Student Teaches Lesson on ‘Sale’ Prices That Weren’t

Yvette Henry’s father was upset when he learned at a Discount Tire Centers store that the tires he needed would cost more than the sale price listed in the firm’s newspaper ad. He refused to buy the tires.

Henry, a student at Adelphi Business School in Los Angeles, then decided to turn the incident into a class research project. She began tracking prices advertised by the firm and eventually turned her findings over to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Based in part on the information Henry had gathered, prosecutors sued AKH Co., Commerce-based parent of the 85-store chain, for alleged deceptive advertising. On Wednesday, AKH agreed to pay $45,000 in fines and costs to settle the suit.

“I tracked the ads for about eight months,” said Henry, who lives in Newport Beach. “I was looking for discrepancies in advertising.”

A ‘Sale’ Price

Discount Tire, for example, would advertise a “sale” price for a particular tire one weekend at $30, she said. Two weeks later, there would be a big “discount” ad, but the sale price for the same tire was still $30.

“You cannot use ‘sale’ price when you’re not actually giving someone a discount,” said Henry, who considers herself a consumer advocate.

Henry turned her findings over to prosecutors last November, and they continued tracking the company’s ads, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Gay A. Geiser-Sandoval.

Under state law, such “never-ending” sales are illegal, Geiser-Sandoval said. AKH claimed that the ads simply failed to state clearly what was on sale and what wasn’t. But that also is a violation of state law, prosecutors said.

“The law says that consumers must not be misled by advertising,” Geiser-Sandoval said. “And those old ads fooled all of us here” in the prosecutor’s office.

In settling the case, Discount Tire did not admit it had violated any laws, and was ordered not to violate any in the future. The settlement applies only to the company’s advertising in California and does not affect its operations in Arizona, Washington and Oregon, Geiser-Sandoval said.

But the settlement came too late to boost Henry’s grade in her business course.

“I think I got a B+,” she said.