Dawn Dishwashing Detergent Fraud

Dawn Dishwashing Liquid TV ads claim they donate $1 from the sale of every bottle to helping clean up wildlife caught in oil spills. I had been buying this product feeling virtuous until I read the fine print. (I can read the bottom line on a reading eye chart. I had trouble reading Dawn’s disclaimer.) It turns out they do no such thing. Only if you visit their website and pass a gauntlet of tests do they donate the $1. Further they cap their donations at $500,000 no matter how much soap they sell. The gauntlet includes:

• Selecting the correct browser. The HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is non-standard and does not work with most browsers.
• Taking a vision test to read a serial number on the bottom of the detergent bottle in faint dot etching.
• Taking a typing test to type a string of nonsense correctly.

What Dawn has done is unforgivable, effectively using fraudulent advertising to steal people’s donations to help oil soaked wildlife. The executives responsible should be criminally prosecuted and forced to pay up the $1 on every bottle as promised. Note the website use weasel words, more truthfully “one bottle can = $1 to save wildlife”, where the TV ads fraudulently claim “one bottle = $1 to save wildlife ”. They should also be required to place ads confessing to the net amount per bottle they actually donated.

I wrote Procter & Gamble’s legal department, but they ignored me. Perhaps they would pay attention to a boycott.

On 2010-06-27 the TV ads started to use the “can“ weasel wording, and they flash for a fraction of a second in smaller type the need to visit the website and the $500K cap. Dawn are still trying to deceive their customers. What sleasebags!

On 2011-03-20 copies of the commencial disappeared from the web.