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I just saw an TurboTax Ad where a guy was like "I Like free stuff" and then it said he was "happy to read the disclaimer" on TurboTax and see that "Roughly 37%

• halJordan 3y ago
  I agree on every level, but I'm compelled to remind you this is the America where wendy's (?) had to revert to a 1/4 pounder from a 1/3 pounder bc people thought they were getting less meat. And let's not forget the ever-present anti-education cohort that can't be convinced math is good even when you tell them it's how you calculate discounts or tips.
  • sharps1 3y ago
    I had to look this up as I didn’t grow up in the States. It was A&W. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr... Crazy.
    • cityofdelusion 3y ago
      This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.
      • MBCook 3y ago
        Reportedly that’s the answer they got in focus groups when they tried to figure out why it failed. 4 > 3.
        • ckw 3y ago
          So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?
          • zo1 3y ago
            Quarter and pounder rhymes so rolls off people's tongues. Fifta-Pounder? Fifth-Pounder? Five-Pounder? For all we know, marketing vetoed it cause they were lazy.
            • euroderf 3y ago
              How 'bout a five-ouncer ? Or would that suffer by seeming microscopic when listed close to "32 ounce" drinks ?
      • maximus-decimus 3y ago
        I did teacher's college in Canada and the teacher who taught math said his biggest surprise when he moved from Europe to Canada is how terrible people were with fraction. I think he asked a barista to fill his cup to 2/3 and they couldn't do it because they didn't know what 2/3 was.
        • kidsil 3y ago
          I had the same shock but with reading. They're very much ahead in Europe in terms of reading levels.
      • wharvle 3y ago
        Anecdotally, it seems like working with fractions is where a lot of people fall off the math-train and never get back on. … yes, that early.
        • ethbr1 3y ago
          Fractions and negative numbers. And, to be fair, they're the first math concepts that aren't intuitive. Which IMHO leads to some people not studying, then feeling lost, then rationalizing their lack of effort as "I'm bad at math" or "Math is hard."
          • Ferret7446 3y ago
            Fractions are pretty intuitive. Is the pizza or cake analogy really that advanced?
            • wharvle 3y ago
              One third times one fifth loses a lot of folks. As does addition and subtraction of fractions that don’t start with the same denominator, for that matter. They might figure out what to do to pass the test, but they may not get it.
              • chrisfinazzo 3y ago
                Can confirm - While I was decent at math up to a point, fractions and long division in 4th Grade sent me down a hole that took me years to get out of...until Algebra II as a junior in HS crushed me. I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. I actually did reasonably well in Algebra for the first quarter or so until it all fell apart.
                • wharvle 3y ago
                  I re-invented what turned out to be short division (no joke! I wouldn’t learn it had a name until I was in my late 20s) because I hated long division so much, same year we started doing long division in school (4th grade? 3rd? IDK). Fits in about the same space as the original problem unless it’s printed so small that you have to rewrite it, and way less room for transcription errors. I also find it clearer but that may just be me (fwiw I’m “bad at math”—I find it incredibly boring and basically can’t follow proof- and equation/identity-based stuff, I have to turn it all into algorithmic thinking to have a prayer of understanding it; i.e. my opinion on the superiority of short division is that of a mathematical imbecile, so, grain of salt) > I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. It doesn’t help that in chemistry, 1 + 1 may be 1. Or 3. :-) [edit] short division: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division Under the “example” section, the little superscripts are what you write in by hand on the problem as you work it, at least as I did it. 9/4 in the hundreds place is 2 with 1 remainder, so write 2 up above as part of the solution and a 1 superscript next to the 5 in the problem itself (tens place), now that’s 15, divide that, 3 goes in the tens place of the solution, write the remainder (3) next to the digit in the ones place as a superscript and do it again, if you need to keep going just add a decimal point and zeroes as required. Way faster than working long division, takes up less space, and less error prone (imo). What’s actually going on is clearer (again, imo)
      • ants_everywhere 3y ago
        It's not that they're rare, it's that it legitimately is an easy error to make even if you understand it to be an error. Even people who work with equations every day will occasionally make careless mistakes like this. That's why mathematicians joke about how it's important to make an even number of sign errors. To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... But it's enough of a cognitive barrier that it doesn't surprise me that it would impact the behavior even of people who would answer correctly on a test. Where it does get easy is if you work with the same set of fractions every day. For example, if you work in construction in the US you can probably quickly order the fractions commonly used for measurement, e.g. 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 3/4 etc. But 1/3 isn't one of these. Now that I think about it, they probably should have just chosen a fraction that you can find on a tape measure, like 3/8.
        • JadeNB 3y ago
          > To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... You absolutely don't have to remember that x |-> 1/x is order reversing, and, for most people, shouldn't—you immediately give two or three other methods (I don't understand what "write down the equation" means) that are a much better way for the average person to check this.
          • ants_everywhere 3y ago
            Yes, but I was also speaking generally about fractions since that was the context of the comment I was responding to. For example, consider: 1/1123 < 1/1092. Is that inequality true? The fastest way to check is to compare the denominators and adjust for the way division interacts with the inequality. You can't really draw that pie chart quickly. You could write the equation down and multiply both sides though. For 1/3 vs 1/4 yes you could draw it quickly. Or you could fill a glass 1/3 full of water and one 1/4 and compare them. But that's a pretty special case for small enough denominators.
      • JadeNB 3y ago
        > This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on. I literally had an argument with a room full of US university professors about whether or not 30% and 1/3 were the same thing.
        • grigri907 3y ago
          ... and what was your answer?
          • JadeNB 3y ago
            > ... and what was your answer? The correct one, that 30% is less than 1/3.
      • acdha 3y ago
        I thought so as well but A&W backs that version: https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...
      • reactordev 3y ago
        Average Americans that frequent QSR’s don’t math so good.
      • happymellon 3y ago
        Or perhaps all those people on here who defend US Standard measurements over metric and quote the fractions they know over decimals as an advantage are a minority? Perhaps the average Joe would be better off with mm rather than 1/16" increments.
    • refurb 3y ago
      Wait, did Snopes say this was real because of a news article that contain hearsay?
      • a_random_canuck 3y ago
        Do people think the NY Times reports hearsay as fact? Here, straight from the horse's mouth: https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...
        • peteradio 3y ago
          Based on a "focus group" discussion which are well known for selecting the brightest bunch of people who have nothing better to do than answer questions for 2 hours and get a coupon for free fries.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • foob 3y ago
    It's also important to take any corporation's explanation for increasing their own margins with an extremely large grain of salt. I'm not doubting in the slightest that consumers had some confusion around the fractions, but all it would take for the company to revert their campaign is for the increase in sales to insufficiently offset the increase in their own costs. Blaming it on consumer stupidity afterwards washes their hands of any responsibility for backpedaling, and makes for a memorable and repeatable story that increases brand recognition while simultaneously painting them as heroically trying to offer more value for the same cost.
  • m463 3y ago
    VINCENT: And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? JULES: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the f*** a Quarter Pounder is. JULES: Then what do they call it? VINCENT: They call it Royale with Cheese. JULES: Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac? VINCENT: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac. Aside: a lot of tax preparation services, or their services that let you upload your data - the privacy policy says they can all "use" your financial info.
    • nusl 3y ago
      Personally I prefer Big Kahuna Burger
  • filoleg 3y ago
    You say “this is America”, but my mother (who grew up in USSR/Russia and was in her mid 30s at the time) was seriously asking middle-schooled me on multiple occasions whether 0.7 liters of milk was less than 0.55 liters. I don’t remember the exact numbers, i just remember that the smaller volume one had 2 digits past the decimal, and the larger one just had 1 digit. And no, she wasn’t testing my knowledge, she was seriously confused, as she would ask me that even later in life. Mind you, she has a masters degree. She is in her early 50s right now, and she is fully of sound mind to this day, not senile or anything like that. Imo, this type of silliness is rather common across many different places, but Americans just tend to own it and not be afraid of coming off silly (if that’s how they genuinely end up behaving in a given situation).
• purple_ferret 3y ago
  Are they leaning in to it or are they forced to fit in the disclaimer? Seems like the strategy of the ad is to repeat the word "Free" so much people don't remember the rest and to make it seem like the disclaimer is meaningless. Even with it, it's still free.
  • chefandy 3y ago
    Probably a bit of both. What the commenter is describing is a textbook social proof tactic. "Hey, I like free stuff and taxes make me feel like a bit of a doofus, just like that guy. And like that guy, I see myself as the clever sort of person that isn't fooled by fine print. That free Turbo Tax program sounds awfully useful and free for people like me!" And Intuit can also point to that commercial and say "how is this trying to disguise the proof?" and they'd be right. They're just also trying to make it feel free still by making it free for a relatable character. Sounds hokey but that sort of shit has been the bread and butter of advertising since forever. A vanishingly small percentage of people are anywhere close to as rational as they think they are when buying things. Many of the most self-assuredly "skeptical, rational, well-researched consumer" types get totally snowed by the simplest marketing ideas because they're looking for sales bullshit they can empirically disprove, and most marketing is influencing people in a way that makes them think they came to the conclusion independently.
• zerocrates 3y ago
  Yeah this ad has been running a lot. I was pretty sure when first seeing it that they'd already gotten in trouble for their last ads that used the word "free" a lot, and this was a very direct response to that... I guess that's just the final decision that's being reported on here.
• xyst 3y ago
  How this ad got green lit, distributed to various mediums (tv ads, yt channel, social media), and nobody saying “wait, this is terrible” is unfathomable to me.
  • thegrim33 3y ago
    Well, I mean, that extends to pretty much all advertising nowadays. It's all completely awful. A while back I saw a CGI cookie hop up on a table and twerk its animated cookie ass at the camera to rap music, on public television, in order to sell cookies. How many people were involved in making something like that, and all agreed that this was how they wanted to sell cookies. The same mentalities are built in to most companies now, it's all downhill from here.
  • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Just remember all the other tone-deaf commercials that have ever been released. They all passed teams of people saying "this is a great idea."
• Imz4di 3y ago
  TurboTax is marketing to the kind of people who think getting big refunds is a good thing. That's generally people with lower incomes, so this fits that target.
  • xivzgrev 3y ago
    It is generally a good thing for folks who live paycheck to paycheck. Higher withholding forces more budgeting, and then they get a big paycheck once a year to pay off whatever
    • whamlastxmas 3y ago
      It’s almost certainly a bad thing to get a big refund because small budgetary changes can result in being unable to make ends meet which is extremely expensive in terms of fines
    • chrisfinazzo 3y ago
      In addition, I wouldn't be surprised to find that many of the people who are in the target demographic for this feature don't itemize - and never have a need for such practices. A 1040 + W2 might the only equation these people need to solve for.
    • burkaman 3y ago
      People who live paycheck to paycheck are very good at budgeting because they have to do it to survive, they don't need any more pressure. If anything it's richer people that could use a little prodding, but either way we don't need the government to be withholding extra money from people it thinks might have bad habits. > they get a big paycheck once a year to pay off whatever If you have something big to pay off, you usually need to do it right away. You probably can't afford to wait however many months until you get your refund.
      • deleted 3y ago
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      • fantasyfacts 3y ago
• supertrope 3y ago
  This is distressingly common in marketing. "0% APR financing for well qualified buyers." Where well qualified means 720 FICO score, lower debt to income, and lower payment to income ratios. These details are not even in the fine print of the ad. Then there's ads that show a picture of the high end version of a product with text "starting from <low price>!" (that corresponds to the base model).
  • garciasn 3y ago
    Less than a 720 FICO score is “fair” with 720 being “good”. I’m sorry but “fair” doesn’t make you a well-qualified buyer IMO, so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
    • supertrope 3y ago
      It's FICO & DTI & PTI. None of this is defined in the ad not even the fine print. I'm well aware that 700 is around the 50th percentile.
• diogenescynic 3y ago
  I saw the exact same ad today.
• llacb47 3y ago
  That is… unsettling.