SEATTLE (Legal Newsline) – The Children’s Place is fooling customers into thinking its sales contain more of a discount than they actually do, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
Elaine Dougan filed her case in Seattle federal court on May 30, acting as a private attorney general and/or the lead plaintiff in a proposed class. The lawsuit seeks damages under the Consumer Protection Act.
Her lawyers at Hattis & Lukacs say they’ve been monitoring the chain’s pricing since 2014. They say they have time-stamped screenshots of more than six million daily offerings for more than 53,000 products.
Their research “shows that The Children’s Place’s advertised website-wide ‘sale’ events and advertised percentage-off and dollar discounts were false, and that its list prices (i.e., reference prices) from which the discounts were calculated were false and inflated,” the lawsuit says.
“For the majority of its products, The Children’s Place never offered the products at the list price—not even for a single day. For the rest of its products, The Children’s Place very rarely offered the products at the list price (e.g., typically less than ten percent of the time).”