Media Play might be in big doo-doo (1 Viewer)

[Mark Philp]

Both the New York Attorney General and his counterpart in Connecticut are investigating Media Play's tactics regarding their going out of business sale. It's claimed that they've received hundreds of complaints from consumers stating that MP raised their prices before the sale started so that the 20% off was based on the higher price and not their normal selling price. The example they gave was the new "War of the Worlds". Before the sale started it was around $18.00 and now it's selling for about $27 so even with a discount it still costs more than it did before. I don't know about Connecticut, but here in NY that's illegal.

 

[Jason_V]

I'm no expert, but it would stand to reason that doing things like this is illegal period under some kind of consumer protection law.

 

[CraigF]

Wish we had laws like that in Canada. This happens all the time here, a "sale" shortly after a dramatic price increase, so you get the old pre-sale price essentially.

What has a company going OOB to lose by doing this?

Sears has been doing something similar regularly for years, finally got dinged recently. Advertising original prices that the goods never actually sold for, so they can pretend they're on sale. The fine was (I'm sure) far less than their profit... But they're "in business" so have some minor amount to lose. They're still doing it.

 

[Mark Philp]

In this case, they didn't actually raise the prices for a short time, the AGs claim they repriced everything the night before the sale started. New York has pretty strict laws about GOOB sales. Stores must have a permit that's only good for a few weeks or maybe a month and they can't bring in any additional merchandise to sell. This all came about maybe 20 years ago because there use to be dozens of camera and electronic stores in the Times Square area of New York City that were always "going out of business", in some cases for years, just to fleece the tourists into buying the junk they were selling. I'm really surprised that Canada wouldn't have laws like this.

 

[CraigF]

Mark: You might be surprised how little consumer protection there is in Canada. We don't have a fraction of the laws that exist in the U.S., and the ones there are are rarely strictly enforced. In many things we follow the U.S.'s direction, but not in this. Our CP laws are superficial, you can get away with a lot here. I could go on... It is no wonder Canada is considered a major world haven for money laundering too. We are not innocent!