When A Sale Is Not A Sale: The Worst Offenders
BOSTON (CBS) - When it comes to shopping, everybody loves a bargain; but a local consumer magazine found that sometimes a seemingly great discount, isn't a discount at all.
The non-profit group Checkbook.org tracked prices at seven major retailers in the Boston area for almost a year. They found several well-known retail chains had items that were always on sale, or almost always on sale.
"It's clear they are misleading consumers," said the executive editor Kevin Brasler. Edgar Dworsky, a Somerville consumer advocate who spent years working with the Massachusetts Attorney General's consumer division agrees.
"If it's always on sale, it's in essence, never on sale," he said.
Checkbook tracked the price at Macy's for Levi's 501 Jeans. They found the jeans were on sale for 44 straight weeks. We brought our undercover cameras into the store just a few days ago to check the price and we too found them on sale for 15% off. They also tracked the price of expensive down pillows and found Macy's had them marked down from $420 to $120 80% of the time.
At Kohl's, checkbook researchers found a cookware set on sale for 42 of the 44 weeks. They also found a Vera Wang bedspread was on sale 100% of the time during the same period. Both items were on sale when we checked.
Checkbook editors claim that Sears had the worst track record. They monitored the price of a KitchenAid stand mixer and found that it was marked down every single week of the 44 week survey. The same was true for a Craftsman lawnmower. Several other items including a luggage set were almost always on sale.
So why is this a bad thing? According to Brasler, it's all about the deception. "A lot of stores use these steep discounts, these sale tactics to prevent consumers from shopping around," he said.
Sears doesn't see it that way. In a statement a spokesperson said: Sears disagrees with any suggestion that its pricing is misleading or deceptive". The statement went on to say: Sears complies with applicable pricing and advertising laws."
According to Dworsky, these retailers are on the edge of the law. "The Massachusetts law says the sale has to be real. You have to offer real savings. You can't compare your sale price to a phony regular price that you never charge or that you rarely charge."
We reached out to Macy's and Kohl's, but they never got back to us.
You can check out Checkbook.org's research here.