Is John Lewis breaking its price pledge?
THE pledge to be ‘ never knowingly undersold’ has gone back decades and helped John Lewis to thrive.
However, the upmarket store has been accused of reneging on the promise made in 1925 to match the prices of rivals.
It failed to drop advertised prices on 15 out of 16 products after being informed they were being sold for less by other stores. Some were sold by chains like Tesco Direct and Toys R Us or at smaller specialist stores.
The products ranged from Lego sets to speakers, swimsuits, RayBan sunglasses, hairstylers, a tent, baby monitor and watch, according to MoneySavingExpert.com.
Coupled with its customer service and long warranties, John Lewis’s pledge has been the cornerstone of its success.
But there are caveats. In 2007, John Lewis said it would only match a rival with a bricks and mortar outlet if it was within eight miles of one of its department stores.
In 2010, it extended the promise to match the web prices charged by other ‘ bricks and mortar’ retailers. But it did not include web- only stores like Amazon, which do not have the same overheads.
The price promise may also be limited to refunding a specific customer rather than cutting the headline figure.
MoneySavingExpert. com bought items from John Lewis stores and its website over two days in March, all of which were cheaper elsewhere. They included a Bang & Olufsen Beoplay A2 portable Bluetooth speaker for £299.95 but costing £239 at Peter Tyson.
John Lewis was selling the GHD Platinum hairstyler for £165, which was £20 more than Cocoon Hair and Beauty.
A Lego Duplo My First Carousel was £19.99 compared to £15.99 at Toys R Us while a pair of Ray- Ban RB2180 round framed sunglasses was £116 but £82.10 at Shade Station.
An Easy Camp Huntsville 400 tent was £132 but £129.99 at Charlies Stores while a Microsoft Office 365 Home subscription for five users sold for £79.95 was £59.99 at Argos. John Lewis said: ‘We are disappointed MSE focused on a small number of examples rather than the millions of prices that we lower each year.
‘We have a dedicated pricemonitoring team who proactively check the prices of tens of thousands of branded products every day.’
‘We proactively check every day’