By Christie McGuinness
For many Americans, Amazon has become a saving grace. When someone forgets to buy a present and it is sold-out in stores, Amazon can have it delivered in two days. For city dwellers who can’t always find what they’re looking for in their neighborhood, Amazon can deliver it to their apartment. Amazon has cornered the market as an online one-stop shop for just about every product imaginable. However, Amazon has come under fire recently for its pricing practices as consumers contend they are being misled into believing that Amazon is giving them a bargain.
An advertisement is an invitation to do business and an offer to sell a particular product. In other words, the price attached to the product is considered to be an offer and the consumer has the option to accept the offer or to look elsewhere for a better bargain. Amazon is being accused of misleading its consumers into believing the products they are buying on the Amazon website are on sale. According to a New York Times article, “[w]e’ve been conditioned to buy only when things are on sale … what many retailers have done is make sure everything is always on sale .”
A class action lawsuit in California is alleging that Amazon is violating California law by misleading consumers into believing they are buying products at a discount. This case is currently being fought out over procedural issues as to whether or not the matter must be arbitrated rather than heard in the District Court.
This is not the only trouble looming on Amazon’s horizon. Consumers are also concerned that Amazon has stopped showing ‘list prices’ along with the prices for which Amazon sells its products. Meaning, Amazon is no longer informing customers of the product retail price in comparison to the ‘discount’ for which Amazon sells the same product. As the NYT article discusses, Amazon’s business model is to sell its products cheaply and make up for lost profits through sales volume. Now, consumers are concerned they are no longer getting products at a discounted rate, and they are no longer reassured that Amazon provides them the best price for its products. There also is concern from small-scale businesses that the inability to list their price lowers their sales revenue because they are unable to convince customers they have the most competitive pricing. This is rooted in the same notion that consumers need to be convinced they are getting a bargain before they check-out with their Amazon shopping cart.
The question remains: if everything is on sale all the time, is anything ever really on sale?
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/amazon-is-quietly-eliminating-list-prices.html?src=me)