Baked Beans, Cars and Fraud Awareness

Next week, in my capacity as Minister of Consumer Affairs, I will officially launch Fraud Awareness Week 2010 – an initiative in which private sector, public sector, and community agencies work together to raise awareness of scams in the community.

To kick things off, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs visited Otago University's Orientation Week to run a 'scam' of its own and get the message out.

The Ministry 'scam' involved running a competition in which contestants took turns sitting in a bath tub of cold baked beans – kindly provided free of charge by Heinz-Watties – with the individual who sat in the beans the longest winning a car. The catch, however, is that the 'car' was actually a two-inch toy.

Participants signed up using an entry form that asked for personal details, signature, date of birth and featured a check-box to say “I have read and agree to all the terms and conditions” – which stated that the car would not be the same size as the model shown and that the Ministry could sell all competitors' details to anyone it pleases. The last point of the terms and conditions congratulated them on reading all the fine print and informs them that the competition is a scam. To ensure no hard feelings, all competitors were in on the stunt – but entry forms were passed throughout the crowd.

The stunt generated a huge amount of interest from the students, who were assured that the Ministry would not actually sell their details on, and received packs containing a free can of beans along with Scamwatch and Ministry of Consumer Affairs information. Further, around one in 10 students read the fine print and realised what was going on – they received a free can of beans.