Black Friday: "Moonpricing" - Users complain about cheeky retail trick
Created: 11/25/2022 11:16 am
By: Ines Baur
Manor's Black Friday price tag is sure to turn heads.
© Screenshot Twitter
The glued-over price tag of a Swiss department store chain caused anger and outrage on the Internet on Black Friday.
In order to encourage customers to buy, the original price was given as a "special price".
Munich/Basel – Special offers, bargains and discounts are intended to encourage customers to make purchases.
Not just during Black Week or Black Friday.
Although consumers are in the mood to buy, they are increasingly checking the Internet to see whether the special price is actually special.
Or they tweak the “sale” price tag and check what the original price actually was.
That may bring a fact or two to light.
A customer of the Swiss department store chain Manor probably also wanted to know what was behind the taped-over label.
What she found upset her.
She posts her discovery on the reddit.com portal.
As you can see, the "special price" is 129 CHF, the original price is 179 CHF.
A saving of 50 CHF.
Underneath the label that was peeled off, however, you can see that the original price was CHF 129.
Black Friday Deals: Moon pricing - Moon prices violate the requirement of maximum transparency
The discussion that develops under the picture goes beyond national borders.
A user (country unknown) writes that this will be illegal in his country next year.
Another user writes: "It's already like that in Germany.
We call it moon pricing, unfortunately it still happens every now and then because it's hard to control."
"The Price Marking Act stipulates that the sales prices and possibly also the basic prices of those goods that are offered to consumers by companies on a commercial basis are to be marked," writes the Federal Ministry of Labor and Economics.
The correct labeling of the prices of products is essential for the decision of the consumer in their daily shopping and serves fair competition.
"If moon prices are used for comparison, this violates both the requirement of the greatest possible transparency and the ban on misleading," writes the
Handelsblatt
.
Lunar prices that were previously not asked at all, or at least not seriously, may therefore not be used for comparison.
"This is clearly an unacceptable misleading of the consumer."
Find the best Black Friday deals here.
Black Friday 2022: Moon pricing – how do the black sheep among the retailers trick?
It is often believed that retailers slowly increase their prices weeks before Black Friday.
In order to then reduce properly on the key date and offer bargains.
In order to find out how much money you can really save when shopping online on Black Friday, the portal
idealo.de
claims to have carried out an extensive price study.
Consumer centers explain that unfortunately it is not in the interests of consumers and how they can protect themselves from fakes.
Basically, it makes sense to only buy what is really needed.
And of course to compare the prices.
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Black Friday: Moonpricing at Swiss department store group
Whether the post on Reddit is correct cannot be verified at the moment, but since the price tag looks real and such methods are often used by companies, the probability is high.
Our editorial team has sent an inquiry to Manor, no reply yet.
