Tim Tam & Thermomix Shonky winners
CHOICE announces 2014 Shonky winners
After a record number of nominations, this year's Shonky Awards have seen two banks, an iconic biscuit company and a cult kitchen appliance targeted for the awards no company wants to win.
One of the biggest winners (or losers) is the Commonwealth Bank, which presided over one of Australia's worst financial planning failures, leaving thousands of customers in the red. A senate inquiry found that some of Commbank's financial planners orchestrated a "calculated deceit" and deliberately and in some cases fraudulently put clients into risky and inappropriate investments to meet bonus goals. The bank offered up a slick PR campaign apologising for the failure, but at the same time lobbied to water down financial advice protections that could protect consumers in the future.
Arnott's Tim Tam peanut butter flavour biscuits have also come under the microscope, after CHOICE discovered the company's new flavour contained no peanut butter, had two fewer biscuits and 35g less per pack, and cost the same as a regular packet of Tim Tams. Not that you would suspect being short-changed, as the package size has remained the same.
The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite also received a Shonky Award for some creative accounting meant to convince consumers that one charge of the e-reader would provide eight weeks of battery life. Buried in the fine print was the fact that the Kindle's claims were based on thirty minutes of use per day, meaning the actual battery life is 28 hours, far from the eight weeks promised.
And CHOICE's own guilty mum Kate Browne brought to our attention the S-26 Gold Toddler and Junior milk drinks, which are marketed to parents concerned about ensuring that their children receive appropriate nutrients, despite the fact that they aren't needed for healthy children over the age of one.
Other winners announced at the event were Kmart's swimwear, which may become transparent when wet and mustn't come in contact with rough surfaces, heated pools or harsh chemicals and Bankwest, which offers a high, teaser interest rate for their children's savings account before slashing the rate after a year.
Last but not least, Vorwerk, makers of the cult all-in-one mixer the Thermomix, took out an award for their choppy communication around the launch of a new model that saw loyal 'Thermo' fans lose hundreds of dollars off the resale value of their now-superseded machines – practically overnight.
Read more about this year's Shonky winners in the Hall of Shame, or cast your vote for the Shonkiest Shonky in our people's poll.
Source : Choice October 14th, 2014 Author : Zoya Sheftalovich
