Can a company sell a product with a different companies sticker on it?

Question

I was at Goodwill today and I was looking at a bottle of "Brawn OXY" laundry detergent and my fiancee noticed that there was a different label under the "brawn" label. So I peeled it off and the detergent that was in the bottle was called "valuetime" it had no Oxy in it at all and it was a completely different product. On the back side of the bottle was a directions label for "Brawn" covering up the "valuetime" label. I asked the store manager if he could explain this and he looked really confused and said I have no idea. Infact he put the product back on the shelf and went on back to work!! Can a company do this?

Answer 1

The obvious answer is no, a company is not allowed to mislabel a product. It is consumer fraud.

But you don't say if the shelves were stocked with several examples of the same thing or if this was one bottle that was mislabeled. Is this an isolated incident? A prank? or is it repeated throughout the store on this as well as other items.

If it is a pattern I would contact the City or County attorney to alert them to the situation.

Answer 2

Sure. I am not sure of the relation of Brawn and ValueTime, but one easy situation is Canadian vs. American brands. A company with a successful product in one country may find it can't sell the product under that name in another, so they label the same product with a different label and in some instance, need to ship to the other country product already labeled, so they over label it. Also store brands for many stores are made in the same plant (even name brands as we found with the peanut butter scare).
It is unusual to have something where the label peels right off, but you were in Goodwill and it may have been donated exactly because it had labels on labels - perhaps a foreman or manager thought it was a good idea and put them on and higher ups or customer managers disagreed

Answer 3

Well, yes.

A company can market a product under different names however, it is unusual to have a name on a sticker over a professionally printed product name.

The same processed meat, shoes, clothing, gasoline, and other tangible products are examples sold under different names. The packaging is usually separate.