Heinz has issued an apology after a promotional QR code scanned from the back of one of its ketchup bottles linked to a porn website.
United Press International reports a German man posted a photo of the bottle and website to the company’s Facebook page warning the product “is probably not for minors.” UPI said the consumer scanned the code expecting it to link to a contest about designing his own label, though instead he encountered the pornographic website. The consumer said several phones were tested, all producing the same result.
Heinz responded to the post apologizing for the incident stating it no longer owns the domain associated with the contest which ended last year. The website domain was later registered by the porn site, replacing all of the Heinz content.
The consumer, Daniel Korell, said he didn’t understand why the domain wasn’t ensured for another year or two. “The bottle may be a remnant, but it exists even in many households,” he wrote. “A .de domain name really doesn’t cost the Earth.”
Heinz offered Korell the opportunity to design his own ketchup label and send him a bottle of it free of charge.