Ice Cream 20% off! (The product silly . . . not the price!)

[Zzaph]

My wife and I developed a taste for chocolate and peanut butter ice-cream at Baskin Robbins, a very unusual flavour and very yummy! (Don't knock it unless you've tried it!)

Something seemed amiss when we noticed a couple of things . . . Firstly, they always place the take home tubs in a bag upside down and secondly, all of the take home tubs are a product 'sold by weight' but unlike the butcher or the greengrocer, the scales they use look like the cheap ones for home use and they are behind the counter and the customer is never shown the weight of product they buy.

We got suspicious when we brought a "Popular" size tub home and when we went for the first spoonful, the contents slid down revealing that it was only about 2/3rds full. Our own scales found that what was supposed to be 680 grams of product was actually 540 grams and their policy of upside-down packaging concealed the fact that it wasn't full.

We took our complaint to the store owner who was apologetic, even asking date & time so he could check our story on the security video. He replaced the tub and told us that they were always very careful but sometimes new staff were not.

Since then, we always weigh the tubs we bring home, and about 30% of the time the weight will be on or slightly over what it should be. About 70% of the time the tubs are underweight, usually by 20 to 40 grams (we do account for the weight of the packaging).

Last week we decided that we had had enough after we bought 3 tubs, nearly $50 worth, got home and found that the small tub that should have had 340gms had 290gms, the medium tub that should have had 680gms had 521gms, and the large tub that should have had 1.36kg had only 1.24kg. We essentially paid for a small tub that we didn't receive.

After the first seriously underweight episode I rang the Dept of Justice which includes weights & measures and was told that if what I said about B-R's practices was true, that they were in breach of the law and that we should make a formal complaint. The store owner convinced us that it was a very rare occurrence and we gave him the benefit of the doubt, but with what we have observed since, especially the last episode, we will not buy from Baskin Robbins again, even if it means going without our fave flavour, and the formal complaint is on it's way to the Dept of Justice.

For the benefit of Baskin Robbings (sic) we have bought from more than one store and the practice seems typical across all of the stores that we tried, so please do not try to blame it on one franchisee.

Can you imagine the outcry if a chain of butchers or green-grocers decided it wasn't important for the customer to be satisfied that they were getting correct weight? That's why we have laws regarding this type of thing.

I have seen lots of stores that will have a 20% off sale, just beware . . . with Baskins Robbins it means 20% off of the product, while the price remains at an all time premium!