Sit & Sleep is a bedding and furniture store that advertises mattresses non-stop here in Southern California. Their big slogan/guarantee is at the end of every television commercial: “Sit & Sleep will beat any advertised price or your mattress is freeeeeee!” But is this such a good idea? It seems to me a competing store, or someone who wanted to set up a new competing business, or just anyone who wanted them to stop running those ads, could easily take advantage of this guaratee to scam them out of lots of mattresses!
Here’s how this scam might work: A competing business (or anyone pretending to be one, really: after all, they didn’t say it had to be an ad from a real store; just an advertised price) could put an ad in the paper claiming to be selling mattresses at way below cost. Then they could go to Sit & Sleep with the ad in hand and get all the mattresses at that advertised price or else get them all free. This would likely put Sit & Sleep out of business while at the same time increasing the competitor’s stock of mattresses for peanuts. (And if customers come in to the competitor’s store to buy the mattresses, they could say they’re out of stock because everyone rushed in and bought them all for the rock-bottom price.)
So, Sit & Sleep, have I stumped you at last? (Well, whatever it takes to get those ads to stop. Seriously: they’re really annoying! You’re like the Crazy Eddie of L.A.)
