Bottom line: It’s illegal. If an item is marked a certain price with no other stickers on it then that price is to be honored. If that is truly the policy of the LHS owner then I would never shop there; nor would I encourage anyone else to do so. And I would look forward to the day when the “Space Available” sign goes up in front of the LHS owner’s store becaue he’s forced to go out of business.
Treat your customer right and he/she will return and support you, as well as tell others to do the same. Word of mouth is still the best advertisment for any business.
The Better Business Bureau if I remember correctly states that the item will be sold for the price marked.One of my next stops would have been the BBB office or contact them online and report it.
We had a local shop in the 80’s and 90’s that charged 110 to 125% of retail price on everything train related. I suspect he marked up prices on old inventory when prices went up; but I don’t know that for a fact.
He sold his train inventory to me about a year after I opened; even at a steep discount; he had less than $1,000.00 in inventory.
I came across my year end inventory from 1999 this week end; I carried $6500 in Athearn inventory alone (retail). That was at the tail end of the blue box era; Genesis was just starting…
And in Texas, the practice described by the original poster is illegal; you have to sell merchandise at the price at which it is marked…
Yeah, as others have noted, that’s just really low, as well as illegal in most states.
What is desireable to find is a shop that sells at MSRP, but always at the original price. I haven’t been there in years, but that’s how Hawkins in Lafayette, IN was when I used to get over that way semi-regularly. His stock is deep, very deep. No real deals on current stuff at full MSRP, but give it a few years to age and some of those prices start looking pretty good. When folks ask about some item from the past they can’t find, I still send them to Hawkins, where he just may have it and at a very reasonable price.
Hawkins is still that way. His stock of parts is legendary. As I generally know when I am going to West Lafayette, I’ll shoot him an email of the things I’m looking for, and he will have them set aside for me. I love going to that shop…
Well, youse guys said it all. The LOWEST price displayed for an item is to be the sale price. If I have a sign on a bottle of wine saying that the price is $6.00, and my brochure says that it is $5.00, it is sold for $5.00. More often I will put a lower price on the shelf on some stuff that I want to move.
The shopkeeper does have to watch out for people switching tags or lables and then claiming a lower price.
Gas stations in North Dakota are permitted to change their prices only ONCE a day. There is no saying when that change will happen. Mostly when the guy across the street raises or lowers his price.
When the big sign outside of the gas station says $3.75, you have to look at the small print to see if that price is for the gasoline or for the cigaretts.