complaint-against-lays-pepsico-to-pay-compensation-for-underweight-packages, picture credit: consumerpsyche.com

Kya aap hawa khaate hain? 

Translation: Do you consume air?

Apparently, you do, if you are a regular consumer of PepsiCo’s Lays!

The frustratingly overbloated Lays packets with a laughable number of chips inside has always irked me. But, I was always shusshed by the all knowing elders saying that all that flavored air inside packs was a must for protecting the chips.

I had always known. Parents should have gone by the numbers NOT the size.

Sadly, they never agreed and I spent a forlorn childhood, spending half my time fighting frustrating battles with my siblings over the last tidbits and the rest crying, hugging the sinfully tantalizing aroma of the empty packet. Sob!

No wonder when Akosha’s  Spark raised a demand to reduce the air, I was amongst the first vehement supporters of this ‘noble’ cause!

And now I know that I was right all the time. The packets indeed had less chips that they should!

A particularly alert and rather methodical customer acted on the suspicion, half the kids population in this country had harbored for past decade.

He weighed the Lays packet he had purchased.

And horror of horrors, a packet whose weight was marked 30 grams actually weighed just (gasp!) 8 grams!

CHEATERS!!!

The consumer was as appalled as all of us are right now and dragged the company to a consumer forum with the help of Consumer Education and Research Society (CERS), after several unsatisfactory response from the country.

The Ahmedabad consumer forum, (whose Bench or its kids were evidently as upset with Lays as the rest of us), ordered the company to pay a whopping Rs. 50,000 as penalty in addition to Rs. 5,000 in mental agony and Rs.2,000 by way of litigation cost to the consumer. The court, while ruling in favour of Bajaj, commented that if PepsiCo claimed to be an international company, then such negligence was not acceptable.

Mental agony damages were never more justified!

Before you buy, get that wafer packet weighed (DNA)

Does the air content in your Lays packets annoy you? Support this cause and vote for the demand to reduce the air-content at Spark A Change, Support The Demand Against Lays.