Two H&M customers are crying foul and sharing a PSA on the store’s red sale stickers. They say the red stickers are hiding the fact that the original prices are cheaper in some cases.
TikTok user Lauren Nolen (@lauren.nolen) recorded the video during a recent shopping trip to H&M. In the video, she shows an H&M red price tag for $25.99. “Y’all, we are exposing H&M right now,” she said, peeling back the sticker. Once the sticker was removed, the original price appeared: $24.99.
@lauren.nolen H&M EXPOSED #scam #scammeralert #hm #exposed #hmscam #hmexposed ♬ Friday Night Lights – ROKKA
Nolen and her shopping partner explored the store for another example. They repeated the process on a shirt that was listed at $27.99. After removing the sticker, lo and behold, the original price was $26.99. “They are putting red stickers on top of the original price and we peeled them off only to find out that the original price was cheaper. They are literally scamming us,” Nolen said.
The Daily Dot reached out to Nolen via Instagram direct message and TikTok comment and H&M via press email. The video has garnered over 31,000 views since Oct. 24 and left some viewers shocked.
“So now I’m going to ripping the sale sticker just to make sure,” one viewer wrote.
“CALL THEM OUT!!!” a second commented.
On the other hand, some users disagreed that this qualifies as scam.
“nothings new everything is being high price, food, and all,” one user stated.
“this is a re tagging process when they don’t have white stickers , H&M cannot raise prices in stores only lower,” a second user explained. “This happens when price changes by item has already been shipped to store.”
“[it’s] not a scam…all the products are just marked up prices. happens all the time when you work in retail just like how marked down prices work,” a third user explained.
According to Forbes, some retailers do use “fictitious pricing,” which means “retailers list an original price on a product that does not truthfully reflect prior selling prices, to boost sales. Many of the [retailer’s] products, particularly in its outlet stores, had ‘original prices’ that were never selling prices.”
Nolen isn’t the only one to raise awareness for deceptive price tags. A Walmart employee revealed what an actual clearance sticker looks like. The actual clearance sticker includes both the original and new prices. Another user named Nicole exposed an online clothing store for selling a dress double the original price.