Reader Colin writes us to share an email he sent to Target about their practice of marking items as “Sale”… with no actual discount. Colin writes to Target:
I’m currently in the process of shopping for a Nintendo DS, and have been keeping out for any kind of deals on the item before I buy it. Today I was in the Turnersville Target, and I noticed a big red SALE tag on the DSes. However, the price was still the usual $129.99. I asked the clerk at the electronics counter and he told me “Yeah, that just means it’s at the price in the flyer.” Quite frankly, the only word I can think of for marking an item with a SALE tag when it is not, in fact, at a sale price, is deceptive.
We thought this might have been an isolated incident in New Jersey, so we went to our local Brooklyn Target and sure enough, the Nintendo DS Lite is marked “Sale” even though there is no discount.
The Target flyer is clear about the fact that the DS is not on sale. Why is it marked “Sale” in the store? Just because it is pictured in the flyer?
The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs says there are laws against offering items for “Sale” at more than the MSRP without clearly marking the tag, but make no mention of marking things “Sale” in store when they’re not discounted from the MSRP. However, the New York City Consumer Protection Law “prohibits DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES, meaning any claim or action having the potential to deceive consumers.” This may well fall under that law.
Regardless of the legality, it’s certainly not a consumer friendly practice. Not cool, Target. —MEGHANN MARCO
New York City Department of Consumer Affairs
(Photo: Meghann Marco)
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I have been seeing crap like this for years. I first noticed it in grocery stores, where “Price Drop!” signs were placed next to items on which the price was actually higher than it had been previously.
Basically, they think we’re fools who’ll be so attracted to getting that elusive deal that we’ll abandon common sense. And, for the most part, I have to assume they are right, otherwise how could they still be getting away with these practices?
I am another [former] Target Electronics Team Member and for some reason I feel compelled to reiterate that there is absolutely, positively, NO corporate conspiracy here. This was a poor minimum-wage employee either not noticing or not caring that the wrong tab was placed in together with the sign.
Sloppy, yes, but they’re not trying to screw you in this particular case. If you’re going to hate on Target hate them for not adequately training their employees and treating them like crap.
The Fred Meyer grocery store in Washington state used to do one better than this. They would take something like a lamp, for example, that retailed normally for $10 and put it on sale for $9. Then they would remark the tag to read:
Sale $9
Regular price $15
40% off
Often, the stockers were too lazy to remove the old tag and all you had to do was lift the sale tag to see the lie.
@teh1337pwnZorz:
You know, part of me wants to go ahead and get pissed about you calling me a moron and an idiot, but then I realize that you have “leet-speak” in your handle, and therefore automatically lose a lot of creedance with me.
I’m not worked up about this being a “Target” thing, but an advertising thing in general, and yes, a “we don’t want to have to think for ourselves” kind of thing. People bitch CONSTANTLY on the net about having to use their brains, and automatically assume that having to do so is an inference that a company is 1) Dishonest and 2) Evil.
It’s stupid. You can talk about “reasonable” human beings, but, dammit, you can’t read the price? How stupid are you if you’re going to BUY something because a little red tag with ONE word on it makes you THINK it’s cheaper than normal? C’mon. Get over it, it’s advertising, and all these people who are acting like Target is telling you that it’s 50% off when it’s the same price it is anywhere else.
It really does remind me of all the people who will sue companies into putting warning labels for things that SHOULD be common sense, and yes, that does piss me off, and it should piss off any reasonable person. This SERIOUSLY reminds me of the little warning stickers on lawnmowers that say “Don’t stick your hand under here or you’ll get hurt” because you know someone stuck their hand under there, lost some fingers, and sued saying “Well, I had no idea that if I stuck my hand into a rotating blade that bad things might occur.”
It’s just further indication of the idiocy of the American populous, and the demand that people keep making for everyone to spell everything out for them and if that doesn’t happen, it means that they’re being decieved. How does that NOT piss you off if you have an ounce of brains or common sense?
Man, you guys are some serious conspiracy theorists. Put your tin foil hats away, people.
The flag was a simple mistake. Generally, when a store runs out of As Advertised flags, they’ll use Sale flags instead of none. There’s no conspiracy, and any fool who doesn’t notice the price of what they’re buying, sale or not, deserves to pay regular price.
The sign has dates because that’s when the sign comes down. Who knows what the price will be after 4/28? If it’s advertised again next week, the sign will be replaced with another As Ad sign. Most likely, it won’t be in the Ad, and therefore won’t have a sign.
This isn’t rocket science, people. And if you’re upset about Target’s Ad Advertised system, well, from the comments above it’s clear that lots of businesses do this.
I used to work at Fry’s Electronics as a salesman. They would do this stuff every week. However, rather than just advertising items that weren’t actually being discounted in price, they would use those items so we could bait and switch them, as directed by management.
Example: they would put “iPod 80GB, $349″ in the ad… or even drop it by a tiny amount, so it would be $344 ($5 off). Then our “suggested” upgrade would be a competing Creative product and we were expected to “upsell” the customer into the Creative, since it was not on the ad.
Our commissions would always drop on the ad items to motivate us. Using the example of the iPod vs. Creative product, we would get $0 or even negative commission on the iPod (even though often times the customer was paying regular price or even MORE than the competing non-ad item) and then we would get a $5 or $7 commission on the Creative item.
This was especially irritating with laptops, where we would tell customers one week that the best laptop we had was a Fujitsu, because it carried a $40 commission on it, but then the next week that same laptop would be on sale and it would have a $0 commission, so we would tell people that the Toshiba one was better. Unfortunately, without commission, you were making minimum wage, so it was hard to be honest and forthright with customers becuase management had orders from on high to promote certain items and actually PREVENT people from buying ad items. Most of the time it was the salespeople who would pay for this practice, since any commissions we earned were taken away when people returned items. So they’d put some really shitty items on sale, we’d sell them like crazy and then sometimes weeks later we would have that money taken out of our checks because the customer returned it.
One of the worst things they used to do was put an item in the ad like a brand-new Sony Vaio and then the “suggested” upgrade would be a refurbished HP. The customer could “save tons of money and get a similar computer!” But many times those sales would wind up alienating customers to the point where they would never want to come back. One guy I sold a refurbished HP to had to return it FOUR times and each time we would give him another one to take home… in each case, the machines were DOA. But hey, we got $15 commission on those as opposed to $2 on the “sale” Sony Vaio that was at regular price. Had the guy bought the Sony when it was NOT in the ad, I’d have gotten $20-25 commission instead of $2 (or $15 on the refurbished HP).
These practices are ultimately what is truly wrong with retail stores and what drives a lot of consumers to shop online. Know what a “deal” really is before you walk into the store, especially when it’s a store where the salespeople are either commission-based or earning very low wages (the Target stores in my area – Silicon Valley – pay $8/hour to start… sometimes even less).
To everyone pointing out that it is human error, the same tag is on the same sign in a store in NY, NJ and I believe someone said in FL.
You really expect me to belive the sign maker in every one of those stores put the same wrong sign on the same merchandise?
On the red sign, it says “SALE – through Saturday.” and in smaller print “Sale prices are automatically registered at checkstand.” Then it gives a date as to when this “sale” price is valid.
Only, there’s no sale price. Deceptive!
Welcome to retail anywhere!
We had this going on all the time when I worked at Kmart. Its all about signage and uninformed consumers.
I worked at a store, and someone priced a computer at 9999.99 from corporate..
@radioboy
Whether you believe it or not, that is the issue.
It’s just ridiculous that people can’t accept human error as the cause for this. As Advertised signs are supposed to have As Advertised flags. Target doesn’t send instructions to stores saying “Hey, stick a Sale flag on this As Advertised sign for us”
What I can’t believe, is how many people on this thread are still freaking out about this after a proper explanation was posted.
@radioboy
When an old sign was taken down at the store I worked at, the white sheet that indicated the item and the price was removed from the sign holder, but nobody ever took out the side tabs (they were rather firmly stuck in there).
Empty signs were stored in boxes by the color of their side tab. A yellow box for both “Price Cut” and “Temporary Price Cut”, a blue box for “Free Gift Card” and other special offers, and a red box for both “Sale” and “As Advertised”.
So when it came time to make new signs for the weekly ad, people just reached into the red sign box and grabbed a handful of the sign holders with the red tabs already stuck in there. Which was a random mix of both “Sale” and “As Advertised” tabs. And as previously mentioned, barely anybody knew the difference or cared enough to change it.
I can’t imagine it’s much different at other Targets. Again, no corporate conspiracy. Just poorly trained workers.
I stumbled across a very similar situation over the weekend at a local Michaels while shopping with a friend.
Many items, mainly those in bins, were marked as “sale” but displayed identical before and sale prices on the signs.
Catches your attention from afar, but up close you realize there’s no bargain.
Yeah, that balloon that says Sale, should actually say “As Advertised,” but if this store is anything like mine, the guests/team members pull things down and the balloons are thrown away. SO, they’re either DA’s and didn’t realize what they put up or they didn’t actually have any of the “As Advertised” balloons left, both of which are very common. Also, try getting anyone in charge of ordering to actually get you the supplies you need to do your job, you will be beat with the expense binder saying that the store is over budget.
Hey Bank of America! Your ATM Gave Me A Fake $20 Wealth Junkie (who has a blog) received a fake $20 on a routine ATM trip, and didn’t know it was fake until a Costco employee informed him. He brought it back to the bank and they apologized. What is a Secured Credit Card?
This is not uncommon many major retail stores.
Check your weekly ads. Look for game systems and Apple products. You will see items that are on ‘sale’ with MSRP prices almost every time.
@nightshadowon: you got it exactly right
I love Target as much as the next guy, but they need to stop doing this. The sale sign wasn’t a human error. I see this every week when I go to Target. You’d think they could afford to put all the items on sale in their weekly flyer, instead of the As Advertised (retail price) crap. It really IS deceptive when you stick a sale sign next to the item, which implies that it’s going up in price next week.
“The sale sign wasn’t a human error”
No? Even though the paper signs are sent from headquarters (Which very obviously say As Advertised) and they are separated and put in plastic sign holders at store level? If you see that often, the store managers aren’t paying enough attention to that process. If a district manager walked the store and saw it, they’d probably get reamed for it.
I managed an EB Games in the same shopping center as a Target, and people would often see the “sale” signs on fixed-price items like the DS Lite and assume that, since we were a specialty store, we were charging more.
The honest truth of the matter is that game consoles are the same price everywhere, with RARE exception, because they are extremely low margin items for retailers; generally 1% or less. When they are offered below the MSRP, they’re generally limited to 10 or fewer items per store.
What gets me is that people who are loyal Target shoppers seem to think they can do no wrong. Having had many friends who have worked for Target and seeing the way they run their store as a neighboring retailer, I’ll offer the observation that Target seems to be just another “big box” retailer out to crush the local competition. They have slightly better goods and service than Wal-Mart or K-Mart, but you’ll still get better stuff and better service at a specialty store, often for around the same price (or sometimes, even less!) if you wait for a sale!
Umm, it says ON SALE TILL SATURDAY, what happens after Saturday?
Wow. The actual sign says “As Advertised.” This means that the item is advertised at regular price. Just because it’s in an ad does not mean it is on sale. Some idiot just put the wrong balloon on the sign because they saw it was red and didn’t read it. Get over yourself. I am so sick of people complaining about others over their own lack of sense.
While I agree that Target’s methods of advertising can certainly be misleading (undoubtedly many marketing practices are intended to make consumers think they are getting a great deal/making a wise purchase) if a person is concerned with finding the product at the lowest available price, then they would benefit from looking up the price at several retailers. Often times one finds an item “on sale” that is being sold for less than what the store usually charges, then comes to find another store which always sells the item at that price, and then can choose the company with which they’d like to do business.
I’d also like to add, that on the very same ticket which says “As Advertised” it also says “prices valid 4/22-4/28″ implying that after that date the item will not be available at the “Sale” price. That is not the result of human error, but slimy marketing.
I think this is a misleading practice. How many people purchase this thinking its a sale item when it is a regular price. DUH, of course its a sale item. That is what Target does, SALE THINGS!!! Regardless I have noticed this alot at alot of stores. Walmart is bad about saying they are rolling back a price, when I just bought it the week before and its still the same price with a ROLLING BACK PRICE sticker stuck to it. Most of these business do this to make money. Its our responsiblity to research and compare. and not give our money to those who practice these types of advertizing. I am looking for a few particular items for xmas. Waiting until the Black friday ads come out thinking i’d get these things cheaper, WRONG. its another scheme to get u in the door. prices have not gone down NOT 1 CENT. some have even gone up yet tell you in the ad prices only good 5 am 11am only. Stores have to think that during these hard times, its better to sale things at a smaller profit than not sale them at all.
I though that I was the only one that noticed that. They have it for sale but it’s really not on sale. Isn’t that like false advertisement and Target is suppose to have good deals too?
It’s a shame. I agree with all the comments.