What is considered false advertising?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Imagine advertisements marketing a particular product as '3rd best in the industry.' That would make for some awesome commercials.
 
Originally Posted By: Michael_P
Our oil creates a hydro-pneumatic cushion between vital engine parts.


I sure hope not!
 
Gokhan pointed out in another thread the cleverness of this wording. Considering that the magnitude of the data point is smaller than the error bar, and is essentially zero, it's easy to claim that the wear protection is unsurpassed or that no one does any better, since it cannot be shown, through that testing methodology, that anyone is doing better.
 
Originally Posted By: Luisraul924
every last one of those mother [censored] say "unsurpassed wear protection". Not everybody can be "unsurpassed"! If one is then by logic the others cannot be. So when everybody on the market is better than Mobil and everybody is apparently "unsurpassed" in wear protection, what exactly is false advertising then?


Logic and basic English skills. You obviously are deficient in either one, or both.
First I will help you to understand what 'surpass' means.
1. to go beyond in amount, extent, or degree; be greater than; exceed.
2. to go beyond in excellence or achievement; be superior to.
Now we have an understanding of the word 'unsurpassed' we can use logic to realise that if all products are equal to each other, then no product surpasses another product. They are all unsurpassed.
 
Last edited:
Here's a little story I heard several years ago from a colleague. I don't absolutely know that it's true but I know it was the story I was told and that that person was in a position to know the facts.

A certain oil company wanted to add a fuel economy claim to their highly prestigious engine oil. They ran a Sequence VIB test. It failed. They ran another. That failed too. I forget the exact number now but roughly speaking the company ran 199 failed VIB's before, miraculously, they got one that passed. So they disregarded all the fails and used the one that passed. False advertising of fuel economy? Apparently not according to them.

Who am I referring too and what was the oil? I won't say but when you think about it, it's pretty obvious..
 
Originally Posted By: Joe90_guy
Here's a little story I heard several years ago from a colleague. I don't absolutely know that it's true but I know it was the story I was told and that that person was in a position to know the facts.

A certain oil company wanted to add a fuel economy claim to their highly prestigious engine oil. They ran a Sequence VIB test. It failed. They ran another. That failed too. I forget the exact number now but roughly speaking the company ran 199 failed VIB's before, miraculously, they got one that passed. So they disregarded all the fails and used the one that passed. False advertising of fuel economy? Apparently not according to them.

Who am I referring too and what was the oil? I won't say but when you think about it, it's pretty obvious..

36.gif
 
Company A might do well in the 4-ball wear test
Company B might carefully weigh main bearings in taxis, run them 100k, then run them again
Company C might send stuff off to Blackstone and come back with low #s.
Company D might test against only "the top performers in the competition", being Coastal 10w30 and Accell SF from Walmart.

They'd all be in the right to claim they haven't been beat.
 
It took me about 5 minutes to find example ads claiming unsurpassed...

They all used a different measurement upon which they based their claim.

So if they say unsurpassed wear protection, the question you must ask is based on what criteria.

Or just ignore it as it's puffery.
 
"Unsurpassed Protection"

Why's it always "protection?" Why not "lubrication?"

"Our oil provides unsurpassed lubrication."

I'd be more impressed if they said that.
 
Originally Posted By: Clevy
Originally Posted By: Luisraul924
I've been to all the major/well known PCMO manufacturers websites researching PDSs and such. The one odd thing I noticed while visiting them is that every last one of those mother [censored] say "unsurpassed wear protection". Not everybody can be "unsurpassed"! If one is then by logic the others cannot be. They also all say they're better than Mobil1 but ExxonMobil is still taking everyone to school when it comes to sales. Even the people that know good oil mostly seem to choose Mobil1. If these other companies were so much better, why haven't their sales held a candle to ExxonMobil's wallet? So when everybody on the market is better than Mobil and everybody is apparently "unsurpassed" in wear protection, what exactly is false advertising then?



Actually shell is the volume leader in sales,so your "taking everyone to school" idea is wrong.
Iirc Mobil is 3rd worldwide behind shell and castrol.

As far as marketing is concerned since unsurpassed wear protection isn't really claiming anything specific such as an industry recognized wear spec so it doesn't mean much.
Pennzoil claims the least wear via some industry recognized method in the 5w-30 flavour and the competition isn't challenging the claim,which is very interesting considering the rp labelling issue among others.


I think he talking about synthetic oil sales.
 
Originally Posted By: Luisraul924
I've been to all the major/well known PCMO manufacturers websites researching PDSs and such. The one odd thing I noticed while visiting them is that every last one of those mother [censored] say "unsurpassed wear protection". Not everybody can be "unsurpassed"! If one is then by logic the others cannot be. They also all say they're better than Mobil1 but ExxonMobil is still taking everyone to school when it comes to sales. Even the people that know good oil mostly seem to choose Mobil1. If these other companies were so much better, why haven't their sales held a candle to ExxonMobil's wallet? So when everybody on the market is better than Mobil and everybody is apparently "unsurpassed" in wear protection, what exactly is false advertising then?


Its really simple if you break it down to simple thinking.

An automotive oil in the SN category can truthfully claim it offers unsurpassed protection simply because no one else surpasses it in the SN category because there is no higher API category. So the oil is truly unsurpassed.

Motor oil is all about marketing, Mobile 1 is king of marketing. It has NEVER produced ONE or a series of INDUSTRY standard tests to prove any of its marketing, yet everyone looks to Mobile 1 as the best. If you really think about it, ANY OIL, why does the public buy it? It buys it by the race team sponsorships on TV or the writing on the side of the bottle.
No Joe Public buys oil on real industry standard testing.

They are all good, choose the API rating you need and your good to go.
Some are better but there is no way to know what is best when buying off the shelf. Most people would be better off buying Walmart SuperTech and calling it a day until the day comes that the companies that charge more then SuperTech show you the testing data to back claims of being better.

Before I get flamed, I do think Mobile 1 and Valvoline are top tier name brand oils and far exceed oils like Royal Purple and other super expensive oils sold on marketing.

If I was to use any exotic oil it would be Amsoil, they are the ONLY ones that produce real tests against other oils to back up what they are selling. So if you want to spend money on a top tier oil choose Amsoil because no one else proves to the public what they are selling.
 
Last edited:
How many people change their own oil?
Out of that small fraction of the car-owning public, how many select synthetic oils?
Outside of BITOG, how many people would even consider PP, Ultra, Synpower or Edge?
M1 came to the market early and has been consistently sold under the same brand through many changes in formulation and through the addition of many new flavors.
XOM also has good marketing and a good website, plus if you need a Euro oil, M1 has you covered.
Good luck finding such an oil on the shelf at Walmart of any other brand.
Nobody else has had the marketing sense to do all of this, plus M1 can be relied upon to be a good oil, although that's actually true of the rest as well.
As a consequence, M1 eats every other synthetic oil for lunch in sales.
If I want to claim to be good, I'm going to try to claim that my oil is better than M1 in at least one quantifiable way, even though it may actually be worse overall.
 
All advertising is false advertising. I'd be surprised if there's even one verifiable fact in any bit of advertising you'd care to name.
 
Originally Posted By: Luisraul924
Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
97 V6 with 250k mi. The famous sludger.

Ah yes. Have you thought of running the engine hotter (say with a TRD radiator cap and higher temp thermostat) as a preventative measure?


Having a 1MZ-FE run hotter is the last thing you want.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom