Niantic just lied in their F Face. Can we sue them?
On the official site (https://support.pokemongo.nianticlabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009004747-Raid-Battles) they said: "If you and your fellow Trainers are successful in defeating the Raid Boss, you’ll earn special items...", followed by "Special items may include Golden Razz Berries, Fast and Charged TM, and Rare Candy."
So, now we know that some players only get revives and potions as raid reward, which is the same as that there is no special item.
I see False Advertisement here.
Answers
Actually reading comprehension on origiainl poster is fine. People defending Ninatics poor wording is not.
Getting Zero of all 4 special items, would be a form of false advertising.
There is no qualifier, no maybe, in the first sentence that says if you win you will earn special items. It doesn't say you MIGHT earn special items, it says you WILL earn special items.
The second sentence having the word May in it doesn't negate the fact that the first sentence doesnt.
You DO earn special items every time. Special items "MAY" include Golden Razz Berries, Fast and Charged TM, and Rare Candy. Or, they may include potions and revives.
You are jumping to a conclusion about the definition of "special items," when in fact Niantic simply said they MAY include rare candy, golden razz's, etc. (the word "may" implying that they also may not).
I think you are wrong.
Considering that the 2 sentences reference raids, and those 4 items are available only from raids AND considering they are explicitly listed as special items.
I think Ninatic would have a hard time justifing in a court of law that Potions and Revives which you can get outside of raids are included in the listed Special Item rewards you are guaranteed in sentence 1 from a raid.
If Ninatic wanted to include other items, they could have said instead of "and rare candy" then "rare candy and other items"
Context is everything in a case like this. The fact that they EXPLICTLY listed 4 special items that are available ONLY from raids in a raid reward prompt would likely trump in a court of law any arguement to stretch the word "may" to include not listed items available outside raids.
Sure they could, if they listed it in the 2 sentences or if they listed "and other items"
But they didn't.
We will have to agree to disagree but I strongly suspect any plain language reading of those 2 sentences together would imply those 4 items only are Raid Special Items and that you are entitled to a minimum of 1 special item per raid.
What annoys me is that people are so quick to jump on the "let's sue them" bandwagon. The world would be a better place if people used common sense as opposed to purposefully looking for ways to manipulate a situation.
Batteries for example shouldn't have to include a warning about not being eaten, but because of previous lawsuits, Companies now have to include those warnings because certain people are morons and will sue them because it didn't specifically state not to,
more specifically, stop trying to take the time and effort that someone has spent creating something you use to make you enjoy yourself (for free) and turn it to your own financial gain.
Actually, you aren't understanding the meaning of the word paragraph. you also aren't a lawyer in the least sense of the word.
Any lawyer would tell you, that you can not seperate one line out of a law, or context of law/pargraph.
You are focused on only the 2nd sentence in a vacuum. It doesn't work that way in law or in writing. The 2nd sentence is contextually tied to the 1st sentence being raids.
Why are you guys defending Ninatic.
The wording is clear, and yes it is false advertising.
Sentence 1: If you and your fellow Trainers are successful in defeating the Raid Boss, you’ll earn special items.
Sentence 2: Special items may include Golden Razz Berries, Fast and Charged TM, and Rare Candy."
Sentence 1 does not have the word may in it. Sentence 1 clearly says you will get a special reward from a boss.
Sentence 2 has the word may, to cover which of those special rewards you get or dont. But that doesn't cover sentence 1 giving you nothing.
It is actually false advertising. I wouldn't go to court over it. But it is false advertising.
If you read the advertisement, you would expect at least 1 special reward. So if you get 0 Golden, 0 TMs, and 0 Rare candy, it is false advertising.
No, that's simply not true.
If they wanted special items to include more than the 4 items they would have said something like this
Special items may include Golden Razz Berries, Fast and Charged TM, Rare Candy, and other items"
They defined special items in the 2nd sentence to include 4 things, and 4 things only currently.
They didn't allow for Special Items to include anything outside those 4 items.
So if you get Zero of those 4 items, then yes it's false advertising.
Sorry, but your argumentation is porous as swiss cheese.
I quote you here: "If you read the advertisement, you would expect at least 1 special reward." This would only be true if sentence 2 would include the words "at least one of the following:"
And you're not getting nothing. You're getting at least some revives and/or potions.
The way they wrote it is intended to make you to jump to the conclusion that you will get at least one of those. But in fact the "may" makes all the difference. It gives the whole sentence uncertainty it is the nature of subjunctive constructions.
I understand what you are trying to argue Arak2, iIt would be a reach to argue that it constitutes false advertising and would likely not hold muster in a court of law. If you actually tried to make the above arguments before a court, it would likely be viewed as semantics. Given that there are differing opinions on what "special items" include and what are expected from raids, you will have a hard time proving that (1) the statements are in fact untrue and misleading, and (2) Niantic knew, or should have known, that the statements are untrue and misleading. I don't think that it would pass the "reasonable consumer" test to constitute misleading. In fact, I think it unreasonable to think that the statements made by Niantic are misleading. The statements have to have a likelihood to deceive, and this "implies more than a mere possibility that the advertisement might conceivably be misunderstood by some few consumers viewing it in an unreasonable manner." Lavie v. Procter & Gamble Co., 105 Cal. App.4th 496.
I mean you can try to argue to the court breaking down your understanding of the English language and tell him/her that's not how it works, but you would likely lose. To say is absolutely is "False Advertising" shows a misunderstanding of the law.
Just my two cents. Also, I am not defending Niantic just because I disagree. I share the same frustration as you with the game and don't like these new raid items.
I've already said I wouldn't personally bother, but keep in mind Ninatic has already faced lawsuits over Wahby Park in Michigan and over the Chicago, means that someone could.
I think there's a couple pieces of evidence you are missing. The sentence doesn't say "Extra" items, it says "Special" items. It then goes on to list 4 special item examples.
I think the fact that those 4 "Special" items were added to the game expressly with raids, the topic of the 2 sentence. Would preclude Potions/Revives from being considered special. They were already in the game, as normal items.
Let me ask you in plain terms, when raids were added did you consider Revives special items?
After reading all comments, I agree that it is at least misleading. Whether it is false advertising or not is debatable.
Nevertheless, their revenue on the day when legendary was first released reached 5.8M USD. Since almost everyone has bought the boxes and, Niantic didn't put up any notice before nerfing the rewards, it is a huge scale of "fraud". I for myself bought the boxes in the expectation that each ticket would at least turn into some Golden Berries, candies or TMs. I feel like a fool after they nerf it.
A few good players on Discord were interested in a Lugia, so I went to help tonite--we had 19 fight a Future Sight. It took us 130 seconds. I got 3 rare candy, 8 golden razz, 1 charged TM and 5 hyper potions. I missed catching a 2041, which is ok. A few did catch their first one, the other 3 raids I've done post-nerf were ALL potions and revives, plus 3 measly GR.
