2015 has been a year full of people calling out brands and retailers for shady price practices. It's pretty well established that outlet prices are lies and are essentially made-up "retail" prices. Well now Macy's and Bloomingdale's are being accused of false pricing in a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that Macy's (which owns Bloomingdale's) purposely labeled products at a price higher than suggested retail in order to make shoppers feel like they're getting a better deal when they're put on sale. The lawsuit goes so far to say that the prices are "arbitrary" and "artificially inflated." One of the plaintiffs says she bought a $5,000 mattress from Macy's because she thought it was discounted by 50%. God damn. I honestly never realized how expensive mattresses could be. As The Fashion Law notes, plaintiffs Kristin Haley and Sylvia Thompson aim to make this a class action lawsuit and represent everyone who has been made a victim of this illegal pricing scheme.
For real though, think of all the money to be made by intentionally pricing them wrong. Some smaller stores already do it, but they typically set the price only a few dollars higher. At a huge operation like Macy's, that's millions of dollars taken from the shoppers. People were getting FLEECED if this was an actual business practice. We'll see how this one pans out.
