length after baking due to not following exact specifications. Apparently, human factor influences on the final product, and I do not think that it is the company’s fault for not providing a foot-long sandwich to its customers.
It seems to me that advertising a product by displaying its weight and including margin of error would be the best solution to avoid any conflicts. In this case, subway would advertise its footlong sandwich by claiming that it is 12 inches (+/- 0.75 inches) long.