On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:56:31 +0000, Peter Parry
wrote:
>On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:05:07 +0000, Alex Heney
>wrote:
>
>>Here we are only talking about the first of those, namely where the
>>indication is "(a) that the price is less than in fact it is;".
>
>>That particular clause must, in my view have been written to prevent
>>this type of "inertia selling", where the consumer feels pressured to
>>(or can't be bothered not to) still go ahead when he finally finds out
>>at the point of purchase that the price is actually higher than
>>indicated.
>
>At the time the Act was written for almost all routine shopping the
>purchaser knew the price in exactly the same way the cashier knew the
>price - both relied upon reading the same label on the item.
>
I'm not convinced the customer would often have seen the price label
on the item in those days.
>There were no barcode scanners and no opportunity for a different
>price to be charged at the till than was displayed on the item. There
>was virtually no chance of a customer to be told at the point of
>purchase that the price was different from that marked on the item so
>your postulated "inertia selling" simply didn't exist as a problem and
>it is inconceivable that the drafters of the Act had this in mind when
>writing it.
>
Possibly that could explain why that clause was separated out and
reworded in 1987.
>What there was, and what the Act tried to suppress, was misleading
>pricing of the "25% of recommended price" sort when the "recommended
>price" had never been charged or "Sale - 50% off" when the higher
>price had never been charged.
Which are not covered by that clause, but by the other clauses under
S21.
> Even today most prosecutions are for
>modern relatives of this sort of misleading pricing - offering two for
>the price of one on displays but tills not being programed with the
>offer and charging twice.
That is not a variation on the above, it is completely different.
--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.
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