Tired of Hunting for Prices at the Apple Store? So Is New Jersey
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Apple’s style of showing digital prices in its retail stores isn’t sitting well with New Jersey’s Attorney General’s office, which has just fined the company $150,000 for what it calls “widespread pricing violations” in its stores throughout the state.
In a press release, state Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin announced that Apple has agreed to pay the civil penalty and change its business practices, which center on not showing product prices in an accessible way in its stores.
The allegations stem from the Division of Consumer Affairs’ (“Division”) reinspection of 11 Apple stores subject to a 2017 consent order requiring Apple to install continuously available pricing information for iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, Apple Watches, and other electronic devices displayed on tables in stores throughout the state.
New Jersey Office of the Attorney General
New Jersey requires all retailers to ensure prices are easily visible to all customers, ”plainly marked with a stamp, label, or sign on or near the merchandise.” That came into conflict with Apple’s more modern style of showing prices digitally using apps running on the devices themselves or iPads placed on the display tables. Items on shelves also tend to rely on QR codes or software prompts.
This has long raised concerns among regulators in New Jersey, although they reached a compromise in 2017, agreeing to allow prices to be displayed digitally as long as they were immediately visible and didn’t require anything more than basic interaction with a device.
However, Apple has seemingly failed to comply with that agreement, as the AG’s office notes. In each one of the eleven stores visited by state officials, the investigators found display tables that lacked pricing information and smaller items like “charging cables, protective cases, and audio devices” without any selling prices shown either on the packaging or visible nearby.
To make matters worse, it’s not the first time this has come up, which has raised the AG’s ire even further.
“At a time when prices are skyrocketing, consumers deserve to know what they’re paying for products on the shelves. Once again, Apple has violated the law by failing to display the prices for products in their retail stores — keeping consumers in the dark,” AG Platkin said. “It’s bad enough when companies violate the law once. It’s even worse when they are held accountable for violating consumers’ rights and then engage in the same unlawful conduct again. There is no excuse for Apple’s repeated misconduct here, and consumers deserve better.”
The $150,000 civil penalty is the largest that’s ever been levied under the state’s Merchandise Pricing Act. The ruling also includes a consent order that requires Apple to ensure its pricing is readily accessible to customers. Specifically, prices must be
- Plainly marked by a stamp, tag, label, or sign affixed to the merchandise,
- Apparent on the screen of the device itself upon limited interaction, or
- Located in close proximity to where the consumer finds the merchandise, so that consumers can independently know the price while looking at the merchandise without the need to interact with a salesperson.
Apple is also prohibited from requiring customers to use any electronic device such as an iPad to find the price of an item unless it’s displayed on the device “clearly and conspicuously” or can be easily accessed through “limited interaction.” It’s not clear what “limited” means in this case; tapping a screen to wake it up would presumably be fine, while browsing through several promotional screens to get there would likely run afoul of the rules.
Beyond pricing, Apple is also required to ensure that its refund policies are “clearly and conspicuously” posted either on the merchandise, at the point of sale, or at each store entrance.
