Black Friday sale and misleading discounts being advertised

Other topics Off-topic
1

It seems BL thinks Black Friday is coming a month early, who are we to argue with those who can’t read a calendar.

It is a long one though, so that is good.

My concern though is the use of misleading and outright lies about the discounts offered.

I know I bang on about the law, but, they matter.

In order to use a previous price in a sale, the item must have been available (in the U.K. at least) for a period of no less than 28 consecutive days at the higher stated price.

A1 Mini is going to be in sale at £169 down from the previous price of £269, a huge £100 discount. Except it isn’t. The current price, which is the same price it has been since the last sale ended is ALSO £169, not the stated £269.

The current price of £169 sits next to it previous price as they have been advertising it at the new price of £169 for a couple of months at least.

IMG_7599
IMG_75991668×747 166 KB

Current price which has been this for a few months.

IMG_7598
IMG_7598679×807 87.8 KB

Black Friday price which is identical.

The AMS (yes I have vested interest in this) is shown as £239 down from £339, a huge and welcomed discount. This one has a true discount this time, however, it isn’t as much as is shown.

The AMS unit is currently sold for £309, this was true prior to the last sale. Thus means the discount is an excellent £70, not the untruthful £100 being promoted against the sales of goods act.

IMG_7596
IMG_75961668×772 139 KB

Current price and same as for many months.

IMG_7597
IMG_7597716×828 100 KB

Sale price pretending the prior price was £339.

Honesty

Let’s get real here, why is honesty such a bad word?

Why are the constant lies and deceptions continuing unabated.

The A1 mini is an excellent price already, discounting it further wouldn’t be reasonable, but, pretending it has a £100 discount applied is clearly a huge easily avoided lie.

The AMS has a decent £70 discount, why lie and pretend it is £100? £70 is a decent discount. There is a lot of argument that I agree with) that the AMS is overpriced, but, as discounts go £70 is a lot to brag about. £100, is a pointless lie.

The same thing happened during the previous sale.

Why is my wish that the lies to ours faces and the ones behind the scenes such an important business model for BL?

It only harms their brand and the reason for so many negative consumer ratings that make BL look like a corrupt group of fly-by-night operators.

Law breaking

These advertised prices, of which I provided just two of the many are breaking the law. At least a U.K. one, I have no idea what other countries have for consumer protection against “fraudulent sales tactics” (that is the section that relates to this).

I want to think they are better than this.

18 Likes
2

Totally agree. I was getting excited about the sale when i saw last night but looking again this morning i thought wait a minute somethings not right here. Then seeing your post i was like ahhh yes the cheeky @! :thinking:

3 Likes
3

First seeing this, I was sure the US didn’t have such laws. But I did some Googling, and here it is:

(a) One of the most commonly used forms of bargain advertising is to offer a reduction from the advertiser’s own former price for an article. If the former price is the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time, it provides a legitimate basis for the advertising of a price comparison. Where the former price is genuine, the bargain being advertised is a true one. If, on the other hand, the former price being advertised is not bona fide but fictitious—for example, where an artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction—the “bargain” being advertised is a false one; the purchaser is not receiving the unusual value he expects. In such a case, the “reduced” price is, in reality, probably just the seller’s regular price.

(b) A former price is not necessarily fictitious merely because no sales at the advertised price were made. The advertiser should be especially careful, however, in such a case, that the price is one at which the product was openly and actively offered for sale, for a reasonably substantial period of time, in the recent, regular course of his business, honestly and in good faith—and, of course, not for the purpose of establishing a fictitious higher price on which a deceptive comparison might be based. And the advertiser should scrupulously avoid any implication that a former price is a selling, not an asking price (for example, by use of such language as, “Formerly sold at $______”), unless substantial sales at that price were actually made.

(c) The following is an example of a price comparison based on a fictitious former price. John Doe is a retailer of Brand X fountain pens, which cost him $5 each. His usual markup is 50 percent over cost; that is, his regular retail price is $7.50. In order subsequently to offer an unusual “bargain”, Doe begins offering Brand X at $10 per pen. He realizes that he will be able to sell no, or very few, pens at this inflated price. But he doesn’t care, for he maintains that price for only a few days. Then he “cuts” the price to its usual level—$7.50—and advertises: “Terrific Bargain: X Pens, Were $10, Now Only $7.50!” This is obviously a false claim. The advertised “bargain” is not genuine.

(d) Other illustrations of fictitious price comparisons could be given. An advertiser might use a price at which he never offered the article at all; he might feature a price which was not used in the regular course of business, or which was not used in the recent past but at some remote period in the past, without making disclosure of that fact; he might use a price that was not openly offered to the public, or that was not maintained for a reasonable length of time, but was immediately reduced.

(e) If the former price is set forth in the advertisement, whether accompanied or not by descriptive terminology such as “Regularly,” “Usually,” “Formerly,” etc., the advertiser should make certain that the former price is not a fictitious one. If the former price, or the amount or percentage of reduction, is not stated in the advertisement, as when the ad merely states, “Sale,” the advertiser must take care that the amount of reduction is not so insignificant as to be meaningless. It should be sufficiently large that the consumer, if he knew what it was, would believe that a genuine bargain or saving was being offered. An advertiser who claims that an item has been “Reduced to $9.99,” when the former price was $10, is misleading the consumer, who will understand the claim to mean that a much greater, and not merely nominal, reduction was being offered.

Source

It bears repeating that the manufacturer, distributor or retailer must in every case act honestly and in good faith in advertising a list price, and not with the intention of establishing a basis, or creating an instrumentality, for a deceptive comparison in any local or other trade area. For instance, a manufacturer may not affix price tickets containing inflated prices as an accommodation to particular retailers who intend to use such prices as the basis for advertising fictitious price reductions.

Source

As far as I can tell this is an interpreted/edited version of laws, and not just suggested guidelines.
Source and Source

It says in the sale T&C on the US store that

The discount amounts advertised are calculated by comparing between MSRP with the final purchase price

IIRC they’re a separate entity from Bambu Global, so if they’re considered to be reselling printers, the MSRP would be set by Global and thus might not be breaking the law? It seems like breaking the law is something that they would avoid doing, so that might be the workaround they’re relying on. Either way, it’s misleading. They do at least have some discounts on some items, like filament should be at a decent discount, but it’s still hugely misleading in my eyes. This also makes it seem to me like they’re breaking the law just with their normall “Sales”

Screenshot 2024-10-19 at 9.32.04 AM
Screenshot 2024-10-19 at 9.32.04 AM878×282 22.6 KB

I believe this one, for example, has been going for months now.

Sorry for the long post! Would also like to say that this is not legal advice, correct me if I’m wrong, and I have no clue what I talking about.

6 Likes
4

This has always been interesting to me. Something I don’t quite understand is US businesses that are found guilty of it and lose a court case, but continue to do it to this day. When Malc mentioned it the first thing that popped in to my head was HobbyLobby. Every single item in HobbyLobby is always on sale. They will be unboxing the holiday decorations and put them on a shelf with big signs that say “30% off!”. So I just googled it and they were sued in 2014, lost and paid fines. Then sued again in 2018… but they are still doing it to this day lol.

2 Likes
5

So what if they get sued though. If it continues making them money, they will continue to do it unless the punishment is greater than the rewards.

3 Likes
6

If the fine is lower than the cost required to comply or the predicted loss of profit from following legal practice, then the fine can be chucked into “expenses”.

3 Likes
7

They literally define it as “the cost of doing business”.

The social media companies do the same, as do financial institutions caught profiting from embargoed countries, the fine is never as large as the profit.

Companies think there is more profit in lies.

I think there is more profit in truth.

If I asked everyone on the forum could you recommend BL, I imagine the common response would be…

Their printers are great, just hope you never need to deal with support.

3 Likes
8

There used to be a saying long ago - crime doesn’t pay. In the US business world these days, crime pays handsomely.

Years ago whenever a business was found to have violated consumer protection laws the first step in determining the consequences was known as ‘disgorgement.’ Only after that was the ‘fine’ or punishment determined.

Disgorgement happened when the court determined how much money a company had made from their illegal activity. The company was then required to either return 100% of the ill-gotten gains to the consumers that it defrauded or turn that money over to the courts. Once that was calculated out, fines were imposed that were separate from that money. So if a company made 10 million from something that violated the law, the first thing that happened was that they lost that 10 million. Then they had to pay a fine, for example 1 million.

The result (and the intent) was that the company would ALWAYS lose money if it engaged in illegal activity. Over time, big donors (in other words, the owners of large corporations) began to hold sway over judges by simply making it perfectly clear that they would not donate to any judge who actually disgorged companies that violated the law - and lo and behold the process has mostly simply went away now. The same company that in the past would have to forfeit the 10 million and lose another million on top of that now just loses the 1 million and still keeps 9 million.

And the end result is that crime now pays very well for corporations.

5 Likes
9

Agreed. Same here in Australia. A1 Mini with a huge discount to $329. Except that’s been the price for a long time and what I paid. It is misleading advertising.

Will see what the P1P with AMS comes down to. Currently $1299.

Would settle for P1S with AMS but comes to almost the same price, there’s no combo :frowning:

10

They have given all the prices, they just make them hard to find.

1199 AUD

1 Like
11

I live in the US and I’m not sure there it’s SOP for businesses here to be corrupt. But if they are able to have a better bottom line even after lawyer’s fees and fines, the reason would be as simple as basic arithmetic.

1 Like
12

P1P plus AMS looks tempting then :slight_smile:

13

There was a recent Bambu “holiday” sale where filament was advertised at some “low” price. But every time I clicked through the sale link to the filament page, I saw no evidence of any discounts. The prices were the same as all along after they dropped their membership thing.

1 Like
14

The Black Friday sale filament price for 4+ rolls is identical to the current pre-sale price.

It pays to check before assuming we are being told the truth.

3 Likes
15

Sometimes in the U.S. its more profitable to break the law and pay the fines lol. Theres almost never jail time for corporate leaders because corporations are people that cant be locked up. Its all stupid. They probably think they are doing the right thing because its maximizing shareholder value in some dumb way. One party wants to do away with consumer protection all together.

On a side note, the ceo at my job is pretty much crashing our company but just got a 45 million dollar raise while laying off 25,000 people. Murica and whatnot

1 Like
16

I have talked with them, and the BF prices will be available from when the sale starts. The prices we are seeing now aren’t the BF sale prices. Calm down guys - i’m pretty sure we will be getting some good deals tomorrow. :slight_smile:

17

All the sale prices have been published since the sale was announced, we know the sale prices.

2 Likes
18

As I said, the prices you see right now are NOT the BF sales prices (even the ones you see on their BF sales page). They will be lowered tomorrow when the sales start.
At least that is what I have been told.

But the prices, from the link your’re sharing does show a discount? (except for the A1 mini)

image
image1198×540 28.8 KB

19

Except when they are.

You said the sale prices weren’t available yet and then confirmed I had shared the sale prices.

It also worth noting they have a huge Black
Friday sales page advertising the same prices in addition to the list I provided.

This one is deceptive though, be careful. It shows price reductions that are not true due to deceptive practises.

Which weird because you said no prices were available when you said to calm down after both of these prices were linked well before your “calm down” comment.

So, they have announced them, they have used misleading discount amounted based on fictitious previous prices and we aren’t guessing.

But, yeah, we should calm down as every one was apparently not calm.

Rude given you claimed nothing was known.

3 Likes
20

You are all complaining about the discounts, but from what I see there is a discount.
Therefore I said you should all calm down.
Chill buddy.

Looking at the P1S the current price is €849 - the BF price will be €759. That’s a discount isn’t it?