{"id":502906,"date":"2010-04-01T14:09:33","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T18:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10004002"},"modified":"2010-04-01T14:08:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T18:08:04","slug":"bjs-wholesale-ordered-to-give-refunds-for-deceptive-coupons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/502906","title":{"rendered":"BJ&#8217;s Wholesale Ordered To Give Refunds For Deceptive Coupons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/04\/4-1-2010%202-02-23%20PM-thumb-439x200-38827.jpg\">         <\/p>\n<p>The Maryland AG&#8217;s office says that BJ&#8217;s Wholesale Club charged customers for items that were supposed to be free. Naughty!<\/p>\n<p>The coupons in question were apparently &#8220;Buy One Get One,&#8221; but had fine print that limited the value of the coupons to an amount that was, in some instances, less than the cost of the item.<\/p>\n<p>Customers who used these coupons were charged the difference between the limit and the price of the &#8220;free&#8221; item. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Businesses in Maryland must abide by the law and when they advertise something for free, it is just that &#8211; free,&#8221; said Attorney General Gansler. &#8220;As a result of this agreement, BJ&#8217;s has agreed to stop these deceptive practices and reimburse customers in Maryland.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>BJ&#8217;s will pay a $40,000 penalty and agrees not to charge customers for &#8220;free&#8221; things in the future. It will return money that it charged Maryland consumers, so watch the mail if you used one of these and got charged. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oag.state.md.us\/Press\/2010\/040110.htm\" >Attorney General Gansler Settles with BJ&#8217;s Wholesale Club<br \/>\nCompany Agrees to Stop Offering Deceptive Buy One Get One Free Coupons<\/a> [Maryland AG]<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/weblogs.baltimoresun.com\/business\/consuminginterests\/blog\/2010\/04\/bjs_coupon.html\" >BJ&#8217;s pays fine for coupon confusion<\/a> [Baltimore Sun]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Maryland AG&#8217;s office says that BJ&#8217;s Wholesale Club charged customers for items that were supposed to be free. Naughty! The coupons in question were apparently &#8220;Buy One Get One,&#8221; but had fine print that limited the value of the coupons to an amount that was, in some instances, less than the cost of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}