Fans without puff, a wasteful composter and a sugar-laden children’s snack are among products named by the consumer advocacy group Choice in its annual Shonky awards as among the worst it has seen this year.
The chief executive of Choice, Alan Kirkland, said he was amazed the organisation had to keep giving out the awards, now in their 16th year.
“Healthy toddler food should actually be healthy. An expensive compost bin shouldn’t generate more waste … a smart fan should cool you down.”
‘The worst we’ve ever tested’
A bladeless fan sold under a number of different brand names and put through its paces by Choice expert tester Adrian Lini was assessed as performing seven times worse than the average tower fan, and 70 times worse than the best fan.
The Smarthome Bladeless fan from Kogan sells for a full retail price of $300, but Lini also found imitations of exactly the same design priced as low as $60.
The bladeless fans were one of the “worst performing” retail appliances Choice had ever seen, Kirkland said.
“The labs originally tested the Kogan model and found it to be the worst we’ve ever tested but once we dug a little further, we found a number of these knock-offs littered across Australian retail,” he said.
Essentially the same fan was found under different brand names in a number of different stores and across retailers online.
Lini said the fan advertised a lot of “gimmicky features”, but there wasn’t “much to it”.
“It’s got a poor design, extremely poor performance, a weak motor and a high cost,” he said.
“Once you move outside the metre or half a metre range, there’s absolutely no airflow … at the end of the day, the fan just does not perform.
“It’s tricking you into thinking you’re buying something at a different level of quality, but it’s just a very light breeze.
“You can’t trust a product off brand name alone … find independent reviews or go into the store itself,” Lini said.
Kogan did not respond to a request for comment.
More landfill, at a hefty price
The Breville FoodCycler, retail price $499, was little more than an “extremely wasteful” and “pointless” compost bin, Choice said.
The food disposal system transforms food waste into odourless eco chips for the garden or bin, claiming to reduce waste by about 80%.
“We found it bulky, expensive, complicated and noisy,” Kirkland said.
“This product is marketed to make you feel like you’re doing the right thing – putting your food scraps to good use and avoiding landfill.
“The reality is you’re buying an alternative to a simple compost bin that will cost at least $2,000 over the course of its lifetime.”
Home economist and “kitchen nerd” Fiona Mair said the product was “taking advantage” of people who wanted to look after the environment.
Mair said its intermittent “ear piercing” noises drove Choice staff to take it away from its lab for testing “because it was so annoying”.
“It’s hard to explain, we didn’t notice it at first, just this irritating noise doing our head in until we had to move it out of the kitchen lab,” she said.
The FoodCycler, which takes between four and six hours to turn waste into eco chips, also requires regular replacement filters, which contribute further to landfill.
Mair said people without access to a garden for composting would be better off asking their local council for food waste bags, or trying a bokashi bin.
“Why would you want to spend money to reduce your food waste into landfill when you can buy compost bins or worm farms that virtually cost nothing to do the same thing?” Mayer said.
“It’s just another appliance that sits on your bench, and it’s contradicting itself. It takes energy to make, it’ll probably end up in landfill, as appliances do, and it’s a waste of money.”
Breville’s general manager, Lucy Martyn, said Choice’s review missed the “bigger point” that most food waste went to landfill at “significant cost and grave environmental consequences”.
“We completely agree … that compost bins are a great option for dealing with food waste – however the reality is … not everyone can compost and the volume of food waste that makes it to landfill is evidence of that,” she said.
“By focusing on this narrow comparison, Choice … distracts from the more important issue. Every kilogram of food waste in the landfill produces 1.3kg of CO2 … even when powered by Australia’s predominantly coal-based grid, there’s a net carbon reduction when you FoodCycle versus sending food waste to landfill.
“The cost is also misrepresented … a typical household running the machine three to five times per week will likely require filter replacements every three to six months so we can estimate this at $120 per year. Based on an average power rate of $0.25kWh and 0.8kWh per cycle four times per week this is approximately $42 per year. The bucket lid filters do not require regular replacement.”
An advocate that doesn’t advocate
The Airline Customer Advocate received a Shonky for its alleged inefficiency as a complaints handling body after prolonged Covid flight cancellations left travellers stranded.
Last year, the Airline Customer Advocate announced it wouldn’t be taking complaints about common problems faced by air travellers during the pandemic, included being offered flight credit in place of a refund.
The body is funded by Jetstar, Qantas, Rex and Virgin Australia to provide a “free and independent service” to facilitate unresolved complaints about participating airline services.
“The Airline Customer Advocate is no advocate,” Kirkland said.
“It can’t investigate your complaint, it can’t make an independent decision and it has no power to make airlines do anything. Instead, it will forward your complaint back to the airline, asking nicely for the airline to respond to you in 20 days. And that’s about it.
“It’s basically a complaint forwarding service masquerading as an independent complaints handling body.
The Airline Customer Advocate did not respond to a request for comment.
A sugar bomb for $150 a kilo
Choice experts said they were “shocked” to find Kiddylicious Strawberry Fruit Wriggles contained more sugar, in the form of concentrated fruit sugars, than lolly snakes.
Choice said that claims such as “packed with real fruit” and “no artificial additives” were liable to lead parents to believe the product was healthy: 61% of respondents to a Choice survey perceived the Kiddylicious wriggles as healthier than jelly snakes.
“This product markets itself as a healthy, fun toddler-friendly snack, but the reality is it’s an expensive, sugar-laden dud,” Kirkland said.
“Kiddylicious … [makes] you feel like you’re doing the right thing by your child, but these lollies are 68% sugar, at a cost of $150 a kilo.”
A Kiddylicious spokesperson said the sugars contained in the fruit wriggles were “naturally occurring” in the fruit used to make the product.
“Unlike lollies, there are no added refined sugars to this product. In fact, for each 12g packet of strawberry fruit wriggles, we use approximately 87g of fresh fruit,” they said. “We do not employ any marketing tricks, what’s in the pack is clearly labelled on the pack. Our products are portion controlled to provide parents some peace of mind.”
The spokesperson said Kiddylicious snacks were marketed as a “sometimes food” but specifically formulated for babies and toddlers.
“Our range is designed to support a child’s development, with shapes, sizes and textures which aid self-feeding, play and co-ordination,” they said.
Up to $30,000 of debt
Buy-now, pay-later products have rocketed in popularity in recent years, but humm was criticised for allowing customers to borrow up to $30,000 at a time.
“Buy-now pay-later products have been deliberately designed to avoid safe lending laws,” Kirkland said.
Choice said loans from such companies fell into a gap in safe lending laws. “That means they don’t need to check whether you can afford to repay a debt before they lend you money.”
Kirkland said humm, which markets itself as the “bigger” buy-now pay-later brand, demonstrated how “dangerous” these products were.
“Buy-now pay-later providers like humm like to pretend they are just a modern form of layby, but nobody ever laybyed $30,000. This is unregulated credit, pure and simple,” Kirkland said.
Choice said it approached humm four times to ask how it checked whether it was lending safely, and “could not get a straight answer”.
A spokesperson for humm said it was only contacted on two occasions with two separate sets of questions and responded “quickly, fully and transparently” each time.
They said the company provided an interest-free product, built with “consumers’ best interest at its core” and played a key role in developing the Buy Now Pay Later code of practice.
They said humm ran a “series of checks” for all potential customers including a third-party product suitability check with the third-party credit bureau Illion.
“For purchases over $1,000, income verification is mandatory for all purchases. We also conduct thorough identity checks and ensure that we comply with AML obligations,” they said.
“We utilise our own sophisticated credit algorithms to ensure that customers have the ability to repay … our exceptionally low hardship, loss and arrears rates demonstrate that we have this balance right.”
