Word: baits
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...haggling about Stalin's price; he got all he asked, without argument. Roosevelt apparently welcomed the expansion of Russian power in the Western Pacific. Behind Churchill's back, Roosevelt offered Stalin participation in a Korean trusteeship from which Roosevelt proposed to exclude Britain; Stalin disdained the bait. Behind Chiang Kai-shek's back, Roosevelt gave Stalin his view of China's internal strife: "The fault lay more with the Kuomintang [Chiang's party] . . . than with the so-called Communists." Stalin did not argue. If this was Roosevelt's view, then world Communism would know...
Selling by Underselling. Though the bait advertisers' products differ, their methods are the same. Each offers an item at a ridiculously low price as a come-on, to get into the prospect's home or get the housewife into his store. Then the salesman tries to switch the prospect to a high-priced model. For example, in Cleveland last week, a housewife answered a TV ad for "a brand-new Free-Westinghouse* sewing machine for $50." When the friendly salesman turned on the machine, it made so much racket she thought it would scare her children. When...
...Since bait advertisers calculate that one housewife in three will buy the high-priced model, the pattern is repeated daily in thousands of U.S. homes. In Seattle, vacuum cleaners are popular bait. Radio station KOL advertised a rebuilt vacuum cleaner for $8.95, but a demonstration showed that it lacked the suction to extinguish a match, and the salesman switched to a $120 cleaner...
...identifies a "mystery tune" (usually something as well known as The Star-Spangled Banner) receives a coupon to buy "a $14 photograph" for $1. At the studio the prospect is pressured into buying a frame ($2.95 extra), tinting ($6 extra), and perhaps a whole set of pictures. In Chicago, bait advertisers plug a food-freezer plan. By buying in large quantities from a "co-op," the prospect supposedly saves enough to pay off the cost of a freezer. But, says Chicago's Better Business Bureau: "The savings to the consumer through the food-freezer plans are no greater than...
Although the nation's Better Business Bureaus and legitimate advertisers are battling the baiters, they have found it hard to make fraud charges stick so long as the sharpie actually has a cheap product for sale. Radio and television stations have been slow to ban bait ads, say that it is impossible to check every advertiser. One of the best ways to end bait advertising was used by Denver's Better Business Bureau. It hired a man with a sandwich board ("Don't get hooked by phony wholesale offers") to parade outside the advertiser's store...