Posts across TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook from people claiming to be the retailers’ workers, as well as consumers, show workers removing the bottom portion of tags with prices and consumers discovering ripped tags in stores. Posts show whole displays of clothing for brands like Walmart’s Wonder Nation and Target’s Auden at stores across the country with altered tags.
Social media posts accusing both retailers of the practice began appearing online around the same time. These posters claim that removing price tags can allow the retailers to raise prices more easily, possibly in response to tariffs, and the moves have garnered criticism both from workers who say their shifts have been dedicated to the task and confused consumers who believe the retailers are attempting to conceal price increases.
Rag tag: In one TikTok from July 25, a poster claiming to be a Target employee bemoans “having to rip off EVERY individual price,” noting she spent “almost a whole 8-hour shift” performing the task. Another August 8 TikTok by someone saying they are a Target worker shows her tearing off the price tags on stacks of jeans, claiming that the retailer “can’t keep up with constant price changes.” Some Reddit users made similar assertions in a July 20 r/Target thread—claiming employees had to work past closing or come in at 4am to remove prices on tags.
A July 29 TikTok shows someone claiming to be a Walmart employee removing prices from apparel tagged with the Walmart-exclusive Child of Mine by Carter’s brand. “Processing/working freight takes longer just because of the tariffs and prices going up…I’m over it,” she said in the caption. Another post this week showed an apparent Walmart worker with a handful of ripped-off price tags.
Consumers have taken notice, posting their own videos, threads, and Facebook discussions questioning the torn-off price tags and whether they indicated inflated pricing, noting removed pricing deterred them from buying.
Retail Brew visited a New York City Target location on August 21 and 22 and found a significant number of removed prices across its private-label brands Auden, All in Motion, and A New Day. Many items weren’t re-stickered and had no indication of price. One item was not recognized by Target’s app when Retail Brew scanned its barcode.
At an Auden underwear display with most price tags removed, Retail Brew identified a handful of untouched tags whose scanned barcodes revealed prices $1–$2 higher than printed on the tag. Some products had been re-stickered with higher prices, with increases of $2–$5. Similarly, one TikTok filmed in a Walmart location shows stray unaltered tags with prices conflicting with higher on-rack pricing signs.
The price isn’t right: The tag changes at Walmart have come after the retailer enacted a new labeling process across all brands in its fashion department in May that led it to direct employees to remove select perforated price tags, using signs or stickers on the clothing displays to indicate the price, Walmart’s director of media relations, Jaeme Laczkowski, told Retail Brew. Some, not all, prices were changed as a result, but the company would not confirm if any were tariff-related changes. However, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said last week in the retailer’s Q2 earnings call that “as we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we’ve continued to see our costs increase each week.”
Walmart tags that differ from prices on the signs, as seen in TikToks, are a result of incorrect placement or a sign representing the highest price of items in the display, per Laczkowski. Walmart does not have in-store price check scanners, so consumers must use the Walmart app, ask an associate to scan the tags, or bring the tag to checkout to confirm the price for tags whose price has been removed.
Target did not respond to questions Retail Brew sent regarding the price tag removals.
When asked about tariff-related price increases on its Q2 earnings call last week, Richard H. Gomez, Target’s EVP and chief commercial officer, said the retailer will “take price as a last resort.” He noted the retailer will be “leaning into” its private-label brands to deliver value to customers.
The move by Target also comes just after the retailer ended its 10-year price-matching initiative in July that allowed consumers to receive a price match for items sold by Walmart and Amazon.
Ripped off: Jeff Sward, founding partner of retail merchandising consultancy Merchandising Metrics, and Liza Amlani, principal and founder of Retail Strategy Group, both told Retail Brew that price removal from tagged products is not a common practice.
Since retailers pay to label and price products, their subsequent removal is a “wasteful strategy,” Amlani wrote in an email, and Sward said doing so at such a high volume is a “highly inefficient, highly expensive process.”
The sole use of signs to indicate price for apparel at big box retailers can get “messy,” Sward said, and when there’s multiple styles on one fixture at different prices, or when products are moved to the wrong spot, it gets “messier and messier.”
“It’s just hard to believe that the big guys like Walmart and Target didn’t have a better mechanism for making this all happen,” he said. “Of course customers are going to get frustrated and maybe not buy stuff, [especially] if they think they’re in the process of being ripped off.”
This report was originally published by Retail Brew.
Politics8 years ago