A nonprofit organization that probes firms for false and misleading advertising claims that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) has been falsely labeling some of the products on its shelves.
The organization called Truth in Advertising claims that Wal-Mart has been falsely labeling some of the foreign products on its website as “Made in the USA”. After further investigation, the organization discovered that the retail company has mislabeled more than 100 products. The products that included mattress pads, baby wipes, and dental whitening products were imported but the firm had comfortably tagged them with the label. It is not clear whether the items were labeled randomly before inspection or whether it was intentional, in line with the promise to increase the presence of American-made products.
Upon the findings, TINA.org confronted Wal-Mart through a letter sent on June 22. The letter stated the organization’s intention to forward the matter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if the company failed to rectify the situation by June 26. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) responded with a promise to pull down the items from the websites as well as rectifying any other misrepresented material.
The retail company also responded with a statement that the error only affected a few items, and the firm does not expect that minor mishap to compromise the overall reliability of the website. A spokesperson for the company also stated that the problem will be rectified within one week.
The company’s spokesperson also announced that the badges were added to some of the products because the search engines would not show items the label in the search results. Adding them was purely intended to assist customers to find the products they want. Truth in Advertising placed a lot of emphasis on the authentic information. The organization stated that Americans are fond of home-made products and are even willing to pay premium prices for such products. It is, therefore, important for the information accessible to customers be in line with the actual products to maintain the consumer’s trust.
