Amazon Sued Over Misleading Sale Savings

As Black Friday sales are at a peak now, it is a good time to question the savings claims that stores make that give you the impression you are getting a really deep discount.

A Florida consumer says he was induced to buy a Fire TV last February when Amazon advertised that it was on sale for limited period of time and he could save a substantial amount of money.

A typical ad for the TV on the Amazon website looked like this:

At $299.99, there appeared to be a $150 savings compared to the list price. Amazon defines “list price” as follows:

*MOUSE PRINT:

In this case, Amazon says the list price is at or above the price that Amazon actually sold the product at least once in past 90 days. (According to the plaintiff, Amazon is the only seller of this product.)

According to a sales price analysis done by the consumer’s lawyer, neither this TV nor over a dozen other Fire TVs sold for the so-called list price in the recent past as far back as to last October. However…

…it was Amazon’s practice to hike up the actual sale price of the relevant Fire TV to the List Price for an extremely short period, in some instances as short as literally one day, and then immediately to lower the actual sales price back down to the normal sales prices. Amazon conducted these short spikes in price up to the List Price solely for the purpose of trying to make the stated List Prices literally true, even if in practice customers were deceived by Amazon’s omission of the material fact that the referenced List Prices were only available for such a short period of time as to virtually amount to not being available at all.

So not surprisingly, the consumer is suing Amazon for misleading sales practices including misrepresenting the saving and the limited time nature of their sales of these TVs. [See complaint.]