I’ve been told by a few different people that a store is legally obligated to honour whatever’s on a price tag even if the tag is wrong. This seems completely absurd to me but I’m having trouble finding any information about it. I figure it’s more likely that many stores will honour any misprinted price tag as some kind of store policy and that people think it’s the law because people generally like to think it’s a criminal act any time they’re disappointed in any way.
Can anyone tell me if such a law exists in any country?
In America, a store is legally bound to sell at a price that they have advertised, but they are not at all bound to honor things like misprinted price stickers. I had to explain to people many many times that they wern’t gettiing a two hundred dollar item for twenty bucks just because it had the wrong price tag. You wouldn’t believe how many times people threatened to sue me or the store or whatever. Some people.
I remember one day at work one lady would not stop bitching about the fact that we charged her full price for something (about $3) but it said $0.87. It was an obvious mistake, and she dug through everything to find the cheapest one and was very happy to find the misprint. Anyways, we explained to her that it was a mistake etc… and she kept telling us that we HAVE to charge her that price since that’s what it says. It wasn’t until she left that I thought to say something along the lines of “Well if it was marked $9 would you expect me to charge you nine dollars, or attempt to figure out the correct price”
I recall an episode of Fight Back! with David Horowitz from the early 80s in which he described a similar situation. If a store is selling product on sale, and the sale ends without the price stickers being removed (or covered) then they are required to honor the lowest ticketed price. I suspect that he was refering to Califonia law. I don’t recall his cite.
“Fight back, and don’t let anyone rip you off!”
It is my opinion that the stores should honour the lowest price or they should be charged with fraud or ‘bait and switch’. If the store is advertising (showing the price on the item or the shelf is still advertising) a price then they should charge that price. Is there nothing to stop the merchant from making up any price that they like when you bring the item to the register?
Now, I suppose that the merchant could refuse to sell the item to you at all by removing all the product with the errant pricing and telling you that they are not for sale at that price. The store should have some sort of written Pricing Policy that ould adress these sorts of problems.
This is interesting…a-HA!, see section 54 called double-ticketing (about halfway down).
Occasionally, you will see fine print at the bottom of the ad disclaiming responsibility for misprints. I don’t know if this implies that they would otherwise legally have to honor a misprinted price, or if they just disclaim it on general principles.
So according to that, the lady in Joey P’s post would be out of luck as there was only the one mismarked item. I am not sure if we have the same regulation in the states, but I suspect the concept of “good faith” would be brought in. Thus deliberate deception is fraudulent (possibly including not changin the price on items no longer on sale) while lone mismarked items are not.
Just a few days ago, I saw a sale item at the grocery store, but the tag said “Good through [date]”, where the date had already passed. I tracked down an employee to ask, and he said that yes, the sale price was still good.
Now, that may just be Albertson’s, and it may even be just the particular Albertson’s I shop at. YPTMV.
Are you serious? No, don’t answer that; I’m sure you are…
I’m just glad that you’re not making laws in my world. I can only hope someday you go to sell your car and in the ad instead of putting $10,000, you put $100. So someone just like you can have you criminally charged (as you felt was the appropriate punishment) for refusing to sell it for a penny over a hundred bucks.
I suspect you’re the type who feels that if the door is open and noone is guarding the merchandise the price is lowered as well. Where do you get off calling someone a criminal because they’ve mislabeled a price?
Just didn’t like the statement that business people such as myself were criminals if we tried to charge a fair price for something after mistakenly mismarking it.
But I shouldn’t have responded with “oh yeah? well I think you’re a criminal.” I’m sorry.
The scenario that got me thinking about this question in the first place is the U.S. prices marked on books. When you go to a bookstore in Canada, most books have a U.S. price printed right on the book. Most of the time it says something like “U.S. suggested price,” “price higher in other countries,” or it has prices for Canada beside it. But once in a while it just has the price with no indication that it is a U.S. price. In that case the distributor or the store adds a sticker somewhere with the real price and it doesn’t obscure the U.S. price so there are now two prices on the product. The bookstores don’t seem to care about the fact that there are two prices not always marked “U.S.” and “Canadian.” With books it’s assumed that the lower price doesn’t count, even if it’s not marked U.S.
I agree it’s a bad idea to disappoint customers by hitting them with a new price after they’ve gone to the trouble to pick out something thinking it would be cheaper. But that’s why I wouldn’t expect there to be a law as it’s in the interest of the shop owner to make sure price tags were clear and accurate and I can’t imagine what they’d have to gain by getting people who are already in the store to the cash register only to annoy the hell out of them once they’re there.
Bill H. - Thank you for the apology. I am not suggesting that retailers don’t have a reasonable expectation of profit but there are some retailers that will do so by deceptive means.
The paragraph after the one you quoted claifies my thoughts and allows for the honest retailers to correct their mistakes. If a big ticket item were marked for $100 instead of the appropriate $10,000 then the retailer should be able to refer to a written policy that is available to the consumer that would address such a situation (print ads typically have a disclaimer included, noted by BrotherCadfael). I don’t think it makes good customer service to spend a lot of time explaining the stores policy for making an error of $3.00 to $0.87. Give the customer the goods for the lowest ticketed price and go get rid of the other errors. The section in my second link explains that if there are 2 prices on an item, the lower must be charged. What I don’t want to see is retailers putting a price on their goods, and then saying that the price is wrong and will not honor that price without attempting to correct (or make a notice) the pricing that the consumer sees. “I know it says $10, but I am charging you $20”.
I guess that my point is - **It is the retailers responsibility to accurately price their merchandise and the consumer should have the expectation that the price quoted will be the price charged. **
Pokey - If the pricing is not clear, then it seems that you could refer to the Competiton Act, Part VI, Section 54 (linked above) and get the goods for the lowest ticketed price. Books that I have seen here (also Toronto) usually have the US indicated after the dollar amount. I have also seen stickers obscuring the lower price or the corner cut off the inside flap.