Fresh from a bumper year that saw an 800% increase in the forint value of fines it levied, Hungary’s Competition Office (GVH) has raced into 2010 with its regulatory guns blazing. According to fn.hu, the GVH on Tuesday announced that it had slapped a Ft 1 million fine on the local unit of German discounter ALDI for unfair business practices. ALDI’s offense was that it had deceptively advertised a line of children’s carnival costumes by suggesting they included toys that in reality they didn’t. So while the ads for the Indian girl costume (not the one pictured at left, duh) showed her with an axe – and said the costume came with all the “necessary” accessories – there was no axe in the box. Ditto for the princess costume, which came without a magic wand, and the ninja costume, which came sans sword. Bwaaaaaaaaa!
Being the parent of a two-year-old who would probably explode in flames if he were on the receiving end of such a bait-and-switch, I can’t say I disagree with the GVH’s decision to stick it to ALDI over the missing gear. Still, given the ceaseless humiliations consumers in Hungary are subjected to, you do have to wonder if this was really the most pressing case at hand.
Meanwhile, one doesn’t have to be a cynic to imagine that the GVH has forged some kind of backroom deal with whatever agencies are responsible for child safety laws in Hungary to split the millions ALDI will doubtless be fined if they now go ahead and start putting axes and swords into all those boxes of Indian and ninja costumes.
@ERIK:
So we now really are into the carnival season …
Will this kind of “news” be all until the parliamentary election ?
I want to take that Indian girl home with me. I usually buy all my drink “alcoholic and otherwise” at Aldi.
Price-wise,it is a very good store and the quality
is reasonable, also.
If you think this article is “trite” – what of the discussion about cold remedies over on politics.HU?
A little bit of diversionary fun, now and again, will do us all some good.
P.S.
I was getting very interested in all that information about food…but it seems to have “dried up”?
Perhaps they work out that the junk Tesco often passes off as food is in violation of a trade descriptions axe (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).
I’m waiting for the story about CBA being fined for
selling out-of-date food, as they regularly do at my
local.
Lighten up Wolfi!
If Aldi were selling them as pictured, I’d have one. Looks like she has all the necessary accessories to me!
Thanks a lot Abácsi – my wife has all the “accessories” I need – and two women would be too much for me anyway at my age, even with Viagra …
Wolfi, that’s just way too much information
I went shopping at CBA yesterday out of necessity.
Can’t get to Aldi or PennyMarket because of the ice and snow.
The prices have risen again at CBA and, the quality of the vegetables and meat- deplorable!
I noticed a marked difference in the shoppers’ attitudes as well. They have gone from snarling at each other to totally ignoring the others presence altogether.
I am having a candlelit dinner of carrot soup this evening if anyone would like to join me?
The CBS staff are good at snarling at each other
though, I suspect it’s one of the main hiring
criteria. Regarding dinner, are you male or female –
or just vegyes?
I am a mixture of all three..a sort of hybrid you might say.. a cordon bleu in the kitchen, a whore in the bedroom, and a vegetable by design.
A utilitarian hermaphrodite of unspecified origin
that is conversant with the ways of the night butterfly.
If we were to achieve a clandestine moment together
and fulfilled the contract..and perchance I was to
be in the “family way” what would we call the offspring? And, indeed, what would the liaison between a dwarf and a vegetable produce.
My thoughts are a genetically modified troglodyte
that we could call Bernadette, or Benedict, depending on its gender.
If it goes three ways (like me) then it would have to be named Trisha?
I was very dissented when my Aldi ‘chimney sweep’ costume was just a plain old Magyar Garda uniform, but even that was missing its customary butt plug.
Dissented…wtf does that mean? How could spellcheck switch that work for “disappointed”? And more, why can’t I spell disappointed without spellcheck?
Because you are either drunk or too stupid! PS writing ‘fuck’ all the time only makes you look like the ignorant,dumb yank that you are.
@ricsi:
then writing “friggen” in every second posting makes you … ?
Hey guys, this is realdeal.hu? Politics.HU for the bloody-nose stuff. Please!
Well I am glad that it just comes from writing Fuck rather than the illogical arguments you seem to somehow be able to type out.