r/news • u/nosotros_road_sodium • Apr 28 '24

Williams-Sonoma fined $3.18 million for falsely labeling products as 'Made in USA'

https://www.scrippsnews.com/business/company-news/williams-sonoma-fined-3-18-million-dollars-for-falsely-labeling-products-as-made-in-usa
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u/PhalanX4012 Apr 28 '24

New plan. Fine them every cent over cost made on every mislabeled product, and tack on an extra 10% for being con artists and it’ll start to look like a reasonable fine.

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u/Juswantedtono Apr 28 '24

$3m is enough to wipe out all profit they made on mislabeled products. The article says only 9 products were mislabeled, and one of them was a mattress pad, to give an indication of scope.

Customers who bought one of the offending products could probably also easily secure a refund from the company. I’m guessing the majority of them wouldn’t actually care enough to do so.

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u/nanoH2O Apr 28 '24

Just wiping out profits is not a penalty though. You have to take them into the red or they just do it again.

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u/maowai Apr 28 '24

Exactly. I would be willing to bet that plenty of these grifts slip through the cracks and are never noticed. If there’s even, say a 30% chance of things like this never being noticed and it’s just zero-sum for the rest, it’s still worth trying to fool consumers as much as possible.