'This luxorious recliner has an extra 10% off – my bum it does!' blog discussion

someone

Fake sales are my pet hate ... it's obvious what they are doing but hard to get it stamped out

michellew_2

I think its in consumer law that the product has to have sold at the higher price for a certain number of days, but in the case of large chains this only needs to have happened in one store not all of them - its all a con at the end of the day only you can decide what price you're prepared to pay for something

flimsier

Harveys are dreadful anyway. They're liars and charlatans.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2443527

poppy10_2

Ha ha, good spot. You must have had sharp eyes to catch that one.




Their website is full of similar 'deals'


Plus the rather bizarre 'reverse' sale - it's cheap now, but will get more expensive in the future:




Don't all the sofa/leather companies indulge in this fakery to some extent? What about DFS and its constant "double discount" savings? Do they ever actually sell things at the claimed pre-sale price?

ErikTheViking

What Harveys are doing (and is done by all of the furniture stores, and I suspect most electrical, carpet etc etc stores too) is called 'price establishment'. For a period of 28 days within a 12 month period (if my memory serves me correctly) the company has to display the product at the higher price, in order for them to use the price as the 'reduced from' price in a sale. The trading standards office do regular checks on this practice. So do keep an eye out for reductions in these stores, as if there isn't 'x'% off, you might be one of the mugs who gets caught buying the product during price establishment, and you have very little hope of sympathy if you go in guns blazing when you see the same product at half the price 2 weeks later.

Just to comment on a couple of other things here too...

Delivery charges, even if you pick it up yourself: Harveys (and others) don't keep the goods in store, so if you buy a sofa from them, they still have to have it delivered to the store. You're better off just letting them deliver it. The delivery cost at Harveys is by far the cheapest of all of the furniture stores, and they usually unwrap it and even assemble in some cases.

Regarding the person using Argos... good luck. Low prices indeed, but the quality is generally terrible.

And finally, to the person using local furniture stores, given that this is a moneysaving forum generally, I wish you all the luck in the world. Having used local stores previously, all I can say is that I have been ripped off (price & aftercare-wise) many times. As the stores are smaller businesses, you will doubtlessly be paying a higher price for your goods. There is a highly regarded firm in Macclesfield called Arighi Bianchi, which is considered almost an elite store in the area. However, a couple of years ago, I saw the exact same 3-piece suite in both Arighi's and Harveys, but Harveys were charging literally 50% of the price.

I probably sound like I'm defending Harveys a lot here, which isn't strictly the case, but I think they get a bad rap (not always unfairly). Many of Harveys' problems are caused by the dreadful courier service they use. Most delivery problems seem to be caused by them. If they got off their backsides and sorted out that problem, they would be much better off in the customer services stakes.

Off my soap box now.
Trust me, I used to be in the business.

philneedham

Halfords are bad for this too. Our daughter's birthday is in October and I was spotted a bike in August that she would like, priced at around £80. We were just about to order it when the price doubled overnight. We didn't bother but i received a number of "Christmas special offer" emails on kids' bikes over the next few weeks trumpeting a series of reductions until the bike was back at the original selling price but a "50% off" bargain. Shocking really, I'm amazed that supposedly reputable companies such as these are allowed to get away with it.

Bravepants

I'm avoiding Harveys in the future anyway! £200+ for a chest of drawers, as far as I can tell mostly contructed from dowling and MDF, with not a whiff of wood glue in sight!

Bravepants

PS. ...and don't get me started on Everest!

Beaniebean

I've noticed this on the adverts too. I've now started looking for the previous prices in ads - it's fascinating!

As far as I can tell all the large retailers are doing it. We 'suffered' from it last year with B&Q. We'd been in and priced kitchen units etc and when we went to buy them they'd shot up in price only to be 'reduced' shortly after and advertised as a 40% off Sale - I was furious. In the end I just had to accept I was happy with the kitchen and with the price I'd paid for it.

Thanks to everyone for their comments about this, it's been an intresting read.

Tim_Deegan

Percy1983 wrote: »

I do have a different school of thought here.

I give up with all these percentages off etc and just look at the final price (I don't care how they got there) and decide if its good value.

With that argos seemed to have cleaned up on this last sale leaflet I saw, each item had a previously sold at price (lowest price).

Argos are only cheap when items are reduced to clear. The rest of the time they can be quite expensive. An example would be a brass bed that they used to sell. I used to sell exactly the same model at £179 for the double, and £199 for the king size. Argos were selling them for £299 for the double, and £349 for the king size. It was only when they discontinued them that they brought the price down to less than I was selling them for.