The publishing clearinghouse agreed to pay $18.5 million ‘Deceptive and unfair’ lottery practices And it changed many of its working methods, namely the Federal Trade Commission he said in a press release Tuesday.
A proposed court order filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York states that the publishing company needs to make substantial changes to how lottery drawings and entries are made online. especially The elderly and those with low incomes They are lured into the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes by catchy language on the company’s website such as: “WIN IT!” or “Win for life!”
Some are lucky: A Pennsylvania-based woman He won a million dollars Lottery prize. Others hope to win money in the lottery and continue to buy products or pay fees to increase their limited opportunities, court documents said.
After hopeful customers click sweepstakes registration links emailed to them by the company, the complaint said, they are directed to several Web pages of advertisements for products, including magazine subscriptions. These pages say messages like “$1,000 a week for life at stake!” “Just one thing is all it takes,” the press release read.
The complaint said that consumers interested in participating in sweepstakes were led to believe that they “must order products before they can enter a sweepstakes” or that “ordering products increases their odds of winning the sweepstakes.” thought one woman in california She won a prize of $5,000but the company blamed a “technical malfunction” and said that under the “official rules” they did not win and they were not responsible.
“Today’s action builds on past efforts to crack down on companies that use illegal dark patterns to fuel digital deception and harm consumers,” FTC Chair Lena Khan and the commissioners said in a statement.
Once consumers enter their email address, the complaint said, they keep getting alerts from the company that they must take another step to be eligible for sweepstakes prizes. In addition to these misleading practices, Publishers Clearing House hid shipping and handling costs from consumers until there was a financial obligation. While the company has also maintained that it did not sell or rent consumer data, the FTC claims it did so until around January 2019, when Publishing Clearing House learned they were under investigation, according to court documents.
The $18.5 million fund will be used to recover consumers and implement promised changes to Publishers Clearing House’s business practices. Those changes include clearly disclosing sweepstakes entry web pages, stopping surprise fees and shipping fees, and stopping phishing emails, court documents said.
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