5mo ago

Home Depot to pay $2 million settlement for overcharging customers

www.cnn.com Home Depot to pay $2 million settlement for overcharging customers and false advertising | CNN Business

Home Depot will pay nearly $2 million to settle a civil enforcement claim from California district attorneys that the home improvement company was engaging in false advertising and unfair competition.

"The complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court said that when people at Home Depot brought an item to checkout, they would be charged more money than was written on the shelf tag or on the item itself."

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While the company admitted no wrongdoing, it must pay $1.7 million in civil penalties, as well as $277,251 to cover investigation costs as well as to “support future enforcement of consumer protection laws.”
Why is it we allow these companies to pretend they did no evil? The penalty should have been a couple orders of magnitude higher, and they should have had to admit what they did. Obviously we don't live in a world where both those things would happen, but we don't even get one of them?
They surely made more than two million doing this and so the fine is meaningless. The real way to make it meaningful would be to force the admission of guilt, and then use the admission as justification to stop them from buying out the competition for 18 billion dollars.
Look how they deceived their customers, good thing they can do it to even more customers now!
- I see it less as "being evil" and more about "being incompetent".
  Changing shelf labels in a store the size of a Home Depot is incredibly manual, which is why WalMart moved to e-ink electronic shelf tags. That way, the same system that updates prices at the register updates the tags.
  https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/06/06/new-tech-better-outcomes-digital-shelf-labels-are-a-win-for-customers-and-associates
  Of course that also lets them do surge pricing instantly. "Oh, schools out? Increase prices +.04%!"
  
  I see it less as “being evil” and more about “being incompetent”.
  Maybe, if items are under-priced as often as over-priced.
  
  In an inflationary environment, prices are only going one direction and the shelf tags are going to lag.
  
  0.04%? More like 14%
  
  Evil was a stretch, sure. Though while I appreciate the concept of not attributing malice to what incompetence explains, I think that needs to be couched by whether or not a profit is being turned by the action.
- You can't force someone to say something. That would violate freedom of speech.
  
  Someone? I'm talking about having a corporation admit it's own wrongdoing, not a specific individual.
  
  Haha, corporations are people in America.
  
  Make it part of the deal. Admit wrongdoing and fix it, otherwise here's a 10 billion dollar fine up your ass. Shame the US has shit for consumer protections.
  
  Are you sure about that? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/24/may-the-government-require-an-apology-as-part-of-a-criminal-sentence/

18 comments