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Holiday shopping is in full swing this week, with Black Friday deals everywhere you look. But one major retailer, Amazon, just got accused of deceptive sales practices in a recently filed lawsuit. Here’s what that lawsuit claims is going on.
The lawsuit claims that Amazon used deceptive practices to entice people to buy products. It takes aim specifically at the “list price” of products that make it look like the product is on sale when in fact it’s not discounted. It purports that there are no “limited time sales” and that the list prices are “not real.” It’s the old idea that if everything is on sale all the time, then nothing is on sale.
The lawsuit against Amazon was filed by David Ramirez, a customer who purchased an Amazon Fire TV from the company. It’s a possible class-action lawsuit, which means it has been filed on behalf of everyone who may have been wronged by Amazon in the same way when recently buying a TV.
Though the “list price” is purported to be a price that the item was sold for during the past 90 days, the lawsuit claims that Amazon is making them up in order to trick people into thinking they’re getting a deal.
To prove it, attorneys tracked the prices of many Amazon Fire TVs for almost a year in some cases. The actual price never got as high as the list price, except in some instances where Amazon hiked the price up to the list price “for an extremely short period, in some instance as short as literally one day, and then immediately to lower the actual sales price back down.”
While this may all sound like typical, not-quite-ethical sales tactics, Amazon previously settled a different consumer protection lawsuit in 2021 about similar false reference prices. They were barred from advertising false or misleading prices at that time. So if this new lawsuit proves they’re doing it again, it could mean bigger problems for the retail giant.
Right now, nothing has been decided yet. If a judge decides that Amazon is misleading people again, it may become a class-action lawsuit. In that case, anyone who was wronged by Amazon in the same way (probably by purchasing an Amazon Fire TV) would be eligible to sign up to join the class and receive a portion of the settlement. Potentially, it also has the ability to force Amazon to be more up-front about their deals and pricing, which will ultimately benefit everyone.
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