Deal or No Deal?

Everyone loves to find something on sale. I'm a Filene's Basement veteran myself, and I've participated in a lot of conversations that go something like this:

"Hey there, acquaintance or family member. That's a spiffy new article of clothing you've got there. It must have cost a bundle."

"Actually, I got it at The Basement. It was originally $250, but I got it for $35. Sure, it's slightly irregular and the sleeves keep falling off, but I'll just keep sewing them back on."

I don't mean to malign The Basement. They actually sell good stuff, and an astute shopper can find some great bargains in there. Unfortunately, there are those among us who would seek to exploit my--and your--thrifty nature with pricing shenanigans that place them in the dimly lit corner of the Online Liars.

Yesterday, I talked about the Free Shipping Phonies. Today, I'd like to expose their equally nefarious cousins, the Dubious Discounters. These online hooligans post fake "list prices," then offer what looks like a steep discount to make you think you're getting a bargain. You're not, you're just being fed a lie along with the cake you ordered.

There's a certain site out there that's selling cakes that are eerily similar to the cakes we carry. I won't name names this time out of respect to one of our partner bakeries, but the hooligans know who they are. Their catalog pages offer a "list price" for each cake they sell, which is then crossed out with another price published beneath it. In red, next to that lower price, are the words, "You save $4.00." At least they don't punctuate their lies with exclamation points, but putting them in red is a pretty close second.

If you bought the same Chocolate Satin Cake from us, you'd actually be saving almost a dollar over their price, including shipping, or almost $5 over their fictional "list price." So we're cheaper than they are, and we don't lie to you.

We could do the same thing, of course. List our cakes at $50 a piece and claim fictional savings, but I like sleeping at night.

The practice of fictional list pricing reached a head in retail jewlery sales in Massachusetts a couple of years ago, when several stores were offering savings of "up to 80%." The Attorney General's office caught wise to this deception, and demanded that the following language be included in such advertising: "List price reflects a price at which offers may or may not have been made." In other words, they had to admit that the products may never have been sold at the "list price," which makes the discount fictional. Someday the forces of fair play will catch up to these practices online, until then, buyer beware.

So how can you tell if a discount is genuine? Shop around. I regularly check our competitors to make sure we're giving you the best possible price. If you know what things cost to begin with, you can spot a real bargain. Overstock and Woot are both the real deal. Efendos, which claims "free shipping" is not. They're charging more than we are for cakes, and we just adjusted our prices to reflect the higher fuel surcharges we pay for shipping.

Whoops--did I just say that? Yes I did. We raised our prices a little on some of our products to reflect higher shipping and ingredient costs. And if those fuel surcharges go away, we'll lower our prices, because we're committed to giving you the best possible value for your dollar.

Some folks lie to make you think you're getting a deal. We actually give you one.