Brazen trickery: Rama cup becomes a sham pack - less content, same price
Created: 08/13/2022, 06:38
By: Stella Henrich
The scam is well known in the food industry: Manufacturers bottle less, but offer their products at the same price.
Now the manufacturer of Rama is apparently making a lot of money in this way.
Hamburg ‒ The Hamburg consumer advice center has chosen the Rama brand as deceptive packaging of the month for August.
Apparently, the manufacturer Upfield is "once again tricking consumers", according to consumer advocates.
Because the margarine group only fills 400 grams instead of 500 grams in its cups.
The price, on the other hand, remains constant at many different retailers at 2.19 euros per cup.
This creates a "hidden price increase" of 25 percent.
What is particularly bold about this trickery is that the can is the same size.
With that, Upfield is pretending to have more content, because after all the consumer cannot look into the pack before buying, the Hamburgers uncover the Rama cheating.
Deceptive packaging uncovered: Company points to drastic cost increases
At the written request of consumer advocates, the company justifies itself with dramatic cost increases in its entire supply chain.
“We want our products to remain as affordable as possible.
That's why we've slightly reduced the grammage of some of our products," says Upfield.
The change is clearly visible on the packaging.
The final selling price of the product is always at the discretion of each retailer.
The matter seems settled for the manufacturer.
As described, this decision was not easy for us and we want to keep price increases as low as possible.
Against the background that we will always question the decision and that new packaging processes would cause additional costs that we did not want to pass on to consumers, we have decided to keep the cup sizes for the time being.
Corporate Affairs Manager of Upfield
Brazen cheating: The price for a cup of Rama remains at 2.19 euros.
But the content has shrunk.
The cup size has been retained.
© Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg
Armin Valet from the Hamburg consumer advice center initially believes that many regular customers do not even notice the swindle, "because they do not check the filling quantity with every purchase of such a well-known product," Valet
told
Bild.de.
He was obviously wrong about that.
Because the scam was so brazenly received by consumers that it rained down many complaints in a very short time.
"More than for any other product before," he reports
on
Bild.de.
Cheat Pack of the Month August: Rama recipe has also been changed
In addition to the reduced filling quantity, Upfield has also changed the recipe for the Rama brand, the Hamburgers continue to complain on their website.
The controversial palm fat can still be found on the list of ingredients.
However, the slogan on the packaging "100% natural ingredients" is misleading.
Because the fat spread also contains mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids (E 471).
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According to the manufacturer, the following changes have been made to Rama products:
Rama The classic, now made from 100% natural ingredients, from 500g to 400g
Rama Balance, from 500g to 450g
Incidentally, more and more brands are fooling consumers with deceptive packaging.
With the so-called shrinkflation (
English term for shrinkage and the word inflation
) the rising prices are cleverly covered up by the manufacturers.
The gummy bear manufacturer Haribo recently made headlines with it.
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