Marked up prices . . .

[reeferaddict]

I would like to know where people get off saying this is "illegal".... Let's clear this up once and for all... as a retailer, (not at all related to the aquarium industry), I advertise that I have product "A" on sale for $199.99... the only thing "illegal" I could do would be to sell that product for more than advertised on the date of the "sale"... I can limit quantities... ie, "4 only, first come first served - no phone orders" or something like that... but that's it. When it comes to this Boxing Day sale... there were no advanced advertising of specific pricing as far as I know... correct me please if I am wrong. For a retailer to have a price increase THEN a discount advertised is not in any way, shape or form "illegal"... call it what you want, but it is definitely legal.

[Veng68]

Another thing about retailing......... if an item is priced lower by accident.......... they don't have to honor that price by law (although most do to please the customer, then quickly change the price back to the correct price).

not really on topic but I remember when I used to work retail...... many people would get upset about that.

Cheers,
Vic[veng68]

[naesco]

Originally Posted by reeferaddict

I would like to know where people get off saying this is "illegal".... Let's clear this up once and for all... as a retailer, (not at all related to the aquarium industry), I advertise that I have product "A" on sale for $199.99... the only thing "illegal" I could do would be to sell that product for more than advertised on the date of the "sale"... I can limit quantities... ie, "4 only, first come first served - no phone orders" or something like that... but that's it. When it comes to this Boxing Day sale... there were no advanced advertising of specific pricing as far as I know... correct me please if I am wrong. For a retailer to have a price increase THEN a discount advertised is not in any way, shape or form "illegal"... call it what you want, but it is definitely legal.

What do you call it, Reeferaddict?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by naesco

2. Call the Consumer Protection people to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are found to be true they would probably be required to place a prominent ad on their website offering all who purchased items the difference from the actual regular price and the alleged inflated price.

3. Appoint one or two of us to meet with the management and determine the facts and find out what they voluntarily plan to do about it.

Although I did not make any purchases at that time, I vote for 3.

won't do any good anyways, look at Canadian tire, they have been doing it with there tires for years and nothing has ever been done about it.. it has even been on the news. I can't remember why they are getting away with it but there was a reason because of Canadian business law and a loophole or something.

now another thing to be watchful for is the price increase was surprisingly close to the time Canada raised the prime rate. so this will increase to a cost raise in smaller stores that cannot adsorb it. so if this was a regular price increase right before the sale then they have not done anything wrong.

Steve

[Dolf]

I am not certain if it is an Alberta law or if it is the same around all of Canada. Here in Alberta (for sure) a retailer must have sold the item at what they advertise as their “regular price” in the last month. I have seen companies charged (I specifically remember a store that is a member of the Forzani group.) I am not suggesting that they charge J&L- if their prices are good I guess no reason not to buy from them, but it is misleading.

[Chin_Lee]

Just got the following Newsletter from JL's explaning their price fluctuations. Hopefully the explanation suffices to make everybody enjoy the holiday season a little more.

New Pricing Structure:

As most of you should be aware, we implemented a new computer system in-store and online about four months ago. This enables us to
link pricing and inventory with our retail and online location. It also allows us to change prices/discounts very rapidly with no
wasted time. What took days before, now only takes a matter of minutes.

What our in store customers know that was not posted online was that we took our base retail price and lowered it by 5% across the
board for all dry goods bought in US dollars. This was (and is) due to the fact of the highly volatile Canadian Dollar. By setting a
base retail price, we can adjust our pricing level accordingly to what the dollar does without actually doing a “store-wide price
change” which will still take MANY hours (days).

We did not post this online as we didn’t want to make a big deal of it in case the dollar drops/rises or whatever the case. The base
retail price will remain, and what will be displayed online is our adjusted retail price (the price you pay). All sale
prices/discounts will be calculated on our set retail price until there is some stability in the Canadian Dollar. We will continue
to operate in this manner for the foreseeable future as we feel it gives our customers the best service and most up-to-date,
competitive pricing available anywhere.

We hope that this clears the air on some issues some of you may have had, and explains why and what we did.

[muck]

I got it too Chin, but thanks for posting it for those who might not have received it. Just means everyone has been enjoying a 5% discount on US items for the past 4 months..

Cheers

[reeferaddict]

Originally Posted by naesco

What do you call it, Reeferaddict?

I call it staying in business... remember, retailers reserve the right to provide goods/services to anyone. period. Consumers also have the right to choose where they shop.

I see no problem with this... tell me where they promised ANY discount off a previously advertised price and I will have a problem with it...

[Xtasia]

Why is this such a huge surprise? Grocery stores like SUPERSTORE, SAVEON, IGA and SAFEWAY all do it.

If you dont' believe they do.. you don't spend enough time grocery shopping haha!

It's all about perceived discount. You still get a big discount (ernough that the change could pay for a lunch out..ya?!) but percentage wise it's less. In the grand scheme of things.. It's what you are willing to pay and how much they can sell it to you without going out of business.

Choices. Choices!

[fakename]

Reeferaddict: The problem is that their website offers a percentage based discount on boxing-day, but the percentages are being calculated from an artificially elevated price that J&L NEVER sells it's product for.
It sounds like J&L's logic is that everything in their store is always on 5% sale because the canadian dollar has gone up........
I'm not sure of the rules in BC......in Ontario retailers cannot claim that a price they offer everyday is a sale price.

So if J&L offered (and advertised) a 10% discount on product X, with an everyday price of $100, the expected price would be $90. However, if you assume that the price at $100 has already been reduced by 5%, then the "real" price is $105.26. A 10% reduction in that price gives a final price of $94.73.

So expecting a 10% discount on a $100 item, you only actually get a 4.27% discount from what they sell it for everyday.

I don't think the argument here is about whether or not J&L has good prices (they do), or if they are allowed to sell their products for what they want to (they are). The real issue is that a lot of people on the board, many good customers of J&L, feel that the store was dishonest.

While the laws around this issue may or may not permit it, it is certainly never a good business stratagy to alienate your customer base. I hope that J&L knows that people are upset, it's important to their business that they do. Businesses that don't care what their customers think, or don't care if they upset good customers soon find themselves having going out of business sales.

Aaron