Eyeglass Maker Agrees to Halt Its ‘Never-Ending’ Sales Ads

A San Diego-based eyeglass maker accused of engaging in a so-called never-ending sales promotion has agreed in Orange County Superior Court to halt its alleged misleading advertising and pay a fine of $50,000.

The Orange County district attorney’s consumer fraud unit won the consent judgment against Frame-n-Lens Optical Inc., which has four San Diego outlets and nine in Orange County.

Frame-n-Lens, which has 72 offices statewide, did not admit to any wrongdoing in consenting to the judgment last week, which is effective throughout California.

The company, in fact, was “very cooperative” and took down its sale signs and stopped advertising routine prices as sale prices as soon as it was contacted by the district attorney’s office, said Gay Geiser-Sandoval, a deputy district attorney.

The never-ending sale--a practice in which merchandise is always marketed at “sale” prices or is never sold at “original” prices listed in advertisements--has become a “rampant problem” in the retail industry, she said.

Geiser-Sandoval said never-ending sales confuse and mislead consumers by seeming to offer discounts for only a short time when the apparent bargain items actually are being sold at regular prices.

“If you feel you have to act by Saturday to take advantage of a sale, you may have no chance to get around and compare prices to see if it’s really a sale,” she said. “The word ‘sale’ becomes meaningless.”

In addition, she said, a never-ending sale violates the state’s false advertising law and is unfair to other businesses because they must compete with a company that is doing something unlawful.

In the Frame-n-Lens case, Geiser-Sandoval said, the company advertised a weeklong sale on glasses in Sunday newspapers. A week later, though, the same advertisements appeared listing the same prices and a new expiration date of the following Saturday.

The company also posted signs touting a “sale” and offering two pairs of glasses for $59 continuously plastered on the windows of its outlets, she said.

Ronald Joseph, the company’s executive vice president, said the advertising was an outgrowth of heated competition in the discount eyeglass industry.

He said Frame-n-Lens halted its sale advertising after Geiser-Sandoval contacted executives some time ago.