Beware! Season of trick sales is on

Vivek Paul, a 35-year-old banker, went to a mall on Bannerghatta Road, wanting to buy a pair of jeans costing Rs 3,500. However, he put off the buy when a salesperson told him that the store would be offering discounts in a fortnight.

Paul returned to the shop a fortnight later, only to realise that the same pair of jeans was now priced Rs 5,000, with an offer of 15% discount.

“Had I not been to the store before, I would have ended up buying the jeans thinking I was getting a discount,” Paul says.

Discount offers, once seasonal, are now a round the year happening, snaring gullible consumers. According to marketing experts, giving out offers and discounts is illegal under Consumer Protection Act, 1986. “The regulatory body is taking no action on such sales. Every year, lakhs of consumers are duped by companies pretending to offer items at a cheaper price. There is no way to check the actual pricing of a product,” says Bejon Misra, founder of Consumer Online Foundation.

Interestingly, price discrepancy is not covered under the purview of the Consumer Protection Act. “There is little a consumer can do if he thinks the company has quoted an inflated MRP. The Act does not cover this aspect,” says N Nagaraju, a consumer advocate.

In most cases, retailers play on the instinct of people to buy anything if offered cheap. Many a time, retailers get away by palming off substandard material in discount sales, says Nagaraju.

Pooja Sharma, a student, agrees. “A sports brand was offering flat 40% off on all its collections. I ended up buying clothes and shoes worth Rs 6,500 and found later that one of the shirts I purchased had a small defect.”  She could not exchange the shirt, as discounted goods are not replaced by companies.

Also, experts feel that ‘buy 1 get 1’ kind of offer is usually to clear old stocks.
Take the case Sunaina Gandhi, a 28-year-old HR professional in a leading bank.

She got tricked by the offer a hypermarket chain was advertising -- buy two big bottles of soft drink and get a third free -- only to find out later that the expiry date was just a week away.