Working behind the scenes with retail pricing (not Walmart) I can say this is 100% how it works.
Also have been given a sheet listing all of my department’s products that were below a specific profit margin. Told that we had a sale coming in 2 weeks so make sure to raise prices on those before then so that I didn’t have a drop in my overall department sales. If the customers noticed and asked, we were to inform them the ‘sale’ was to offset the price hike that just happened because we were looking out for them.
phx@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Raising prices then advertising a “sale” at the same/higher price IS actually against the law though. Unfortunately we have terrible enforcement of these laws but they do exist:
…canada.ca/…/ordinary-selling-price
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Is it against the law if they legitimately don’t lower the price though as the above poster is being told to give as a reason, but we know isn’t true?
phx@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Yeah. Calling something a sale at a price that’s not actually discounted under the regular price (with some caveats on how long it needs to be at said regular price), then yeah it’s a violation of the act. Basically false advertising.
Bumping up the regular price to cover what you’d have otherwise saved on tax is dickish but not against any regulations AFAIK