A Ralphs in downtown San Diego has signs and flyers prominently displayed when you walk in, giving shoppers easier access to digital deals and notifying them of their “right to equal discounts” in the fine print on the sign pictured above. A Vons in the University City neighborhood of the city has a bin of weekly ads featuring hybrid “clip or click” physical/digital coupons, with the “right to equal discounts” sign unobtrusively taped to the front door. And a Target in the Ocean Beach neighborhood has its “right to equal discounts” notification stuck on an out-of-the-way bulletin board with other little-read, legally-required signs.
All, in their own way, are complying with a city ordinance that requires grocery retailers to post those signs, informing their customers that, by law, they don’t need a digital device to access advertised grocery deals.
But one year after city leaders first put that measure on the path to enactment, some shoppers say they aren’t seeing the full benefits. And lawmakers in other areas are looking to learn lessons from San Diego’s experience, as they consider their own similar laws.
It was one year ago tomorrow that city council member Sean Elo-Rivera formally introduced the Grocery Pricing Transparency Ordinance, addressing the “digital divide” by requiring grocery stores to offer non-digital ways for digitally-disadvantaged shoppers to access digital-only grocery deals. A council committee gave the measure its stamp of approval that day, launching a process that ultimately saw it become law and take effect seven months later.
As different retailers chose to comply in different ways, Elo-Rivera indicated he was generally pleased with the response, and satisfied that the ordinance was having the intended effect of giving all shoppers equal access to grocery discounts without requiring a digital device.
But not all has gone smoothly. Some city residents are complaining that not all retailers are complying. Some are complaining the law doesn’t go far enough. Others complain it goes too far.
Citizens have been invited to submit comments and concerns to the city. And several have. As first reported here a couple of months after the ordinance took effect, the first formal consumer complaint about compliance was made about that Target in Ocean Beach. “There are special prices tagged on the shelves indicating discounts,” the shopper informed the city. “I inquired as to whether those discounts required the ‘Target Circle’ app. The answer was yes.” Signing up for Circle “requires online access,” so “I think this is in violation of the law,” the shopper reported.
Since then, Coupons in the News has exclusively obtained several additional complaints.
All three of them pertain to Albertsons-owned Vons. One points out a potentially-overlooked aspect of compliance. “Their latest weekly ad lists some ‘deals’ that are only available if you make an online order for pickup or delivery,” a Vons shopper reported. “This marketing ploy of making some discounts only available under very specific circumstances is a direct violation of the Grocery Pricing Transparency Ordinance, or a violation of the spirit and intent of that law.”
Another Vons complaint speaks to some of the confusion surrounding the ordinance’s scope. “I do not use the Vons app, so I asked the checkout clerk to give me the coupon discount,” the complainant explained. “The clerk made me feel like I was stealing from them and would not give me the discount, acting like I was lying about the digital price that was advertised.”
In this case, though, the Vons in question is in La Mesa, a city in San Diego County that’s outside the San Diego city limits, so the ordinance is not applicable there.
The last complaint is not directed at Vons itself – but at local lawmakers. Alone among grocers doing business in the city, Albertsons/Vons decided to cut off San Diego shoppers’ access to most digital coupons, strictly interpreting the ordinance’s requirements out of an abundance of caution. Elo-Rivera called it a “corporate temper tantrum” that runs counter to the measure’s goal of promoting “transparency and fairness at the grocery store.”
But one shopper pointed the finger back at him, coarsely accusing city council members of engaging in government overreach. “The digital coupon law is bulls***,” the shopper complained. “Now there are less coupons in the grocery stores. Way to go with f***ing over the citizens of San Diego… Don’t those a*****es think about the consequences their dumba** ideas create?”
It’s lessons like that, that other jurisdictions are looking to learn as they consider digital deal ordinances of their own. “As San Diego recognized,” a California Grocers Association representative told the Los Angeles City Council back in December, “over-regulating in this space results in discounts being too difficult to offer at any level, and leads to elimination of discounts for all consumers.” The city council last week voted to approve a motion to study the issue, and consider whether Los Angeles should introduce its own legislation. Several states are still considering legislation as well.
So one year after its formal introduction, the effort to ensure equal access to grocery discounts in San Diego may not be perfect. It will be up to other cities and states to determine whether the first place to legislate digital discounts won’t be the last.
Image source: Coupons in the News
