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Wayfair’s “Way Day” — Deal or Dud Day?

Playing off of Amazon’s wildly successful “Prime Day” last July, Wayfair.com declared its own holiday savings event last week called “Way Day.” In TV ads, they claimed to offer the lowest prices since Black Friday on that day.

Way Day

To see if “Way Day” was hyping more discounts than they were actually providing, MrConsumer “randomly” chose 10 items from their various merchandise categories the day before Way Day, April 24, so they could be compared to the discounts offered on the same items the following day. We had no idea which items would be on sale and which would not be.

Wayfair before

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“Way Day” arrived, and here are Wayfair’s prices for the same items during their big sale.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Way Day prices

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Obviously, only checking 10 items is not a scientific, projectable survey. Nonetheless, the results of this spotcheck are interesting. Half the items were the same price or virtually the same price on “Way Day” compared to the day before. For example, the Price Pfister faucet was $82.86 on Way Day compared to $82.99 the day before. The GE dishwasher, however, didn’t even budge a penny from its $803 price.

But there were significant savings on some of the other five items. The pair of lamps dropped from $75 to $60.99. The rug went $277.99 down to $182.06. But the barbecue grill was only $6 less.

In total, the 10 items in our cart were selling for $1923.69 the day before the sale, but dropped to $1773.90 — for a “Way Day” savings total of $150.

So it looks like if one picked and chose carefully on “Way Day” and were familiar with Wayfair’s everyday prices, you could save some real bucks. Otherwise the savings might have only been slim or none.

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Walk Through Kohl’s Doors and Lose Your Right to Sue?!

Mandatory arbitration clauses that forbid class actions have been in the news lately as Congress and the president last fall struck down a new consumer rule prohibiting such clauses in contracts with banks.

Way before this action, Kohl’s department store cleverly stuck a clause into the terms and conditions on its website banning customers from getting together to sue the company.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Kohl's class action waiver

It is not so out of the ordinary to see arbitration clauses forbidding class actions on retailers’ websites. What is unusual is the fact that Kohl’s seems to be saying that this restriction even applies to people who shop in their stores.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Kohl's waiver 2

It says if you shop in their brick and mortar stores you are subject to the same restriction, and that “shopping in our stores constitutes your acceptance these terms.” Elsewhere in the terms it says if you don’t like these restrictions “you should not and are not allowed to…make purchases in our stores.”

What? So merely walking through the doors of a Kohl’s store I lose my right to be part of a class action against them? It sure seems so. (There is an argument to be made, however, that the combination of BOTH using their website AND shopping in their stores is what triggers the class action restriction. However, if that were true then only people who did both would lose the right to sue and certainly Kohl’s wants to prevent Internet users who never shopped in their stores to be covered by the class action prohibition.)

We asked Kohl’s how in the world the class action waiver could ever apply to people who only shop at their stores and were never put on notice that entering their stores triggered this restriction. (Last I checked, there was no notice on every door notifying shoppers they were about to lose those some consumer rights upon entering.)

The company did not respond.

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A Macy’s Rebate Gone Wrong

SensorGel pillowRight after Christmas, Consumer World promoted a deal on a SensorGel pillow at Macy’s as “Bargain of the Week.” It was $20, but there was a $20 full price rebate.

In January, MrConsumer’s own rebate submission was denied by the rebate fulfillment house indicating that no receipt was received. Of course I had included it. Calling them quickly revealed that indeed they had my receipt in their records, and the rebate was approved.

Then in February, some consumers contacted me saying that their rebate was denied because they purchased the pillow online rather than in the store. Here is what one consumer was told when he engaged the rebate folks in a chat session:

Macy's rebate denial

After complaints like this starting coming in, we checked the fine print of the offer on the rebate form.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Macy's rebate fine print

Clearly, right on the rebate form itself, both online and in-store purchases were permitted for this rebate.

Since it appeared that many purchasers may have had their rebates wrongfully denied, we contacted Macy’s PR folks, asking them to investigate, and if they discovered that customers were indeed owed money, that they honor those submissions. After multiple contacts, Macy’s did not reply to our inquiries.

So, MrConsumer had to use some back-channel methods to get Macy’s to do the right thing. He contacted the former CEO of Parago, the rebate fulfillment house that Macy’s uses, to ask her help. This remarkable woman dropped everything eight years ago to address a similar problem with a Norton rebate. She did the same again by contacting the new CEO at Blackhawk Network, the new owner of the fulfillment house.

A week later, a representative of Blackhawk called to say that after discussion with Macy’s and a review of all the denied rebates, they are making good for some 150 customers! And they are also going to more accurately state on the rebate form when an offer is restricted to in-store or online sales only.