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For inexplicable reasons, until recently, Sears maintained a page on its “Shop Your Way” website that was automatically populated with customers’ reviews and comments. The result of this automation was that unflattering comments about Sears’ products and practices got published and promoted as if they were ads, along with the positive ones.
*MOUSE PRINT: Happy April Fools Day week, but these ads are no joke. These negative ads were recently culled from the Sears page containing all product ads.
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From the lost archive of unpublished Mouse Print* stories, circa 2007:
Mattress buying has always been a tricky proposition. You can’t easily compare prices and models of mattresses because bedding manufacturers assign unique style names to each store that sells its products.
That fact alone makes taking advantage of a store’s advertised price guarantee almost impossible.
Assuming you could find the exact same mattress elsewhere (or a comparable one if they allowed it), the Sleepy’s chain seems to make a pretty generous offer — they beat any competitor’s price by 20% or the bed is free.
*MOUSE PRINT: The guarantee, pictured above, exactly as it appeared [in 2007] on Sleepy’s homepage, has virtually unreadable fine print that substantially diminishes the guarantee’s coverage.
We will meet any price on any Stearns & Foster®, Internet, TrueForm®, Tempur-Pedic® or BodyDiagnostics® models. * Applies to same or comparable mattresses prior to delivery. Excludes closeouts, special purchases, exchanges, floor samples, warranties, discontinued & one-of-a-kind items. Must present competitor’s current ad or invoice.
They partially exclude two popular brands, Stearns & Foster and Tempur-Pedic, as well as any price you find online. Even in its TV ads, Sleepy’s promoted its price guarantee but failed to orally disclose its limitations.
Further, our trusty mouse is always irritated by any guarantee that promises to beat a competitor’s price by X amount, or you get the product free. What store in their right mind would rather give away a product completely free rather than merely reduce its price marginally below a competitor? That’s a guarantee that only sounds good until you think about for a minute.
Fast forward to 2014. Today, Sleepy’s price guarantee is nowhere to be found on its website. But, it is still appearing in some newspaper ads, under the same basic terms, but we’re happy to say in larger type:
