WINTER DRAPERY SALES

Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 182, 3 August 1920, Page 3

WINTER DRAPERY SALES

THE "MARKING-DOWN"

PRACTICE.

Winter sales are general in Auckland (says tire Christchiirch Press correspondent), and a number of complaints have reached tho local profiteering tribunal in which tradespeople have been accused of having goods exposed for sale in the windows and marked at prices which indicated heavy profiteering, inasmuch as these prices were crossed through, and very |much lower prices substituted, commonly known as "marking down." The tribunal's investigations made it clear that these marked-out prices were purely fictitious in very many oases, the real price of the article being tho one marked as "sale price.' 5 The tribunal expressed itself in very strong terms against this dishonest trick of attempting to '. deceive the public into the belief that the goodsi in the window marked down were being sold either at a (sacrifice or. at a very greatly reduced margin cfr profit to the shopkeeper. T2ie whole practices of inducing people to purchase articles under the misapprehension that they were gjebfcing bargains was very severely condemned, the chairman expressing the opinion that such a practice ought to be publicly exposed.