Lamps Plus Hit with Class Action After Allegedly ‘Fooling’ Consumers with Fraudulent Sales Prices, Fictitious Brand Names

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In a class action removed to Washington’s Western District, a consumer alleges Lamps Plus not only advertises its products as for sale at false discounts marked down from false reference prices, but has invented dozens of brand names for purportedly exclusive products that it attempts to pass off as third-party brands.

Initially filed in superior court, the 29-page suit charges Lamps Plus has overstepped Washington law and Federal Trade Commission regulations by using “Compare At” or “Compare” prices that are not based on real prices offered for identical products by other retailers. Moreover, Lamps Plus’s supposedly exclusive products that consumers believe are made by other companies, the lawsuit says, “are never offered for sale at other retailers at all,” in part because the products are only ever available at Lamps Plus. The company’s “Compare At” prices are simply made up to inflate a product’s value, the case claims. From the suit: 

“These exclusive products are not readily recognizable by Lamps Plus customers as being exclusive and not available anywhere else. Lamps Plus has registered nearly 40 trademarks—none of which reference ‘Lamps Plus’ in their names—which Lamps Plus utilizes to offer its products under brands which deceptively sound like independent third-party brands that are also offered elsewhere.”