Subway Foot-Longs Coming Up Short


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Subway customers are whipping out their measuring tapes after Internet postings that claim a short-shrifting of the worldwide chain's famous footlong sub, putting the Milford, Conn.-based company in the hot seat.

The controversy began Tuesday in Australia, when a very precise customer, identified as Matt Corby of Perth, ordered a footlong sub and then pulled out a tape measure. Corby found the sub measured only 11 inches long and took his outrage to Facebook, where he posted a photo of his sub alongside the tape measure on the company's page with the caption, "subway pls respond."

The page with Corby's photo appears to be no longer available on Facebook. Screengrabs taken of his image and reposted online show the photo quickly received more than 131,000 likes and thousands of comments.

The photo also sparked an abundance of photos on Facebook of subs being measured and countless comments on Subway's page, ranging from "I think they [subway] owe us some," to "there are way more thing in life to worry about then 1 inch of sub."

The New York Post followed up on Corby's complaint with a New York City-based investigation of its own and found Corby's experience to be more the rule than the exception.

According to the Post, four out of seven "Five-dollar Footlongs" purchased at Subways in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, measured only 11 or 11.5 inches. A local franchise owner told the paper the chain has cut the portions of their cold-cut meats by 25 percent recently, a claim a representative for Subway told ABCNews.com is not true.

Subway attributes the discrepancy in sub length to the fact that the bread is baked fresh daily in each of their 38,000 restaurants. They do say, however, they are looking into the matter.

"We are committed to providing a consistent product delivering the same amount of bread to the customer with every order. The length however may vary slightly when not baked to our exact specifications. We are reinforcing our policies and procedures in an effort to ensure our offerings are always consistent no matter which Subway restaurant you visit," the company said in a statement provided to ABCNews.com today.

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Blows my mind that this is even an issue.... gawd we're such fat asses.

1 inch short on a piece of bread that is mostly fluff but full of carbs... but you still get the same amount of meat and toppings as you would anyways. Who gives a ****.

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I can't honestly remember the last time I had a foot-long at subway!

If ever there was a case of 'first world issues' :|

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Depends if it was just overlooked or it was purposely done. If you are selling a foot long sandwich, it should be a foot long, unless it's specified.... but is it a overly big deal. No. I would imagine the gov't could charge them with false advertisement and since the gov't is short of money, I imagine they will if they find it not to be an isolated issue.

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The way I see it, would you feel the same way if you paid for a gallon of gas, but only received 92% of that gallon? Same scenario here. It's not really about the "food", but about not getting what you paid for. If I pay for a "foot long" sub, I expect to get a foot long sub, not an 11in sub. The same way with paying for a gallon of gas, I expect to get the whole gallon, not part of it.

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Might have been 1ft before it was cut and toasted

No the ones measured aren't toasted. They should be sued for false advertising. I always thought the 6inch was a wee bit short.

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No the ones measured aren't toasted. They should be sued for false advertising. I always thought the 6inch was a wee bit short.

I never really thought about it, mine is normally falling to bits with the amount of ingredients I choose anyway lol

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Haven't been to Subway in a very long time, but the places where I do get subs, they call the "foot-long" a whole sub, and a half a sub, a half. I would have thought Subway was doing the same.

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Blows my mind that this is even an issue.... gawd we're such fat asses.

1 inch short on a piece of bread that is mostly fluff but full of carbs... but you still get the same amount of meat and toppings as you would anyways. Who gives a ****.

im pretty sure its been obvious to many people that they are not foot longs... but think about it this way... I have eaten in my life well over 100 subways ... thats 100 inches I have been robbed of due to false advertisement... also how is the "I have one thanks" or "I could ask you the same thing" or the "il give you a foot long" pick up lines to the hot subway girl still valid if the subs are not a foot long ... is my life just a lie

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My gfs get 12 inches all the time :)

On a serious note I gotta agree with

Blows my mind that this is even an issue.... gawd we're such fat asses.

1 inch short on a piece of bread that is mostly fluff but full of carbs... but you still get the same amount of meat and toppings as you would anyways. Who gives a ****.

im pretty sure its been obvious to many people that they are not foot longs... but think about it this way... I have eaten in my life well over 100 subways ... thats 100 inches I have been robbed of due to false advertisement... also how is the "I have one thanks" or "I could ask you the same thing" or the "il give you a foot long" pick up lines to the hot subway girl still valid if the subs are not a foot long ... is my life just a lie

you lied the second you told her you had a foot long. Why worry about it now?

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Tbh this isnt an issue for me as long as they fill the sandwich with a decent amount of filling i dont mind losing an inch it just means there is a little less to work off at the end of the day, plus wht are they ment to do? Measure every bread stick and if its not 12" throw it out? Then people would complain that they are wasting perfectly good food if people have an issue with eating fresh food then maybe they should bugger off back to McDonalds where they get a smaller portion of everything other than fat and still feel hungry.

Some people moan about the stupidest things at times.

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Might have been 1ft before it was cut and toasted

But that's not how it's specified. Unless there's some fine print that I missed, it should be a 1ft long sub when it's finished.

Is it an issue economically? Yes, i've paid for it. I'm entitled to the product i've paid for.

Is it an issue food-wise? No - at least not for me... I don't need that much food! :p

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What's far more annoying is getting the stingy salad woman, that adds only 3 olives and 2 slivers of lettuce.

Heh. I had one experience at Quizno's, when they decided to overload my sandwich. Ended up with a five-pound Turkey/Bacon/Guac. The poor bread put up a valiant but futile struggle and died a horrible, slimy death.

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Haven't been to Subway in a very long time, but the places where I do get subs, they call the "foot-long" a whole sub, and a half a sub, a half. I would have thought Subway was doing the same.

Except, if you look back at their advertisements, they actually had a measuring tape in on the ad. They are now claiming "footlong" is just an expression of approximate size. If that were truly the case, they would have left out the measuring tape as that is an indication of exact length.

By trimming just enough off that the general public would not notice, the company saves thousands per year.

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