NY’ers Mad Subway Isn’t Giving Full 12-Inch Footlongs

January 17th, 2013. By AbiK

There’s new meaning to being mad at the subway in NYC—and it’s got nothing to do with platform closures or delays.

No, some folks are mad at Subway—the sub sandwich restaurant chain that’s made “footlong” a part of our lunchtime lexicon. They’re mad because they’ve taken a tape measure to those Subway footlong subs and found (shock!) that in a random test, 4 out of 7 footlongs were, in fact, only 11 or 11.5 inches.

Yes, a NY Post discovery reveals that those footlong subs may be falsely advertised. Usually, such egregious findings have the potential to lead to a consumer fraud class action lawsuit being filed. None has apparently been filed yet—not surprising given New Yorkers’ capacity to roll with the daily barrage of life’s nuisances.

The fraudulent footlong story first became a viral hit when Matt Corby, of Australia, posted a photo measuring his footlong—and it coming up short at 11 inches—on his Facebook page (where else? see image above). According to the Post, the FB post got 118,000 likes in 24 hours. That FB post then led the NY Post to traipse around three boroughs buying footlongs and measuring them—the aforementioned ‘test’.

Now, you may think, “so what?” But the NY Post took things a step further and calculated the impact of missing that 12th inch on a consumer who purchases a footlong every other day for a year, at $7 per footlong. They estimated that short-changing customers that inch of sandwich equates to about a $100 loss. That’s about 44 rides on the real subway!

According to the Post, Les Winogad, a spokesman for Subway, said the photo on Corby’s Facebook page “doesn’t meet our standards.” Newsflash: it doesn’t meet New Yorkers standards either. Or anyone else’s.

Tags: Consumer Fraud, false advertising, Footlong, Subway

This was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2013 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Consumer Fraud, Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.