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Reader question: Please explain "bait and switch", as in: One of the false advertising practices is bait and switch. My comments: False advertising, as name suggests, refers to advertising that provides false information. One of such practices is bait and switch. Bait, as in fish bait, refers to something enticing or appetizing. For example, a double hamburger ad may show a hamburger so large in size that a customer is led to believe that it's large enough to feed a family of four. In actual experience, the customer finds that the said hamburger is so small that his teen-age son eats two of them by himself. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, a little bit. Switch, as in bait and switch, is what happens in the above example: replacing the large hamburger in advertisements with a small one in the restaurant. In other words, you're right - bait and switch is a form of cheating. It's not right. Unhappy and angry customers may feel like bringing the hamburger restaurant to court. That is, in the worst case scenario. Normally, customers may choose to swallow their dissatisfaction and never visit the said restaurant again. Anyways, bait and switch as a business practice is dishonest, unethical and just wrong. There's really no appetizing way of putting it. All right, here are media examples of bait and switch - showing one thing enticing (bait) and replacing it with another (switch): | 
