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In its advertising, Sears vows to match competitors' prices, but one Long Island lawyer has been walking a long road of disillusionment after the retailer refused to live up to its promises. Back in 2007, when Warren Dank showed employees at a Hicksville Sears ad clippings from competitors selling a 46-inch flat-screen for as low as $2,400—$1,200 less than what Sears was charging for the exact same product—a manager refused to budge on the price. And so Dank found his life's calling: He drove around to three different Sears outlets in the metropolitan area and was denied the promised discount every time.
Finally, a Sears in Queens condescended to sell him the flat screen for $2,800, which matched J&R Music World but not the lowest priced competitor. So Dank took it to court, and two long years later, he's still fighting. The Daily News says he's seeking $100 million in damages (the Post reports $300 million) but whatever the amount, it will be a victory for all downtrodden consumers when he brings Sears to its knees.
A lot of people are calling Dank a hero (okay, just us), and he might not disagree, telling the Post: "I'm doing this single-handedly. No one else pushed it this far to go on a crusade." UPDATE: Mr. Dank just emailed us with the following clarification: "Please set the record straight on your blog that the $100 and/or $300 million is to pay a class action settlement to all of the customers who were deceived and not to me."
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A hero? Please. This make me ill. What a waste of space.
What a frivolous lawsuit... $100 million dollars in damages. This guy is batshit crazy.
I'm confused—he still bought the TV from Sears even though it was cheaper elsewhere?
Ya. It's like he NEEDED to pick a fight with Sears.
LOL.. good point. He has the ad for the other store with a cheaper price, but he drives 50 miles to all these Sears stores?
None of the articles says what the cheapest store was, but was there ever a J&R out that way?
Also, why not go online!
Maybe this jackass would like to step up and fund a lawsuit against ConEd for mishandling gas leaks, or the NYPD for killing Sean Bell, or anything remotely meaningful and important.
Like you, Bell deserved to get shot.
A crusade for a jackpot by a jackass. Yes, Sears should honor the coupon, but no it isn't going to help anyone but this selfish prick to give $100 million to one guy. If he said he was going to give anything over $10 million to charity like a consumer watchdog group, that would be a hero move.
Actually, someone else did push it this far. His name is Roy Pearson, and he wasn't satisfied with his dry cleaner whose sign claimed "satisfaction guaranteed".
He lost his case, lost his administrative judge position, his wife divorced him, and he was nearly disbarred.
JesusMaryJoseph! Then you buy from the competitor you spaztastic dingus!
Well, if Sears has a published policy, and he followed it, he may have a case. But $100 to $300 Million in "Damages"?
Lots of luck!
As Jen pointed out: He bought the more expensive TV from Sears anyway. I imagine a court would wonder about that too.
I wonder what the other store was? Bet they did the "Sorry! Out of Stock!"...
You can get it cheaper -- he would have overpaid anyway.
Why didn't he just order online? It's a lot cheaper and no taxes.
This is outrageous. I so hate these little "price guarantee" abusers like this guy. You see a lower price somewhere? Go f-ing buy from that place. Now Sears may end up paying $100/300 Mil to this guy, will lose that much on lawyers fees, and may end up closing a few locations or limiting service somehow, because of this expense, inconveniencing other customers.
this whole thing is a tad douchey.
1. who still shops at sears?
2. slow lawyerin' day much?
Well, two courts have disagreed with all the naysayers. I'm sure this guy has no delusions that he'd be awarded a $100 mil judgment -- it's all about the principle. Companies make guarantees that they have no intention of keeping. Good for this guy -- if he's willing to pay the filing fees in court and fight the fight, then go for it. And if it makes Sears and other companies (I'm looking at you Best Buy) adhere to their stated policy, then all the better.
Interesting shift in the comments here - suddenly everyone is now defending corporations? Huh. It's lawsuits like this that keep corporations in check. False advertising is a problem. This guy isn't a hero, but he's certainly calling out a corporation doing something improper, and a lot of people lately have been complaining about corporations doing just that lately.
Sleepy, I don't think anyone here is as interested in defending the corporation's policies as much as they are in pointing out what a greedy turd this guy is for asking for $100m in damages. It is entirely possible to agree with the guy that the store shouldn't advertise a policy and then refuse to stick to it while still thinking the guy has a pathetic sense of what's an appropriate remedy.
Three points come to mind:
A.)Text book case to make the argument that there are way too many lawyers in this country looking for people to sue.
B.)Text book case to make the argument that the loser in a civil suit should pay the lawyer & court costs of the winner to make idiots think twice about clogging up our courts w/nonsense like this.
C.) What a useless piece of skin this douche is.
No problem with this. This is a class-action lawsuit, which means if he wins Sears has to pay up $100M in damages to all of its customers, not to this guy. The big cosmetics giveaway back in January was based on a case like this. (That's not to say this guy won't get a little-somethin-somethin for his trouble though.) Sears should've honored its price guarantee. Ya rolls the dice, ya take ya chances.
Yeah, seriously, WTF? How many of you really care about Sears? I'm sure Sears' legal team can defend them well enough.
Personally, I'd be fine watching Sears pay the guy. They have the worst customer service. My friend went there to buy an air mattress and the only employee he could find on the floor gave him an exasperated sigh and begrudgingly assisted him with price checking a few models. I mean, how fucking hard is life when you're working a stocking job at Sears?
In all likelihood, the guy's not going to win his lawsuit. Sure it's frivolous, but when a corporation advertises that they'll beat the lowest price, they goddamn ought to.
Why does he think he deserves $100mill for this? What a greedy twat.
This guys taking on City Hall, sticking it to teh man. I'm ignoring the 100m or 300m numbers. That's just lawsuit BS and he will never get that. But suing for that much gets their attention, and coverage in the news.
They make a promise and then refuse to keep it. They shouldn't be making the promise.
The amount he is suing for is to prove a point. I am actually okay with this. Decpetive marketing extends through all industries, like say mortgages, so if this guy wins it may set a legal precedent and deter these practices.
I love how some folks here are defending Sears. Retail stores need to know they cannot arbitrarily decide when to honor their own price matching policy. Sure the guy's a nut but sue away.
This is great. Sears uses this claim to compete, unfairly, with the competition. They should be punished.
new breed of ambulance chaser?
srsly?
What no one here seems to understand, especially the idiot who filed the lawsuit, is that stores like Sears never intend to match prices because they know that other stores do not carry the specific model that they do. I used to work at Sears a long time ago and I know for a fact that they receive a lot of merchandise with model #s that only Sears carries. People would come in all of the time with Circuit City ads asking us to match the price of a computer with the exact same specifications (hard drive size, memory, monitor, etc.), but we couldn't do it because the model # was not the exact same. It could be one letter off, and we were not allowed to do it. Lesson to be learned: ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT!
"Cowboys," You're right but you think that is a fair and resonable price matching policy for a large retail business? Of course it isnt. That's the kind of store policy that burns customers and also creates bad PR. The guy is an idiot but Sears will reword their policy if the lawsuit proceeds.
Every American consumer should THANK this guy.
Many different retail outlets make similar promises along the lines of "we'll match any competitors lower price" which I'm sure helps increase their sales. But when it comes time to actually PERFORM it turns-out to be just BS.
The problem is Americans are so used to TAKING IT UP THE AZZ that they never complain or do anything about it. Like when Osama promises "change" or "accountability" and it all turns out to be BS too.
Read my comment. Every American consumer should quit being lazy and READ THE FINE PRINT! In fact, I bet you have not read every software license agreement from beginning to end before installing it. Some of those companies actually put things like this in them: "end user agrees to make pb&j sandwiches at midnight", because they know no one reads them. I know this only because a company I worked for used that exact wording.
I encountered a similar situation on Long Island just before the Super Bowl, when BestBuy refused to price match PC Richards. I purchased my flat screen TV for $500 less at PC Richards and refuse to shop at BestBuy. No lawsuit necessary.
There's a reason Sears is losing money and will likely file for bankruptcy in the next 2 years---outdated business model, high prices, poor service and clueless employees. The market punishes inefficiency.
I was motivated to register just to comment on this (it was linked to elsewhere). The guy may be annoying, it doesn't mean he's wrong. Two things:
1. It's a class-action suit - meaning the money would be allocated to the class, which would probably be something like everyone who had bought a flat-screen TV from Sears within the relevant period (of the guarantee). He would not personally get anywhere near that much money.
2. If Sears (or any store) isn't going to match prices, IT SHOULDN'T ADVERTISE THAT IT WILL MATCH PRICES.
Seriously? He didn't already know that Sears never has the lowest price on anything? They just keep juicing their elderly customers who still use Sears credit cards for everything.