Wal-Mart Chisles Gift Recipients, Class-Action Suit Charges

A class-action lawsuit says Wal-Mart is counting on its customers' good manners in its gift-receipt pricing.

When a consumer buys a gift at Wal-Mart, they get a “gift receipt” which does not display a price. If the gift recipient wants to return or exchange the gift, the receipt is honored for the price the gift-giver paid, not the regular price of the product.

Thus, if a gift-giver buys a $40 lamp on sale for $30, the receipt will be for the sale price, $30, not the $40 list price. Most gift recipients never discover this, the suit argues, because they are too polite to ask the gift-giver how much they spent.

“It really is a ‘perfect’ rip-off,” said Bill Kershaw, one of the attorneys filing the suit. “It's considered bad manners to ask someone how much they paid for your birthday present and only a social boor says, ‘Hey, you know I spent $30 on your gift?’”

Kershaw noted that he and his colleagues have spoken to several consumers who were shorted by the gift receipt practice, but that there are likely thousands more who are completely unaware that their gift cost more than what they were credited. This is particularly true given the nature of the alleged scheme.

“Wal-Mart's scheme to defraud relies on the fact that people generally have good manners and would never ask how much their gift giver paid for their present,” he adds. “Further, rarely does the recipient tell the person who gave them the gift that they didn't like it and therefore returned it. It takes fairly unusual circumstances for the giver or the receiver to discover that they are being short changed by Wal-Mart and even then, most people won't make a stink. So it truly is the perfect scam and 99% of people never know there's been a rip off.”