Consumer fraud: Lowes

I should have known that Lowes (the national hardware store who's stock is listed as LOW) had an odor of corruption.  Lowes is moving into San Francisco after buying the Home Depot site which took Home Depot ten years and millions of dollars in bribes to  acquire.  Lowes bought the site and rights to develop and has started construction in less than a year because they understand San Francisco bribery.

I'm glad they are coming to San Francisco but I will be extra careful when I shop there.  Here is what I found at their South San Francisco store.

The photo is an enlargement of a price sign on door hinges.  The sign is 2" by 1.2".  The lettering on the statement about buying 30 hinges to get the lower price is exactly 7 point type.

If you have 20/20 vision, as I do, 7 point type is readable from roughly one foot away. I thought this product was $2.19 each.  Of course it wasn't, as I learned at the check-out stand.

Hey, you folks at Lowes.  This is consumer fraud.  Lowes is a fraudulent company.  If you work for Lowes you work for a bunch of crooks.  I would guess their financial statement has plenty of fraud in it.

As an expert witness on business ethics I have testified on the subject of type size and fraud.  I once had to testify that Pacific Telephone was offering a fraudulent business answering service. The mailed promotion for the answering service said at the bottom of a letter to the new subscriber, in 9 point type, that all calls to pick up answered messages cost money. Survey data showed that virtually no business person (a notoriously careful group) ever read this 9 point fine print.  PacBell had scammed over $130 million from this 9 point fraud.