As summer approaches, 29-page complaint calls Starbucks advertising misleading but Starbucks says ice is an essential component of iced drinks

More coffee, please! A Chicago woman is suing Starbucks for allegedly serving her too much ice and too little caffeine in its cold beverages.

With summer on the horizon and iced drinks coming back into season, Starbucks is being accused of short-changing its coffee lovers.

A Starbucks customer who orders a Venti cold drink receives only 14 fluid ounces of that drink just over half the advertised amount, and just over half the amount for which they are paying, states the 29-page-long complaint filed by customer Stacey Pincus, the lead plaintiff in the case, filed in northern Illinois federal court on Wednesday, according to Courthouse News Service.

In the iced coffee example, a Starbucks customer who orders and pays for a Venti iced coffee, expecting to receive 24 fluid ounces of iced coffee based on Starbucks advertisement and marketing, will instead receive only about 14 fluid ounces of iced coffee.

Starbucks cold beverages come in four different sizes: tall (12oz), grande (16oz), venti (24oz) and trenta (30oz). Hot beverages are only served in the first three sizes.

In essence, Starbucks is advertising the size of its cold drink cups on its menu, rather than the amount of fluid a customer will receive when they purchase a cold drink and deceiving its customers in the process, states the lawsuit.

Pincuss complaint also takes issue with the companys pricing system, which includes higher prices for cold drinks. Since hot drinks do not include ice and cost less, she argues, Starbucks is making more money off of customers buying iced drinks.

Starbucks believes that the lawsuit is without merit.

Our customers understand and expect that ice is an essential component of any iced beverage. If a customer is not satisfied with their beverage preparation, we will gladly remake it, Jamie Riley, a spokesperson for Starbucks, told CNN.

Starbucks customers who desire less ice in their beverages have also been known to ask for light ice when placing their orders.

You can order light ice or extra ice on any of our iced beverages, the company tweeted last April.

The lawsuit filed by Pincus is to apply to anyone who has purchased an iced beverage in the past 10 years. According to the complaint, the claims could exceed $5m.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/02/starbucks-sued-too-much-ice-drinks

Tireless Canadian-born TV pitchman made millions from marketing company selling everything from kitchen gadgets to compilation albums

Philip Kives, the tireless TV pitchman whose commercials implored viewers to wait, theres more! while selling everything from vegetable slicers to hit music compilations on vinyl, has died at age 87.

Samantha Kives said Thursday that her father died a day earlier after being hospitalized with an undisclosed illness.

Kives became wealthy after founding marketing company K-tel International, which sold Miracle Brush hair removers, Veg-o-matic vegetable slicers and compilation albums with such titles as Goofy Greats among numerous other products.

Kives started K-tel in the 1960s, and according to a biographical sketch on his website, his biggest selling product was the Miracle Brush, which sold 28 million in the late 1960s. More products would follow, including the Pocket Fisherman, a hamburger patty stacker, and the mood ring.

The TV commercials sometimes included the hook line: But wait, theres more!

For a generation of teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s, Kives legacy was a long list of compilation albums with hit songs that were sometimes edited down to fit 20 or more cuts on two sides of vinyl. A glam-pop song by The Bay City Rollers could be found on the same record as country singer Dolly Parton and soul act The Drifters. Novelty song compilations such as Goofy Greats featured songs about purple people-eaters, itsy-bitsy bikinis and surfing birds.

Kives said his biggest music seller was Hooked on Classics, which sold more than 10 million records.

K-tel grew exponentially in the 1970s and by the early 1980s, the company had sold more than half a billion albums worldwide.

Through it all, Kives mostly remained in his beloved Winnipeg and always balanced work with family life, his daughter said.

He would literally leave in the middle of a business meeting to come watch us play in a tennis tournament, she recalled. The commercials were also a family affair. A lot of the commercials he shot, hed bring us kids in … and wed be actors in the commercials.

Kives was born in Oungre, Saskatchewan, on 12 February 1929, the third of four children. The family lived on a small farm and survived on government welfare at times during the Great Depression. By the age of eight, Kives was trapping animals and selling the fur to afford clothes.

In 1957, I left the farm for good for the lights of the big city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the biographical sketch reads. I had various jobs from taxi driver to short-order cook. Then I tried my luck selling door-to-door, such items as cookware, sewing machines and vacuum cleaners.

In 1961, Kives made his way to New Jersey and did sales demonstrations at a department store. The following year, he returned to Winnipeg and found a new way to push products to a much larger audience.

I made a live five-minute TV commercial on a Teflon non-stick fry pan, he recalled. To my surprise, sales took off at a remarkable pace. I quickly spread the TV advertising throughout Canada and this five-minute commercial became the worlds first infomercial ever.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/28/philip-kives-ktel-infomercial-dies-87

This undated photo provided by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s SEPTA Transit Police shows packets and plastic containers of heroin confiscated in Philadelphia, including packets labeled with the name and face of Golden State Warriors basketball player Steph Curry in an attempt to signify the quality of the heroin. (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority’s SEPTA Transit Police via AP)

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/04/30/steph-curry-becomes-face-new-brand-philadelphia-heroin.html