It’s been just over two months since San Diego enacted a first-in-the-nation ordinance requiring in-store alternatives to digital-only grocery deals, and invited residents to submit complaints if they believed any stores in the city were not complying.
The first complaint has now come in. But it’s unclear whether the city plans on investigating it – which raises questions about how effective the much-discussed, thoroughly-debated, hard-fought measure actually is.
The Grocery Pricing Transparency Ordinance, which took effect in October, states that “any grocery store that offers publicly available digital discounts to consumers for the purchase of groceries must provide in-store alternatives, so consumers have access to the publicly available digital discount without needing to use a smartphone or the internet.” The idea is to ensure that shoppers without digital devices, or the tech-savviness to use them, aren’t excluded from accessing the same promotional prices as other shoppers who are able to activate digital-only offers online.
Shoppers who run into any trouble in stores are encouraged to submit a complaint form to the City Attorney’s Affirmative Civil Enforcement Unit, so it can investigate potential violations, notify the offender, and follow up to ensure compliance.
Since the ordinance took effect, one shopper has done so. In a document obtained exclusively by Coupons in the News, a San Diego resident calls out Target and urges the City Attorney’s Office to investigate.
“I have just come from shopping at Target in Ocean Beach,” reads the complaint, dated October 29th. “There are special prices tagged on the shelves indicating discounts. When I went to check out, the total seemed a little high, and I inquired as to whether those discounts required the ‘Target Circle’ app. The answer was yes.”
While many advertised Target discounts are indeed restricted to members of its Target Circle loyalty program, that alone is not a violation of the ordinance. But the only way to sign up for Circle is online, which makes any Target Circle offer, by definition, a “digital-only deal.”
A Target spokesperson told Coupons in the News back in October that its San Diego stores will honor advertised Target Circle offers for shoppers who are not members of the digital-only program, and also offer assistance to shoppers in signing up for the program if they’d like.
But that apparently didn’t happen to the shopper who filed the complaint. Since signing up for Circle “requires online access,” the complaint continues, “I think this is in violation of the law.” The shopper concludes by saying “I believe this is a just law and was a great idea. Therefore, I think it would be worthwhile for the City Attorney to address this.”
When asked about the complaint, and whether any changes or retraining would need to be made as a result, a Target spokesperson reiterated what the company shared about its compliance plans back in October, and declined to comment further.
The ordinance requires the city to “give written notice of a violation to a grocer,” offering them “15 days to cure any violation.” After that, a failure to comply could subject the retailer to fines of up to $2,500 per violation.
Target also would not say whether it had received any “written notice of a violation.” A spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office said only that they are “unable to confirm, deny, or reveal details of an investigation.” A subsequent public records request for any communications between the City Attorney’s Office and Target, which the city is required by law to respond to, turned up “no responsive records.”
So it would appear that the first potential violation of the Grocery Pricing Transparency Ordinance may not have been fully investigated at all.
There’s no timeline spelled out in the ordinance, so it’s possible the City Attorney’s Office simply hasn’t gotten to this yet. What’s also possible is that the office looked into the complaint, and decided there was no violation.
That’s because a strict reading of the ordinance would seem to indicate that the burden is on the shopper to ask for discounts, not on the retailer to offer them. Stores “must provide in-store alternatives” to digital-only deals, but there’s nothing in the ordinance requiring them to grant those discounts proactively.
The citizen who complained to the City Attorney’s Office about missing out on digital discounts at Target said they “inquired as to whether those discounts required the ‘Target Circle’ app,” but apparently never asked for assistance signing up for the program or for those discounts to be applied manually. If a Target employee declined to do so, that would be a clear violation of the law. But declining to offer to do so, may not be a violation of the law so much as it is a violation of the spirit of the law, and the intentions of the lawmakers who enacted it.
When asked for reaction to how the ordinance is being interpreted and enforced, the office of city council member Sean Elo-Rivera – who sponsored the measure, spoke out forcefully in favor of it, and railed against “greedy corporations using digital discounts and apps to squeeze even more from us when we’re at the checkout” – did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
As the ordinance took effect and retailers announced how they planned to comply, supporters of the measure seemed satisfied that they got the results, and the publicity, that they wanted. Whether the busy City Attorney’s Office plans to follow up on individual complaints, and chide major corporations any time a single employee at a single store fails to grant a shopper a couple of dollars off their order, remains a question. The ordinance may have helped put the issue of “digital discrimination” on the agenda. But it could be up to individual shoppers to decide for themselves whether to push retailers to comply – or whether to take their business elsewhere.
Image source: Target
