Dictionary

bait-and-switch en · ADJ

Meanings

1. (not-comparable) Relating to use of bait and switch (offering one attractive exchange initially, but not honoring the offer) in business, politics, and elsewhere.
   • The FTC commissioner, Rohit Chopra, called AT&T’s actions a “massive fraud”. “AT&T’s bait-and-switch scam is a good window into the many harms that result from dominant companies operating without the discipline of meaningful competition,” Chopra said in a statement. 2019 November 5, Rohit Chopra, quotee, “'Bait-and-switch scam': AT&T fined $60m over data throttling allegations”, in The Guardian:
   • Despite Healy's argument that the Liberty Fund would go to worthwhile causes, many felt the Red Cross had deliberately misled donors by using September 11th in a bait-and-switch ploy. 2001 November 14, Jessica Reaves, “Red Faces at the Red Cross”, in Time:

bait-and-switch en · VERB

Meanings

1. (transitive) To exploit using bait and switch.
   • To my surprise, even shock, both of them spent the entire trip sputtering and whining—about being bait-and-switched when their employee-ownership shares of United Airlines had been evaporated by its recent bankruptcy, […] 2020 August 7, Kurt Andersen, “College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots”, in The Atlantic:
   • Perhaps the most baffling and frustrating feature of the mortgage mess is that, to my knowledge, the House Financial Services Committee never held public hearings in which bait-and-switched homeowners testified as to how their mortgage payments doubled in just a few years[…] 2009, Jane White, America, Welcome to the Poorhouse […] , FT Press, →ISBN, page 64:

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