Amazon Just Got Slapped With a $1 Million Fine For Misleading Pricing (recode.net) 159
Some deals are too good to be true. And, for Amazon, they will cost the company. From a report on Recode: A Canadian enforcement agency announced today that Amazon Canada will pay a $1 million fine for what could be construed as misleading pricing practices. The investigation centered on the practice of Amazon displaying its prices compared to higher "list prices" -- suggested manufacturer prices (MSRPs) designed as marketing gimmicks to make people think they are getting a deal, even though it's often the case that no shopper ever pays that price. "The Bureau's investigation concluded that these claims created the impression that prices for items offered on www.amazon.ca were lower than prevailing market prices," Canada's Competition Bureau said in a statement. "The Bureau determined that Amazon relied on its suppliers to provide list prices without verifying that those prices were accurate."
They have plenty of company (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as people value the ephemeral bargain of the markdown, instead of the actual product value, this retail trick will never die.
Re:They have plenty of company (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. I have family that sells furniture and the huge "50% off Sale!" sign that is painted on the front window is peeling from years of exposure to the elements.
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Nope. It's still very, very effective. I have a particular family member who falls for it all the time.
Another common strategy is that fake limited time. You see this pushed with almost product promoted on places like Warrior Forum, JVZoo, etc. (I loathe these websites, but it's that particular family member that falls prey to them.)
Re:They have plenty of company (Score:4, Informative)
"I want this and am willing to pay the amount for it." == Actual Product Value
(Varies greatly depending on buyer's circumstance, and need.)
And as long (Score:1)
as they made $1,000,001, it was worth it.
Fines mean nothing if the fine isn't more than the company made from breaking the rules.
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Canada extorts $1 Million from Amazon (Score:3, Interesting)
Canada's Competition Bureau said in a statement. "The Bureau determined that Amazon relied on its suppliers to provide list prices without verifying that those prices were accurate."
If that's the price the suppliers are giving them, why wouldn't it be accurate? Nobody forces people to buy from Amazon, there's an entire world wide web out there where they can compare prices and make their own determinations. Heck, there are even sites that will do the comparisons for you. Likewise, nobody ever pays MSRP on anything anyway; this sounds like a bogus complaint to me.
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"The investigation centered on the practice of Amazon displaying its prices compared to higher "list prices" -- suggested manufacturer prices (MSRPs) designed as marketing gimmicks to make people think they are getting a deal, even though it's often the case that no shopper ever pays that price."
“The Bureau’s investigation concluded that these claims created the impression that prices for items offered on www.amazon.ca were lower than prevailing market prices,”
So false adverti
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But why target Amazon for this first? Why not start with clothing stores that are much worse at this? Retail price of $200 for a shirt, on sale for $40 before 20% off and a $5 off 25 coupon. The only difference is that for 3 or 4 days out of the year, that shirt is really $200 (and nobody buys it).
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By getting around state sales tax laws, Amazon angered bureaucrats.
They do this to a lesser extent than most online stores. They have warehouses in 24 states. Most online stores have one or two distribution centers across the country. As a result, Amazon collects sales tax for more states than most other online stores. Sure, they do a lot more revenue than a LOT of other companies, but they're not doing it in a significantly different way.
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It's not like someone shopping Amazon doesn't have Internet access. Canada's fining Amazon a million loonies because some p
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Amazon.com prices in the USA are the lowest or close to it. Amazon.ca is nowhere close, and are often completely fantastical.
Amazon.ca and Amazon.com are not very alike.
In Canada, we have laws regarding what you can post as a 'regular' price, in that it must be related to a retailer's actual sales history. The 'regular' price cannot be fabricated from whole cloth. This is distinct from declaring a price to be 'recommended retail price' or MSRP.
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Amazon.com prices in the USA are the lowest or close to it. Amazon.ca is nowhere close, and are often completely fantastical.
Exactly this. I'm sick of finding items on amazon.ca that are more than double the price of the same item on amazon.com (even after taking in to account the exchange rate), and finding the one on amazon.com won't ship to Canada. It's disgusting. .com price, but way better than the .ca pri
I was just looking at an item online, $840 on Amazon.ca $320 on Amazon.com, identical item, same model number, everything. I found a different company that was willing to sell it to me in Canada for $450, not as good as the
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Re:Canada extorts $1 Million from Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
Many many companies were guilty of that sort of stuff, so the regulation helps dealing with that. I know that as an American, you're not really used to consumer protection, but Canadian laws tend to favor the consumer a lot more.
Re:Canada extorts $1 Million from Amazon (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I'm actually a bit surprised that so many people here just casually dismiss the fact that most American companies are engaging in pervasive and systemic deception on a regular basis. For the cynical among us, I'm sure people think that's true a lot of the time -- but prices are a pretty fundamental fact displayed by sellers (possibly THE fundamental fact). A lot of people here, for example, tend to be dismissive of ads, which they feel are mostly misleading and deceptive. I've seen a lot of posts arguing for their complete eradication. But displaying "fake prices" is okay?
Yes, it's common practice. Yes, it's not new. (I remember being shocked maybe 10-15 years ago when I went into a department store after probably not shopping in one for 5 years. And I couldn't believe how EVERYTHING was listed 50-70% off! I remember sales before that, sometimes exaggerating things, but it seems we took a turn somewhere in the past 20 years where this practice of inflating "retail price" became PERVASIVE.)
But just because it's common doesn't mean it's a good thing. While we're at it, can we do away with claims of "now with 30% MORE!" on product packaging unless that claim is followed explicitly by "more than... X" where X is a detailed explanation of what actually has less and when it had it?
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So I am assuming by your post that you are Canadian, and from what I have read above, it is still pervasive in Canada that retailers will hide a few of an item in a low traffic area at a jacked up price for 30 days so they can then advertise a sale that is not really a discount from what they would actually sell it at. So the only difference from the US and Canada is that you are regularly suckered into paying average or more on a "sale" that is not really a discount from the actual price and you THINK you
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We monitored this a bit around Xmas last year. It wasn't so endemic, at least on the sites and products we were monitoring, except on Amazon:
https://blog.scrapinghub.com/2... [scrapinghub.com]
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And nobody is saying anything against that. What they're saying is if you advertise as "30% below the usual price", then that "usual price" actually has to be representative of the price it usually sells at in the general market, NOT some made-up number you dreamed up to make your sale sound impressive. Sell it at any price you want, but you're not allowed to lie about how big your sale really is. That's just basic honesty in advertising, something society has a vested interest in defending.
There's also
Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's the price the suppliers are giving them, why wouldn't it be accurate? Nobody forces people to buy from Amazon, there's an entire world wide web out there where they can compare prices and make their own determinations. Heck, there are even sites that will do the comparisons for you. Likewise, nobody ever pays MSRP on anything anyway; this sounds like a bogus complaint to me.
You are wrong. People rely on this information, which is why it is useful to do it. Amazon could and should easily show what the model normally sells for, but they only have an incentive to do it if forced to by regulation. Like how supermarkets should show price per unit even though anyone can do math if they take the time. In real life, you occasionally need regulation in order to incentivize behavior which is useful for society even though it hurts the person who does it. Otherwise you have lots of fraud, contracts are unenforceable, the economy becomes a whole lot less efficient, etc...
A lot of government regulations are implemented badly, and some are bad ideas, and there are too many--but there are really good reasons for some government actions.
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Free Markets, or something approaching them, can only exist with careful regulation.
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That has never happened. How do you enforce the contracts? Is there an enforcing body?
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Amazon could and should easily show what the model normally sells for
There is no "what the model normally sells for" on Amazon. Amazon prices are all over the place, all the time. If you don't like it you're always free to use a retailer that is or operates more like a brick and mortar store, or you can wait a week and get it for $10 less at Amazon.
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Like how supermarkets should show price per unit even though anyone can do math if they take the time
Ever actually tried that? That's when you'll notice that manufacturers also like to use completely different units from each other. I hope you've studied up recently on your imperial units. How many quarts are in a liter and/or a cup and/or a pint and/or a "fluid ounce".
And that doesn't get into packaging differences. For instance, some dishwashing detergents use self contained pellets (marked as X pellets per bag), while others sell a big container of loose powder. Which is the better deal, per wash? Wel
Lying about the product is not acceptable (Score:3)
If that's the price the suppliers are giving them, why wouldn't it be accurate?
Because it is nothing more than a suggestion from the supplier. It has no actual relationship to real market value.
Nobody forces people to buy from Amazon, there's an entire world wide web out there where they can compare prices and make their own determinations.
So according to you fraud is ok because nobody *has* to buy from Amazon? Weird argument you have there. Sorry but retailers shouldn't get to make any and all claims about their product regardless of veracity. This includes lying about the "market" value of the product to make it seem like it is a better deal than it actually is.
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So according to you fraud is ok because nobody *has* to buy from Amazon? Weird argument you have there. Sorry but retailers shouldn't get to make any and all claims about their product regardless of veracity. This includes lying about the "market" value of the product to make it seem like it is a better deal than it actually is.
Fraud would be if they offered you a product for a certain price, then charged you a different price. Or charged you that price but sent you a different item. Or made a claim that a product had certain features but didn't. The market value of anything is whatever people are willing to pay for it. So it doesn't really matter if you claim that your product is ordinarily worth x; it only matters that you're selling it for y. Your argument boils down to "I think other people are stupid."
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They've been gone for over 40 years, so maybe you're too young to remember "fair trade" laws. Companies were allowed to specify a minimum selling price for their products. Bose, for instance, set a minimum selling price on their stuff to give an impression of quality.
More generally, will you refuse to buy a candy bar for $1.50 because that's the list price?
Typical (Score:1)
Canada is a notoriously uncompetitive market. Gouging is the norm here.
Take the U.S. Target retailer for example. They are a chain well known to Canadian border shoppers. They finally came in under the assumption that they could profit simply by having a Canadian presence, even though they offered inferior content at a premium over what Canadians could get across the border (even after currency and duties are considered).
They failed miserably, and pulled out after big losses, but it speaks to the general mi
I'm all for protecting the consumer (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm all for protecting the consumer, but this sounds like that Canadian agency had a $1m budget deficit and they wanted to cover it fast. Sure, MSRPs are stupid and it would be nice to get rid of them, but how is the retailer supposed to know the manufacturer/supplier has them "inflated". Are they supposed to go all-Sherlock for each item they sell?
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this sounds like that Canadian agency had a $1m budget deficit and they wanted to cover it fast.
That's not how bureaucracies work. More likely they had a $1m budget surplus they needed to get rid of, otherwise they'd get their budget cut in next year's allotment, and they figured paying lawyers to go up against Amazon's lawyers was just the money pit to do the job.
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but how is the retailer supposed to know the manufacturer/supplier has them "inflated". Are they supposed to go all-Sherlock for each item they sell?
You want to claim that you are cheaper than marked price, then you need to do the research!
You can't just make arbitrary claims like that without anything to back such a claim. That is misleading pricing.
Honestly, there are so many common practices today that is fraudulent, if consumer protection agencies were to get aggressive about enforcing current regulation they have the power to change many things.
Note: just because a fraudulent practice is both common and suspected by must customers doesn't make
Re:I'm all for protecting the consumer (Score:5, Informative)
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Huh, that seems to indicate that all MSRPs, at least the way they work currently all over the world, are in violation. Are you telling me that, in Canada, unlike any other country I've been to, there is no such thing as silly MSRPs slapped on items when you go to stores or when you shop online? If that is so, I guess amazon.ca should be penalized.
Yes, that's how canadian law works (Score:1)
Yes, that's exactly how Canadian law works. The Manufacturer can suggest a price, but you will be fined millions of dollars for telling the customer what that price is. Granted, MSRP is generally a marketing gimmick, but it's very much a suppression of speech that would have pitchforks coming out here.
Wait..... (Score:2, Flamebait)
So brick and mortar stores do this ALL THE TIME.... they never cared. But Amazon does it. BAM!
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I think if I was Amazon, I would mention this. And then also inform the agency that for ever dollar they are fined. They will put an equivalent fund in the pursuit of a lawsuit.
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"other people are breaking the law too" has never been a valid defence in any courtroom in the world.
Re:Wait..... (Score:5, Informative)
So brick and mortar stores do this ALL THE TIME.... they never cared. But Amazon does it. BAM!
This is also illegal in Canada and stores get fined for it as well up here. Maybe you're in the US, where consumer protections end where corporate rights start. Doesn't work that way up here though. It's the same reason why when you buy something on Steam in Canada, it's considered an owned product not a license.
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So brick and mortar stores do this ALL THE TIME.... they never cared. But Amazon does it. BAM!
This is also illegal in Canada and stores get fined for it as well up here. Maybe you're in the US, where consumer protections end where corporate rights start. Doesn't work that way up here though. It's the same reason why when you buy something on Steam in Canada, it's considered an owned product not a license.
I get it, they try to operate in CA like they do in US. It's just not that big of a deal in the US because we're acclimated. In the same way that we all know that $4.99 is essentially $5 trying to look like $4.
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And all that time I thought it was because the US had 10x the population of Canada.
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Canadian brick and mortar stores have a LOT of lobbying clout, and they HATE online merchants. Take a look at the argument over raising the amount you are allowed to import duty free. Lowest value in the developed world, by a HUGE margin, and no change in sight, all thanks to brick and mortar lobbying.
Of course it's a Canadian tradition, why compete when you can lobby? That's why we pay much more for almost everything than most other countries (possible exception being Australia, they seem to get gouged alm
Car dealership sucker price yes some people pay (Score:2)
Car dealership sucker price yes some (dumb) people do pay that.
A slap in the wrist (Score:3)
I
New project announced by Amazon (Score:1)
Before the TechDirt revealed "intelligent massless robotic agents" is the new monicker for software, the market valu
Profit! (Score:1)
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This is idiotic. (Score:1)
The problem with the world is that we keep insulating these people from their retarded decisions. Nothing good will come of dumbing the world down to the capability of the lowest common denominator.
There are zero people in the world that we want to breed who were fooled by this. Zero!
Great... can they go after jewelers next? (Score:2)
This has happened in Canada many times before (Score:2)
A sporting goods chain, Forzani's, was hit by a $1.7 million fine. In there also it mentions a clothing chain, Suzy Shier, being fined $1 million.
http://infofranpro.wikidot.com... [wikidot.com]
Sears was recently fined over tires.
http://www.autoserviceworld.co... [autoserviceworld.com]
Here's one more from Micheal's, an arts and crafts store, for $3.5 million!
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2... [huffingtonpost.ca]
Sears has previously been fined over pricing on other products but I can't find a source. In fact, many retailers seem to have issues related to advertise
All Markets Are Free Markets (Score:1)
The market doesn't give a flying fig about the rules you put in front of it. The market will always respond freely. Constrain it too much and "alternative" markets show up. The alternative market isn't really alternative, it is just freedom expressing itself.
I'd like to see this done to Harbor Freight (Score:2)
I buy a lot of crap from Harbor Freight and most of it is worth not just every penny, but more than I paid for it. Not all of it, mind you, but most of it. Especially as Sears implodes, if you go anywhere else for hand tools, you're nuts. But they have taken to employing this practice themselves, and comparing their prices to some wholly invented competitor price. Sometimes they are actually comparing their junk to Snap-On tools, and then claiming you're saving the difference between their sale price, and t
Government tax? (Score:2)
This seems like a case of a liberal government wanting to be the sole controller of taking and sharing of profits via taxation.
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Manufacturers don't have to suggest a retail price. Retailers are perfectly capable of determining how much margin they want over the wholesale price, without reference to any standard price.
This has been going on for decades... (Score:2)
Wait, what? This has been standard practise in every retail industry for decades. Why is Amazon getting dumped with this fine? It's certainly a deceptive practise and needs to come to an end, but how can they single out one seller when their competitors have been doing it for so long? This is just absurd. They should have passed a new law outlawing the practise first. I would love to see something like it in the States as well. You can't just spontaneously decide that something is illegal that so man
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"No worries mate, 99.99% for us, 0.01% for you. Lesson learned." a spokesman was heard to say by an anonymous third party.
Re:Govt wants free money (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh...you broke Law 365, section A, code D! Now we get a million dollars! Muahahahah
Laugh all you want, but there is a bit of validity to the complaint.
If you compare Amazon.com (US) to Amazon.ca (Canada) you will see that Amazon.com is like a superstore, with tons of choices and multiple price points for new, used, refurb, etc., and Amazon.ca is like your corner convenience store, you're lucky if you have one choice and it may or may not be marked up higher than retail. Yes, consumers should comparison shop but it could be confusing for less experience online shoppers.
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Which is exactly why Free Markets will never exist. You can never have the information you need.
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It really is a war of information. If consumers ALL had the information they needed to compare pricing, or to decide which foods will kill them, you'd have a very different image of a "free market".
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But in this case, the consumer has all the pricing information right at their fingertips. You can track almost any product's price history with CamelCamelCamel [camelcamelcamel.com]. Too much work to click a button? Use Wikibuy [wikibuy.com] instead, which will pester you with a pop-up whenever you browse an item with a lower price elsewhere. In 2017, do I really need to mention PriceGrabber [pricegrabber.com] or NexTag [nextag.com]? Hell, even Google links you to their own price comparison service nearly every time you search.
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Personally I don't see the big deal here. I haven't yet met a single person that thinks the greyed out price on Amazon is anywhere near accurate. Mind you I'm not exactly an Amazon fan, but I've never met anybody that takes MSRP seriously unless it's for a very high demand, low supply item.
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I don't know about Amazon specifically, but my wife is very susceptible to "sales" in general. She definitely looks at the "% Off" part of the sticker more than the price itself.
Shopping for computer parts? Use PC Part Picker. (Score:2)
PCPartPicker [pcpartpicker.com].
PriceWatch [pricewatch.com]
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A product is worth whatever it fetches on the market. Unless your product is pretty niche, those websites are a pretty good indication of what a product is worth.
If you find a hunk of gold in the woods, it's not worth zero just because it didn't cost you anything. Similarly, if you spend 40 hours building some craft to post on Etsy and no one wants to pay more than $10 for it, that doesn't make it worth more than $10.
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So in order to get real pricing information you need to submit to being data mined.
No. See my links - you do not need to run a browser extension unless you like the convenience.
It's too difficult to ask companies to be honest about their prices?
Yes, that's a huge and naive ask.
How long until those services start adjusting their prices based on kickbacks from the companies?
It would stand out like a sore thumb since there is a lot of overlap between competing sites.
Then we'll need new companies to track those companies.
We already have that, in a way. Consumer Reports, for instance, evaluates and recommends some of these sites. They also have their own tool.
a few decades ago people would swear companies would never lie about their prices
I'm 41, so maybe you are going back further than that? Marketing and sales have always been sleazy.
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Which is exactly why Free Markets will never exist. You can never have the information you need.
Economic information theory teaches that information has a value and a cost. You can have the information you need, but it costs something. In this case it would cost time to compare.
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A free market that actually delivers on the promises of a free market DOES require perfect information. Otherwise it devolves into a race to the bottom where all you can buy is crap.
Re:Govt wants free money (Score:5, Informative)
How would it not? The whole premise of the free market is based on the buyer being able to determine tha value proposition of the offer. You can't do that when durability isn't apparent. For a while, brand made a decent(ish) proxy for that, but now most brands are just a shell around the no-name chassis used by multiple brands.
For example, 2 widgets priced at $30 and $35. The $30 one is made of substandard parts and will fail in a year. If the $35 one is made with quality parts, it will last 5-10 years. Simple choice. However, in the real world there's also the $40 one which is the same chassis as the $30 one but with a 'better' branding on the shell. There's also the $50 one that used to be made with high end components and would last a lifetime, but last year it switched to mid-grade parts and will last about 4 years.
If you don't have perfect information, you can only choose based on price so when it turns out to be crap, you lose as little as possible. So the $30 crappy one it is. No point in selling one that will last a lifetime at twice the price, nobody will believe it, so make one with the crappiest components known to man and sell at $25 if you actually want to stay in business. Every once in a while, use better components is a run so you can spread some dis-information around.
Likewise, competitive pricing for the same product only works when you know what other people are charging for the product.
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What part of the word "free" do you not understand? Free means unrestricted. Free does not mean omniscient.
On a more practical basis, most people are more interested in whether it's legal to buy a large Coke (for example. in NYC) than whether it costs more at 7-11 than at Costco.
Arrant nonsense. I can choose by convenience, color, date of manufacture, whether the seller is pretty or my friend, by whim, or any of dozens of other criter
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What part of WORK do you not understand? A market can be regulated and healthy or it can be free and fail to live up to claims. It can also be poorly regulated and fail to live up to claims, of course.
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The alternative to free markets are things like command economies, socialism, and price floors/ceilings. And non-free markets very rarely don't fail. For an example of why, see the price ceilings on gas prices during the 70s. Nobody wanted to sell at the prices that the government set, so there was very little supply, which meant long lines at the pump.
Venezuela is having a similar problem on a massive scale. It's hard as hell to import nice things there because the government has official prices that nobod
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No, the alternative to a free market is a well regulated market. That does not imply price ceilings or floors. It may involve efforts to increase supply and almost certainly forbids collusion to artificially depress supply.
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Ummm... no. For Example the NY stock market has at least 3 layers of regulation; the market rules themselves, the regulations, and the Federal government; and is touted as an example of a good approximation of an free market.
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A free market doesn't mean there can't be any regulation. If there was no regulation, then it would just be anarchy and people could just steal your shit instead of actually paying you for it. Again, a free market just refers to how prices are set, and so long as they're determined strictly by the forces of supply and demand, then it's a free market.
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It's the old political shuffle. The people who want no regulations call that the Free Market. Then they point to obviously working markets and declare them to be "free", carefully ignoring the regulations that make it work.
Of course, given the madness over the last decade or so, I would say the financial markets could be working a lot better with more regulation.
Nevertheless, any Market requires adequate information available to the buyer. Look what happened with CDOs when that was polluted with disinformat
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No free does not mean unrestricted. It means something much more complex than that. Unfortunately the word "Free" is a bit of a misnomer and overloaded in English.
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You're quite wrong. Free market just means that prices are governed by the forces of supply and demand, as opposed to being set by an actual government entity (for example, gas price ceilings during the 70s were not free market.) That's all there is to it really.
Other matters, such as making sure that you get what you were promised, don't directly play into that. Other government regulations can set rules against say, counterfeiting, mislabeling, torts, etc, without forcibly altering the selling price of an
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I am very well aware of the definition of Free Market. Read what I said carefully. Markets only work to the degree that the buyer has perfect information. Regulation can improve the situation by banning fraud and false advertising. It can further ban various attempts at information control (for example, by voiding contract clauses banning reviews). All of those things improve the quality of information the consumer has.
Most people call that a regulated market. You can call it what you want, but you will no
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No, if a Free Market is not regulated it becomes a Captured Market. See the unregulated markets of the 1800s and the development of monopolies.
Re:Govt wants free money (Score:5, Informative)
This is a pretty common requirement in the western world. The US is the only western country I'm aware of in which there's not a law against advertising an item as on sale when it's never actually been sold at a higher price.
In the UK (and most of Europe) for example, all price cuts must be advertised as being cut from a different price that you have sold the item at for a continuous 30 day period.
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Yes that's the reason why 30 days before the sales period, new, overpriced products appear. Often they have a single one of each item and they stick it in the least visible area of the store.
They are only here to be "discounted" later. In fact, they don't want you to buy it full price because it would not be available to others and it would break the 30 days mandatory period. Shops don't advertise this but it is not really a secret either. If you ask a seller and if he is not too retarded, he will tell you
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The other common thing they do is alternate two sales -
Oranges, £0.49 –SALE, 3 for 2!
Oranges, SALE £0.33 was £0.49
Each for 30 days.
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My mum bought 4 beigels for 25p each, and the girl tried to charge her £1.40. My mum (who used to be a programmer, and can probably add octal in her head faster than a bakery worker could count bread rolls) said "No. 4 times 25p is £1." The girl responded by bringing out a piece of paper and a biro and
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This is funny sitting next to the anti-American snobbery. We may not have many restrictions on "sales," but we do have lots of consumer protections, and they're followed because customers will get red-faced angry if they aren't, and also the government is obligated to investigate consumer complaints involving false items or untrue prices.
Once difference compared to the Canadian situation in the article is that consumers in the US do not consider a "list price" to have any meaning other than "this is a price
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It's not about list prices, it's about actually selling the product at price $XX.
In Canada you have to offer and sell the product at some price that will form the basis of a regular price. It has nothing to do with MSRP, which is a legal construct, not an actual price.
If you have product A that you price at $19.99 you have to show you actually sold inventory at $19.99 and that you offered the product for sale and actually made sales for the majority of the time (eg more than 183 days a year, for example) th
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Offer and be willing to sell. It is silly to claim that in Canada if you offer something for sale and nobody will buy at your first price, you can never offer it for sale at any other price. Unless somebody buys one, then you can change it. No, that is just an inaccurate representation of the rules. I can know that just because Canada has a functioning economy. If your business fails and you offer everything in your store at a discount and you call it a sale, that is actually allowed! Even if you have an it
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"The US is the only western country I'm aware of in which there's not a law against advertising an item as on sale when it's never actually been sold at a higher price."
That's called deceptive pricing and we most certainly do have laws and court cases dealing with exactly this in the USA, courtesy of the FTC.
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This is a pretty common requirement in the western world. The US is the only western country I'm aware of in which there's not a law against advertising an item as on sale when it's never actually been sold at a higher price.
My personal favorite are the stores always running the 50% off sale. 50% off the MSRP which is what the store would actually sell the price at regularly. That's the United States for you. If we're the world leaders of anything, it's unethical sales and marketing.
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In parts of the US, this is illegal. For example, there's a California law on this:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/09/pf/price-scheme-jcpenney-kohls-sears-macys/
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I didn't realize Kroger and Publix were operating in Canada... /sarcasm
Canada is a different country, with different laws. Just because your experience is one thing, doesn't mean it's the same everywhere.
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This isn't about MSRP but OSPR (Ordinary Selling Price Representation).
I know the linked article mentions MSRP but the quote they have:
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Identifying creeps is also easy: a person who is looking into your window while you're showering.
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Identifying a WASP is easy: a person who steps out of the shower so as to pee in the toilet.
Sometimes you have to go to the bathroom while you are in the shower. Curse those home designers who didn't put the toilet in the bathroom. I hate having to push it down the plug hole with my toe.
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That's some thick pee you got there, buddy!
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That's some thick pee you got there, buddy!
I don't think its pee; it has lumps.