Canadian shoppers angry with cross-border promotion
Posted May 23, 2016 6:34 pm.
Last Updated May 24, 2016 6:44 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BELLINGHAM (NEWS 1130) – Did you make the trek to Bellis Fair Mall in Bellingham for its first sales-at-par long weekend shopping event?
A lot of people are complaining online it’s a bogus promotion.
Some expressed frustration not many stores were participating or seemed to know about the special. Others noted shops weren’t offering the full discount, tried to plug sales of their own or forced people to pay with US cash.
The mall recently came out saying Canadians would pay prices at par at participating stores.
Brad Ratel called NEWS 1130 to say it was a rip-off.
“I’d probably say one out of every eight or 10 stores actually had a sign in the window,” he explains. “They were not offering a par dollar, they were only offering 20 per cent off of select merchandise so the advertisement ended up being nothing close [to what was promised].”
On Twitter, the mall is telling people it thought the promotion was well-communicated and well advertised, but also directed people to its currency exchange service.
“You wait in line, you hear people at the till with a bunch of merchandise and saying ‘what are you talking about?’ and then they just leave their stuff and walk away,” says Ratel.
We reached out to the mall for a comment but haven’t heard back.
