A Saint John man says he’s “a little frustrated” with the labelling on four bottles of hand sanitizer he bought earlier this week, which were packaged in cans advertising a completely different product.
Trevor Martell bought four bottles of zytec Germ Buster spray from the Dollarama on Landsdowne Avenue in Saint John on Sunday, only to peel off the labels when he got home and find an old bug spray bottle beneath them.
Concerned the product inside was not what was advertised, he shared his concerns about the label and the bottle on Twitter.
“I thought, ‘Are they doing some type of false advertising?'” he told Global News.
“I was just concerned — we have a small child and we want to make sure in today’s time when you need sanitizer, you have the proper thing.”
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Both Dollarama and zytec Germ Buster have confirmed that the bottles’ contents are indeed hand sanitizer.
In a written statement, Dollarama spokesperson Lyla Radmanovich told Global News that zytec — its Canadian manufacturer — relabelled clean, unused, pre-printed Dermaguard Insect Repellant cans to package its product in an effort to meet the rapid demand of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A memo with details on the unusual packaging, she added, was sent out to every store, including locations in Saint John.
“If our employees were asked the question they would have shown customers inquiring about this product this memo,” Radmanovich wrote.
“Totally legitimate and a large effort on our part to help with COVID-19 relief.”
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Zytec Germ Buster’s website also alerts consumers to the new packaging with a notification on the home page that leads to a company statement on “packaging concerns.”
That statement assures the public that the contents of these re-purposed bottles are “100% Made in Canada zytec Germ Buster hand sanitizer,” and the packaging labels meet all Health Canada requirements for hand sanitizer products.
“During these unprecedented times, and with the objective of delivering as much hand sanitizer as quickly as possible, Empack has repurposed packaging that was printed and labeled for other products,” it reads.
“All this packaging has never been used, and aside from being labelled for a different product, is the same containers we normally use for hand sanitizer.”
Empack Spraytech Inc. is the aerosol manufacturer that produces the zytec hand sanitizer. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
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Martell said he was “happy” and relieved to learn he hadn’t wasted his money on the hand sanitizer.
He can find “the humour in any situation,” he added, but as a former assistant manager at a dollar store and a veteran of the customer service industry, he said there ought to have been better communication about this product at the cash registers.
“Not everybody would go to a Dollarama website and look up their products,” he explained.
“A little bit goes a long way … I would say, ‘Hey the hand sanitizer you’re buying, by the way — it’s covered up with a label, but it’s hand sanitizer, so don’t worry if the label is stuck over something.'”
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