location: west palm beach, florida
alright, this is a weird one but i can’t figure out how to even properly google to get some answers. i was up at the tangier outlets today with my nephew, who is obsessed with spiderman, and we spied a goofy marvel photobooth. popped him in to take a picture and was confronted with a variety of confusing signage: the screen said $12 for a photo; the tap/swipe to pay dongle said $8; the slot to insert cash said something along the lines of “please pay with exact cash, machine does not make change.”
swiped my card and was charged $8, at which a 10 second countdown started on the screen to insert additional funds. with a sweaty, antsy toddler in tow and no cash, i had no choice but to swipe my card again for a second $8 charge in order to get our spiderman picture.
multiple questions occurred to me after i’d been finagled out of $16 for this shitty picture that, admittedly, thrilled my nephew:
a) how do i figure out if adventure lab by face place run by apple industries, inc out of greenvale, NY even has rights to use marvel’s media?
b) is it legal to throw multiple, confusing prices on your silly little photobooth and rip people off that way?
again, the nephew was beyond excited and the funds were minor so mostly this is a fuck-it couplet of questions, but i’m also not above making someone’s life extremely difficult in small claims if i have the opportunity to do so. what do i even start researching to answer my
own questions about false advertising and using trademarked media?
alas, i cannot attach the photo for your amusement, but trust that it is ridiculous.
thanks for the help!
Comments
a) You call Marvel and ask. Expect to not get an answer, or to have to spend an inordinate amount of time getting an answer.
b) You’ve not really described what the actual prompts for payment were, so that’s an unanswerable question. Are you sure it said something like, “Give me $8 more or else nothing is going to happen and we keep the original $8 and you get no photo,” or could it have possibly been trying to upsell you on something optional or whatever and you misinterpreted that as a required payment?