The Shuster Project

Tobacco Industry Fraud & False Claims Issues

Click HERE To Read Our Letter Sent to Senator Kerry's Presidential Campaign

Payment DISCRIMINATION

For a larger view of the Customer Programs Contract Payment Guide, click on the image below.

Discrimination in the tobacco industry is far more than the "conventional" understanding of that word implies.

If you are of Oriental, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, African-American, Caribbean or other "minority" ethnicity and own a store in a neighborhood all of the tobacco companies "red-line," you are immediately and forever left out of "lucrative" cigarette package and carton "display contracts."

These are contractual agreements which "reward" stores for the placement, display and "volume" of displays and shelf facings placed within those stores by the tobacco companies.

Yet the discrimination doesn’t just end there.

You are even discriminated against if your "volume," the total number of cartons you sell of all brands of manufacture within a week, falls "below" individual tobacco company "standards" in order to even be offered "display contracts."

Yet, even stores whose "volume" is below those "standards" will, to the detriment and discrimination of neighboring stores, be granted "display contracts" and have their "volumes" artificially and fraudulently "increased" because of their "strategic" location, perhaps, or just to satisfy a whim or favor done to a District Manager of the tobacco company.

In 1974, the "average" volume of a store that would qualify for cigarette package and carton display "contracts" was 80 cartons per week.

This "Contract Payment Guide" is from the early 1990’s and clearly shows that the "standard" was raised, over time, to 300-400 cartons per week "minimum volume" to be considered for carton shelf payments and 250-300 cartons per week was the "standard" to receive a cigarette Permanent Package Display contract.

One of the many problems with this "selective," "interpretive" and "slippery" standard was that two stores of "qualifying standards" of volume could be literally side by side, yet one would receive cigarette package and carton "display contracts" yet the other store be denied for no reason whatsoever.

Simple exposure of this corporate discrimination will yield tens of thousands of confirmations that these storeowners not only were denied these cigarette package and carton "display contracts," but that they have never even seen a tobacco company representative…ever…sometimes just based upon their red-lined location.

As the "Victimized Businesses" section begins to yield return affidavits once this ONE example of corporate discrimination is revealed by the media, I will showcase their responses in that section of my Website.

Want two examples for you to investigate first?

Visit the stores along Pembroke Street and/or Arctic Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut and ask them when was the last time any tobacco company representative visited their store….ever…and were they ever offered a "display contract."

If you note the dollar amounts representing actual payment potentials, this money could pay utility bills in a store.

In combination with other tobacco companies, even a stores rent could be paid, so it is no small matter to those stores who were red-lined or otherwise denied these payments for no good reason.

The stores that were denied these payments could be one doorway away from a store that was granted these payments and the special promotions that often came with these "display contracts" and that meant the stores not offered the "display contracts" lost business and customers and money to their next door neighbor because of corporate discrimination.

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