The headline on the letter from Time magazine seemed clear: "Our sweepstakes results are now final: Mr. Jean-Marc Richard has won a cash prize of $833,337.00!"
OK, I know what you're thinking. You're too savvy to fall for that, right? I am, too. Those of us inured to marketers' lies – let's call them what they are – know to look for the fine print, especially when something sounds too good to be true.
And, of course, the catch was there for Richard to find. In tiny type, the promise of riches was preceded by a contingency: "If you have and return the Grand Prize winning entry in time and correctly answer a skill-testing question, we will officially announce that...."
But last week, according to Canada's Globe and Mail, a Quebec judge awarded $100,000 (about $95,500 in U.S. dollars) in damages to Richard for having been unjustly snookered.
The Globe and Mail story said Justice Carol Cohen of Quebec Superior Court based the size of her award in part on Quebec's French Language Charter, saying the wrong was compounded by mailing the English-language pitch to French-speaking Canadians. (Not that language alone explains the problem. Richard uses English at work, and recalls showing the document to an anglophone colleague – who congratulated him on winning.)
An additional problem for Time was that the signature on the letter, "Elizabeth Matthews," was apparently for a nonexistent person – something Richard discovered when he called to complain that his magazine subscription had arrived but his sweepstakes award hadn't.
"It is patently obvious to any reader that the mailing from Time was not only false and incomplete, it was specifically designed to be misleading ... especially to a reader who is not reading in his or her mother tongue," Cohen said, according to the newspaper.
The paper said Time was expected to appeal. If the case were in the United States, I'd expect the magazine to win. Here, we think it's paternalistic to protect consumers from Wild West marketing tactics – even though we know that many people, particularly the elderly, fall for them.
But for the moment, our neighbors to the north have struck a small blow for the more trusting among us. Maybe even for good faith itself.
