A California state court recently issued a preliminary ruling proposing to assess a statutory penalty against online discount retailer Overstock.com in the amount of $6.8 million for engaging in allegedly false and misleading discount advertising.¹ Overstock.com was alleged to have advertised discounted prices that were pegged to the company’s own uncorroborated estimate of undiscounted retail value, rather than on actual data. The case highlights the risk that both online and brick-and-mortar retailers face if they advertise “discounts” from “regular” prices that have never actually been offered in commerce, in violation of the Federal Trade Commission guidelines against deceptive advertising (“FTC Guides”). The case also signals a major new threat to retailers engaging in these kinds of marketing strategies, which are common in the industry.

The Overstock.com case began in 2010, when a group of California district attorneys filed a private action under California’s False Advertising Law, Unfair Competition Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act. Their complaint alleged that Overstock.com “routinely and systematically made untrue and misleading comparative advertising claims” by comparing its retail prices to “advertised reference price(s)” (ARPs) that were not the prevailing market prices for its products. The district attorneys claimed that Overstock.com instead used misleading internal formulas designed to “inflate the comparative prices and artificially increase the discounts it claimed to be offering consumers.” The complaint also alleged that because Overstock.com was no longer merely a reseller of distressed merchandise, but was now actively engaged in original design, production and sale of a wide variety of products, it could not possibly advertise a “discount” for such products that were never sold at an undiscounted price.Continue Reading California Court Proposes to Assess $6.8 Million Penalty Against Online Discount Retailer For Engaging in Commonly Used Pricing Claims