It’s easy to be cynical about anything that involves government consumer bodies, largely because they cost metric fucktons of cash and appear to achieve sod all. That said, we’d be happy to see the likes of Scamnesty do some real good and put an end to nefarious activity, although whether its ambitions will dovetail neatly with reality is another matter.

Scamnesty is a month long initiative that’ll see trading standards officers from across the UK coming together to rummage through your scam emails, texts and letters. No, really – giant yellow bins will be appearing around the country for you to post your suspect letters into. Emails? Texts? They want to have a gander at them, too.

It’s all part of Scams Awareness Month – not quite as attractive as Reader’s Wives Monthly and not even a month because it ends on February 26th – which launches as the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) warns that over four million adults in the UK have responded to a scam, of which a third lost money. That’s fairly serious, isn’t it? Why is this action only a month twenty six days long, then? If you’ve gone to the bother of manufacturing several hundred banana-coloured bins, it seems a shame to waste them if the problem is so widespread. And it’s such a catchy name, too.

There’s more information on the Consumer Direct website – let us know if anything you submit results in any sort of  positive action; we hope for the best, but we fear the worst. Actually, screw that – let us know if you see one of these bins in the wild and have a peek at how full it is – how effective is this campaign at street level? Photographic evidence, please.

A grandad, yesterday.

Back in 1977, when I was just five years of age, my old grandad used to sit me on his knee and say: “Son, you can never completely trust a website that sells tickets to music and sporting events.”

He’d suck hard on a Werther’s Original and continue: “By the time the year 2009 comes around, and I’m long since dead and gone, one in ten people will have found themselves ripped off and left out of pocket from dealing with one of these bogus ticket-selling websites.”

“It sounds scary Grandad – tell me more,” I would say, and so he did. Patting me softly on the head, he’d add: “You shouldn’t worry yourself too much son – before 2010, the OFT and Consumer Direct will launch a campaign to raise folks’ awareness of the illegal practices and a young singer called Kate Nash will have her say.”

“She’ll tell the world: “I think it’s disgusting, scamming people who want to go to gigs and have a good time. They just get ripped off and disappointed, turning something positive into something negative. People should check that the website selling the tickets is legitimate before they buy their tickets.””

“Grandad,” I’d ask, “what’s a Kate Nash?” to which the old man would chuckle and say: “She’s not been born yet, but she’ll be a very popular young singer when you’re a middle-aged man. Although to be honest lad, if someone gave you a fake Kate Nash ticket, you’d think it was your fucking birthday.”

And then he’d chuckle, fall asleep and his false teeth would drop out of his mouth. Sweet dreams Grandad…

Placing the most popular products furthest from the entrance; impulse purchases at the tills; ensuring that whatever you went in for, you walk past as many products and up all the bastard aisles before you find it – we’ve all know that millions are spent by supermarkets on researching new ways to brainwash us while we mosey on through.

There’s point-of-sale material too, in-store marketing such as the legendary Tesco yellow labels. Because they have physical stand-out and represent a financial saving to us, we’re effectively trained by Tesco to become sensitive to their presence and more susceptible to purchasing the item on offer.

The same is true of all retail stores; point-of-sale material is there to teach us what the shop would prefer we bought. Eventually, we come to trust these offers because as beneficial as they are to retailers if we make a purchase, we make a saving too. Everyone’s a winner it seems, unless the trust is abused:

Bitterwallet reader Stuart Ashton found the above example and sent it to us – the sticker promised a saving and the customer saw no reason to doubt it, so he trusted it and bought the item. Another “pointless” offer from the high street or against the law? According to Consumer Direct when we asked them earlier, most certainly the latter. It may have been a one-off mistake, but advertising a product as reduced in price when it isn’t would put a shop on shaky ground with Trading Standards.

How does the situation differ with our recent example of the Argos sale? In that case, though some goods were available for less before the sale, a comparison to previous prices was provided. Even while we may think that’s very confusing for the customer, Argos played by the rules of consumer law. in the example above, the retailer appears to have marked an item as reduced in price without bothering to reduce it, and without providing any evidence that the item may have been sold at a higher price in the past six months.

If you find any examples of the high street abusing your trust during the sales, send them to us at bitterwallet@gmail.com. If you’re not too busy calling Trading Standards, that is.

We warned you earlier in the week about how prices of goods can be manipulated in sales. Halfords provided the example of a price comparison that stated a sale saving was better than half price, when in fact the immediate saving was far less; Halfords hadn’t compared the sale price to the price immediately before the sale, but to a higher price several weeks previous.

It’s a practise allowed by law, but one that could still confuse many people. Here’s another example from the Argos website, as pointed out by Bitterwallet readers Robert and fwiw; a Samsung digital camera – was £79.99, now £68.29; you save over £11 in the sale!

But before you strip bollock naked and party in a sex way, you notice the sale price has an asterisk next to it, so you read the small print and discover the camera has been retailing for £10 less than the current sale price. According to Robert, “the price has actually increased by £10 in the last few days, whilst it was in the clearance section”:

As long the higher price occurred within the last six months and lasted 28 consecutive days, then everything’s above aboard as far as Trading Standards and Consumer Direct are concerned. That said, there’s a sentence near the beginning of the DTI’s Code of Practice for Traders on Price Indications which muddies the water:

There don’t seem to be any caveats attached to the sentence, so it reads as if the sale price should be compared to the price immediately before the sale. We asked both Trading Standards and Consumer Direct about this particular sentence earlier in the week; they didn’t seem to be aware of it, and instead repeated the six months / 28 day law. We may have misread it or there may be a newer code of practise available which we can’t find one – have a read of the code here and see what you think.

Sales are great, because not only can you save bags of money, they validate spending what little you had in the first place. Kids going hungry? Never mind, you’ve bought a new bathroom suite! Red letters worrying the doormat? Don’t worry, there’s a plasma television mounted on the living room wall!

Not all sales are born equal, however, and not all sales are as breathtaking as they may first appear. Bitterwallet reader Ducky contacted us to enquire about the Halfords sale, with particular regards to two products on offer in “the “better than half price sale”, or the “sale with better than half price deals”, depending how you read their rather confusing graphics.

The two items in question are the Navigon 1200 and Navigon 2200 sat nav units:

Quite a deal, you’ll agree; those prices would mean savings of £80 and £110 respectively. Except both units were on sale in Halfords during December for just £10 more than their current sale price; the Navigon 1200 cost just £69.99 and the Navigon 2200 was £99.99 immediately before the sale began, as stated in reviews by PC Advisor and Pocket Lint and subsequently confirmed to us by Halfords themselves.

So what’s going on? Halford’s are comparing the current sale prices to the product prices in October and November. Since both products were sold at the higher prices for 28 consecutive days within the last six months, there’s no breaking of consumer law according to Consumer Direct. That doesn’t stop the price comparison being unclear to customers – you might be led to think the substantial savings are a direct result of the sale, which is untrue since the sale reduced the immediate price of each product by just £10, not £80 or £110.

So it looks like a massive saving, so long as you don’t take into account the prices immediately before the sale began. Oh, and you if don’t know about the manufacturer’s RRP for the products when launched in August:

To summarise, then; Halfords charged up to a third more than the manufacturer’s RRP on these two items, then reduced them significantly to cash in on the pre-Christmas market, and have now reduced both items by just £10 in the sale. Despite this minimal reduction the items are being advertised as “better than half price” deals by comparing them to the original prices that were up to a third higher than the manufacturer’s RRP. Phew.

Consumer Direct advised us this was within their guidelines and when we contacted Halfords they stated that the small print of insert ads notes this is compared to the “was price”.

Them’s the facts, kids. What say you?

Plenty of festival goers were left penniless and pissed off this Summer when an online site sold them tickets that never arrived. We’re talking to you, SOS Masterticket.

This week, there are dozens more people ready for a fight in the car park, after paperticket.co.uk vanished, to be replaced with the following message:

On 16 October, the Metropolitan Police Service’s Computer Crime Unit requested the dehosting of the www.paperticket.co.uk website under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

People who have bought tickets from this site are encouraged to call Consumer Direct for advice on 08454 04 05 06.

Consumer forums across the web are chock full of complaints, including tales of some rather sinister face-to-face meetings. So if you’ve bought tickets that are yet to arrive, what can you do about it? Well, even though the police are investigating, your money might still be unsafe and your bank may not be able to help. (more…)