Big sale. Expires soon...

Martin Stranski

Martin Stranski

Martin Stranski

Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2018
Posts
1
Location
London
No no, this is not a spam or scam. Just walking down the Oxford street in London the other day. I was wondering if there is any law in the UK that would limit the fake discounts and the slogans such as "buy now", which attack the urge to buy. I am getting sick of the "great offers" and all the "only today" crap. It is just everywhere I look an it is not doing any good to the society.
 
you can't legislate against people being idiots. If people are willingly allowing themselves to get mugged off by these fake sales then that is their problem. Legislating against this will just turn this country into more of a nanny state where the government literally holds your Johnson while you go for a leak. Providing the retailers are not doing anything illegal it's up to people to work out if they are quids in or getting mugged off, it's called free choice.
 
There already are numerous legal criteria that sales need to meet when advertised, such as the product needing to have been the 'before' price for a minimum amount of time.

Doesn't mean that retailers don't work around it by bumping up the item price for 2 weeks, not intending to sell any, then reducing it back to the 'normal' price and shouting about the 'massive' savings.
 
wildman said:
you can't legislate against people being idiots. If people are willingly allowing themselves to get mugged off by these fake sales then that is their problem. Legislating against this will just turn this country into more of a nanny state where the government literally holds your Johnson while you go for a leak. Providing the retailers are not doing anything illegal it's up to people to work out if they are quids in or getting mugged off, it's called free choice.
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Why can't you legislate against it?

There's already legislation that stops retailers marking something as "on sale" against a never-sold-at original price.
 
cheesyboy said:
Why can't you legislate against it?

There's already legislation that stops retailers marking something as "on sale" against a never-sold-at original price.
Click to expand...

like i said, if they are not doing anything illegal, why develop a whole new raft of legislation just to protect mugs. it's called free choice, people need to stop being sheep and actually look into things in more detail before committing. Thats the whole problem with society today, no consequences and the expectation that the government is there to pick up the pieces or stop things from happening because you are per chance a gullible idiot.
 
cheesyboy said:
Why can't you legislate against it?

There's already legislation that stops retailers marking something as "on sale" against a never-sold-at original price.
Click to expand...

That doesnt work, they just put the price up in one store to something people would never buy, and then claim huge discounts in other stores. Its all false, I cant believe people fall for it. No, you are not getting a £5k suite for £500.
 
a tactic I have only just been made aware of is the discounts set only on a small percentage of a paticular line.

Say Next has a black friday offer on some jeans, and there is 1,000 in stock. They only set a small percentage of these to be included in the offer, could be 10%. So once 100 items have been sold at the discounted price they go out of stock. The day after the sale, magically 900 are back in stock.

Very also have some underhanded tactics. £100 off ipads, ensuring the latest models are out of stock, day after the sale all ipads are back in stock.

oh, speaking of very.....if anyone from very is reading this....black friday is, erm, Friday not Thursday. The clue is in the name. It's black FRIDAY, not black Thursday.
 
a place int he metrocentre had a closing down sale continuously for about 6 years. best one was a huge sign in massive capitals saying "EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!" and underneath on letters only readable from about 2 feet away "selected lines only".
 
When I worked in retail, many many moons ago, they would see the item at full price within one obscure store for a period of time before then saying it was on sale. To use the word "sale" they do have to prove it was sold at the higher price. Anything other than same such as great offer or fantastic price can be put against anything.
 
A law is not needed, adults (if there are any left these days) just need to exercise a little restraint. It's not like the shops are kidnapping people off the street and forcing them to buy things.

cheesyboy said:
Why can't you legislate against it?

There's already legislation that stops retailers marking something as "on sale" against a never-sold-at original price.
Click to expand...

That's false advertising though, people shouldn't need protecting againt their inability to exercise self control. If I am understanding OP right he wants a law stopping retailers from advertising any kind of sales or discounts simply because people can't control themselves.
 
Last edited:
TheOracle said:
a tactic I have only just been made aware of is the discounts set only on a small percentage of a paticular line.

Say Next has a black friday offer on some jeans, and there is 1,000 in stock. They only set a small percentage of these to be included in the offer, could be 10%. So once 100 items have been sold at the discounted price they go out of stock. The day after the sale, magically 900 are back in stock.

Very also have some underhanded tactics. £100 off ipads, ensuring the latest models are out of stock, day after the sale all ipads are back in stock.

oh, speaking of very.....if anyone from very is reading this....black friday is, erm, Friday not Thursday. The clue is in the name. It's black FRIDAY, not black Thursday.
Click to expand...

Argos are one of the worst for this. Products with massive discounts that aren't in stock or available for delivery. The second the sale ends they're in every store and available for delivery.
 
Spidey senses tingling. Martin signs up from an .sk IP (not even a VPN, just residential), but the post seems relatively tame. Shortly after, someone else, coincidentally from .sk (same provider) signs up, hiding a gambling website in the post unrelated to the content he was discussing. Let's see how this pans out but I wouldn't waste your time guys.
 
Martin Stranski said:
No no, this is not a spam or scam. Just walking down the Oxford street in London the other day. I was wondering if there is any law in the UK that would limit the fake discounts and the slogans such as "buy now", which attack the urge to buy. I am getting sick of the "great offers" and all the "only today" crap. It is just everywhere I look an it is not doing any good to the society.
Click to expand...

What I find interestng is that amazon have been done for this behaviour in the past and ironically amazon forbid people publishing their historical levels of pricing (notice its not on pcpartspicker).

The strategy seems to be to temporarily raise the price of a product, and then drop it down again and claim its a special offer.
 
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