I just saw this troubling video about JCPenney marking prices up. I am appalled to say the least. I can’t believe that they just slap stickers over the lower price to make the consumer think that they are getting a deal.
This really bothers me… like really unnerves me. I want to tell all of my friends and family to peel the price stickers and don’t buy items for more then the price listed on the bottom. Sickening!
Do you shop there? Are you going to continue after seeing this video?
That is really dumb on their part. I realize stores change prices all the time, but take the old labels off and relabel the items. How lazy can you be? to me it’s so disrespectful to think consumers are so stupid.
For them to think we are stupid – whoops!
Well, they are doing what any other retailer does, they just didn’t go about it the smart way – by changing the actual tickets. One of the major complaints from people is they didn’t like the “no sale, no coupons” approach, that they weren’t getting as good of a deal… this goes to show that they were on some things. They, unfortunately, think that if there isn’t a coupon, it’s not a good deal. So here are your coupons back, but you’re paying the same or more than before.
I don’t shop at JCPenny, but from a business standpoint, they aren’t doing anything fraudulent or misleading. This reinstatement of their old “sale” pricing structure has only recently come back, according to the video, last month. These tags are on items that were part of last year’s “everyday low prices” pricing structure that people hated. So, the shirt that he bought that was “marked up to $20” that he paid $13.99 for even though the original tag said $10, is priced exactly the way customers want it to be priced. The $10 was not an “original price”, it was the “everyday low price” that customers didn’t like. So, old JCPenny would have had the tag say $20 and marked it down to $13.99, everyone thought “wow what a deal!” Last year’s JCPenny just had the $10 price tag with no markdown and people thought “wow, what a rip off!” This is the marketing tactic of “sale prices” working at its best. An accurate investigation of this issue would have compared prices from the original JCP that people loved, the recent “flop” JCP with everyday low prices that people hated, AND this “new” JCP which is really just the old JCP. I would put my MONEY on it that the prices of the original JCP are the same as the new JCP.
There another story about Kohls doing this as well. A woman posted photos of the products with their sale tags and the actual (reduced) original tag.