False Advertising and its implications

Today as I was watching a commercial for "No-No" hair removal I began to wonder why companies are not more severely punished for false advertisements.

The commercial stated it uses a form of  "electric therapy" to kill the hair follicles, allowing for the permanent removal of hair. It then did a time-lapse and showed consumers hair magically vanish as they ran a $20 controller looking object over their skin.

How many times are their commercials on T.V. where objects claim to do this or that, and nothing actually happens? In our world of instant-satisfaction consumers often see an advertisement, are given a phone number while in the background it blinks, "ONLY AN HOUR LEFT ON THIS OFFER" and they run to their credit cards, "charge it to the game" and have a worthless product that doesn't do as it claims.

In my opinion, if a product cannot do exactly as it is advertised on T.V. then it should be instantly shut-down. Since when did it become "ok" to lie about your products capabilities in order to gain more customers? America used to be creative, designing products that were truly applicable in the ways that they were advertised.

Now almost daily you see paid-programming where some buffoon exclaims that you can spread this rubber-based product on the bottom of a row-boat and you will be A-ok. Or, for those who have heard of "magic-putty" you can tow a Mack Truck because this product is so strong. But when you buy it, attempt to hand a three pound picture on your wall, it doesn't work, instead you have a broken picture frame and a shitty, useless product.

I personally believe that consumers should get the most accurate "claims" by companies on their product. If the entire world falsely advertised their solutions, how would consumers ever know what they are actually buying? If you say I can do something with what I'm buying, then I should without a doubt be able to do so.

So I end my blog with the question, do you think that companies should receive penalties and fines if they are found guilty of false-advertisement?

I think the death-penalty would be a good starting point.