Re: How to get your under 12 child a free VW

[Dan Henry <danhenry@indiana.edu>]

Jesus:  another internet legend rears its head:

Would it have been possible to check this out for one second before wasting this bandwith?

(This is from the urban legends webpage, http://www.snopes.com/spoons/faxlore/gerber.htm)

Claim:  Parents are entitled to claim one $500 savings bond per child
>from Gerber because Gerber lied about using nothing but natural
ingredients in its baby food.
Status:  False.

Across the country people are getting drawn into yet another Internet
and fax hoax, this one involving a non-existent lawsuit against Gerber.
They're being told that:


Gerber lost the lawsuit because they advertised that their food was all
natural, and when taken to court it came out that they used
preservatives! In the settlement Gerber Food is now responsible for
giving every child born between 1985 and 1997 (under the age of 12) a
$500 SAVINGS BOND.

The grimy bit of faxlore goes on to instruct parents to mail copies of
their child's birth certificate and social security card to a post
office box in Minneapolis.

(This hoax is similar to one involving baby formula. Those interested in
the Enfamil and Similac hoax should see our Baby Formula page.)

Gerber hasn't been involved in any such lawsuit, and there is no $500
windfall awaiting parents foolish enough to supply their child's birth
and Social Security information to strangers. If you don't want to take
just my word for it, have a look at the page Gerber put together to
combat this rumour. Or read the following fine article about the rumours
Gerber has been battling.

"Gerber Battles Rumor on Lawsuit Payouts" by Christopher Walton, The
News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), May 2, 1997:

A rumor has been spreading across America like chicken pox through a
day-care center: It says parents can pocket up to $1,400 by joining a
class-action lawsuit against baby-food maker Gerber Products.

The rumor is bogus.

But that hasn't stopped it from causing Gerber untold headaches.

In what appears to be a massive misunderstanding rather than a scam, the
word on the street -- and on fax machines, fliers and the Internet -- is
that settlement of a class-action lawsuit against Gerber allows parents
to receive anything from a $500 savings bond to $1,400 cash if they
bought baby food or formula during the last 17 years from the Fremont,
Calif.-based company.

But Gerber is not involved in any class-action settlement. It is not
even the target of a class-action suit.

"There's nothing to the rumor," said Chris DeWitt, spokesman for
Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley, whose office has been fielding a
flood of calls. "It's just that - a rumor," DeWitt said. "It's taken on
a life of its own, and there's nothing we can do to stop a rumor."

The confusion apparently stems from the fact that three makers of baby
formula -- Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Mead
Johnson & Co. -- recently settled lawsuits that charged them with
price-fixing. That settlement affects customers in eight states -- not
including Michigan -- and allows consumers to collect $5 to $45 each. A
separate settlement involving Michigan and six other states provides no
cash back to consumers. Instead, the defendant companies will supply
formula for distribution to needy families in those states.

The Gerber rumor first flared in December, shortly before the Jan. 31
 deadline for filing claims in the price-fixing suit against the other
three companies. Misinformation crossed the nation in various forms, but
the main message was that parents with a child 17 or younger could
collect big bucks by mailing the kid's birth certificate and Social
Security number to a post office box in Minneapolis. Richard Redfern,
the Minneapolis-based settlement administrator in the price-fixing case,
said his company received 1 million pieces of mail and an average of
80,000 phone calls a day during three days in December.

Suddenly, people were lining up at post offices from Alaska to Rhode
Island as parents rushed to meet mythical deadlines for filing claims.
For two weeks in December, hundreds of would-be claimants lined up at
the main Detroit post office.

"They were sending stuff certified mail, express mail, everybody trying
to meet some deadline," said a postal employee who declined to be named.
"And there was a guy out front passing out fliers that explained how to
file a claim against the baby formula companies."

"The deadline would change each month," Redfern said. "In one pocket of
the country, the rumored deadline would be February, then in March the
rumor would surface in another part of the country, with a new deadline,
and lines would suddenly form at those post offices."

The problem has been especially irksome for Gerber, which has been
besieged by phone calls. "Call frequency has been up the last two days,"
said Van Hindes, Gerber's director of corporate affairs. "A lot of the
calls this week have been from the Detroit and Traverse City areas, as
well as Milwaukee."

Redfern pointed out that even though Michiganders never had a shot at
award money from the other three companies, the deadline for filing has
passed, the post office box is closed, and his firm is awaiting
permission to destroy 2 million pieces of post-deadline mail. "People
should know that if they mail anything to us now, they're wasting their
postage money," Redfern said.

Barbara "gerbeled facts" Mikkelson