Carter’s Class Action Says Discount Emails Are Misleading

A class action lawsuit claims that emails advertising sales at Carter’s Inc. are misleading.

The Carter’s class action lawsuit was filed by Maribell Aguilar who says that on Feb. 16, 2019, she received an email from the children’s clothing store with the subject line “50-70% OFF EVERYTHING.”

Aguilar says she then made purchases at Carter’s, and did not receive the advertised discount. 

According to the Carter’s class action, the subject line of the email did not contain an asterisk or another indication that the words in the subject line had a “special or invented meaning.”

Allegedly, the absence of such an asterisk or qualification indicated to Aguilar and other consumers who received the email that the subject meant just what it said it meant — that everything sold by Carter’s would be sold for between 50 percent and 70 percent lower than the price for which it was originally marked. 

Aguilar argues that she understood the email to mean this, and claims that other reasonable consumers like herself would understand the email this way.

The plaintiff says she made her purchases at the Carter’s retail store on Feb. 16, 2019 with the assumption that her purchases would be between 50 percent and 70 percent off of the regular price. However, they were allegedly not offered at that price. She says that she did not receive the discounts that she claims she was promised by the email subject line.

The Carter’s discount class action lawsuit says that it was reasonable for Aguilar to expect that she would receive the discounts, and argues that the representations of the discounts were false and misleading.

Allegedly, Carter’s representations in the subject line violated Washington State law because it contains false and misleading information.

To support her argument that the email subject line is misleading, Aguilar states that Carter’s has a policy and practice of not following its own “suggested” retail prices, because the retailer inflates the suggested price and then offers their products at a discount of at least 35 percent, and usually between 40 percent and 70 percent below the suggested price established by Carter’s itself.

Allegedly, this is done to deceive consumers into believing that they are receiving a significant discount in order to entice them into purchasing Carter’s products.

Aguilar goes on to argue that the “50-70% OFF” language in the email is misleading or false because “on the rare occasions when Carter’s offers an item at the MSRP, the item is offered in bad faith to artificially ‘establish’ a price from which discounts are created and advertised.”

The Carter’s class action states that the clothing retailer establishes a false suggested price to avoid the legal ramifications of engaging in fraud, while also ensuring that “few if any” products are actually purchased at the listing price.

Aguilar is represented by Che Corrington of Hattis & Lukacs.

The Carter’s False Discount Email Class Action Lawsuit is Maribell Aguilar v. Carter’s Inc., et al., Case No. 1:19-cv-03088-SMJ, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.

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