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Special offers: Know your rights

1052433_41149064I heard an informative segment on Today with Pat Kenny. Yes yes, I listen to Pat Kenny. It was about the misleading practices retailers get away with and the general principals buyers should follow from the National Consumer Agency guidelines. The NCA site has some handy tips worth checking out, particularly under their consumer value section.

Some are fairly obvious but others are good to get clarification on, especially as there are many retailers luring us in with some tempting offers these days.

Here are a few of the facts covered on the show:

  • Sale price: When something is on sale, it has to be on sale at the original/full price for a reasonable amount of time. The guidelines state that it’s generally 28 days or if its a perishable item or something with a limited life time (Halloween or Christmas item), it’s 14 days. Both prices must be clearly shown on the item.
  • Bait and switch advertising: An example of this is when it says ‘Rooms from €59’ but when you contact them, they are all gone and they try and sell you a more expensive room.  This is bait and switch advertising and is illegal. The business or retailer must have a number of rooms/products at that price not just one.
  • Old stock: A retailer can sell old stock but they must make it very clear that it is old stock or last season. If you see a product for sale that you saw three years previously and it doesn’t state it’s old stock; this is illegal. This is especially important in relation to electrical goods with have a limited life-span.
  • Money off: If you see a sign stating ‘up to 70% off’, they must have a reasonable amount of items that are’ up to 70% off’. If a shop has such a sale and most items are sold in the first day, then the sign should be taken down.
  • Special offer: Introductory offers and limited offers are fine but you must be informed when it ends, the date of expiry must be clearly written.
  • Free offers: If an item is free with a newspaper and it is inside that paper, that is fine. However, if you have to incur any extra costs (apart from the original cost of the paper), this is not a free offer. It must clearly state on the front of the paper that you need to collect tokens or call a premium number so you know you will incur additional costs.

Have you been duped by a misleading offer or do you find sale time a straight forward experience?

5 Comments

  1. I have complained twice to the NCA regarding sale prices in two different stores. Both times I have had proof of the “sale” prices being the same as the original prices and both time have been told that there is nothing they can do to penalise the retailer and it is up to me to negotiate with the vendor. Whats the point in having a watchdog with no teeth?

  2. All very nicely written and civil, but when will the average Joe ever be able to prove these things are going on?? Are we suppose to do undercover work?

  3. My examples were very easily proved. It involved wallpaper, both samples given to me by the stores in question had the price written on the back along with the date. Both price and date were written by the shop assistants, not me. The NCA still didn’t want to know.

  4. I know what you mean. What to do in such a situation all seems a bit vague. What they did say is that if it isn’t just a genuine pricing error on behalf of the vendor and it appears suspicious, then the consumer should negotiate with the vendor and come to an agreement.

    Do you think that it was a genuine mistake in each of the stores or were they attempting to con the customer?

  5. It was a total con job. I went to specifically buy the wallpaper in the sale two weeks later only to discover that the sale price was exactly the same as the original price. There was a sticker on the rolls saying 22.50 reduced to 16.50 but the price always was 16.50.