Complaints against Harvey Norman

A Harvey Norman furniture sale has triggered multiple complaints to the Commerce Commission in the past week.

A Commerce Commission spokesman said since last Monday it had received eight complaints about Harvey Norman, of which seven related to pricing. Five of those related to the same piece of furniture, he said. The complaints were being assessed, he said.

Harvey Norman is advertising a two-piece lounge suite at a ‘‘hot price’’ of $1547. The advert says the sale is an ‘‘early release Black Friday deal’’ and that ‘‘special pricing has been applied’’.

On discussion forum website Reddit, one user pointed out that price tracking website PriceMe showed the product had retailed at $1199 for the past two months, before jumping up to $2199 last Tuesday.

A Harvey Norman spokeswoman said it advertised the price of $1199 on September 13 only.

The PriceMe website had been incorrect in showing that Harvey Norman had been offering that price throughout September and October, she said.

‘‘We have discussed this with PriceMe who will engage their technical team to investigate.’’

The product no longer features on PriceMe.

PriceMe spokesman Chris Palmer said there had been a fault with its price history tool. It picked up that the Harvey Norman product price went down for a particular promotion but did not adjust it back to its normal price afterward the promotion ended, he said. ‘‘It’s our fault as embarrassing as it is.’’

He said there could be hundreds of products on its website that were affected by the same problem.

Consumer NZ head of research Jessica Wilson said assuming the lounge suite was offered at a ‘‘special’’ price on just those dates, and sold at its usual price in between, then the retailer had not broken any rules.

‘‘Retailers will run into trouble if they’re routinely advertising specials and misleading consumers about the discount they’re getting.’’

The last time Consumer NZ ran a price checking investigation at Farmers and Briscoes, it found items that were on ‘‘special’’ almost every week over the 13 weeks of its survey, she said.

By claiming an item was on special a retailer needed to be offering customers a genuine discount, she said. ‘‘There has to be a real opportunity to get a discount.’’

Failure to do so ran the risk of breaching the Fair Trading Act which could result in a fine of up to $600,000, she said.