A frugal life is an easy life!

A fine example of how us customers, stand little or no chance when it comes to "Rip off Britain"
Take a bow Currys, I'd like to see how they explain this one away!

On Christmas Eve, her indoors, purchased a camcorder for my Christmas present.
The price was £349
The camcorder was mis sold - file type did not fit the file type the advisor said that it did, but that's a different topic.

Two days after Christmas, we returned the camcorder to a different local branch, for a replacement.
The price for the camcorder we were returning remained at a regular price of £349.
After looking through the models, we came upon a suitable replacement, on Curry's website, for a regular price of £437.99
This price was the same as the instore regular price, so the exchange was made and we waited for delivery of the new camcorder to the branch to be collected.

Now the part that requires an explanation:
Four days later, still no sign of my new camcorder, I took a look at the Curry's website, which is where the camcorder was ordered in from, to make sure they still had stock of it, prior to my ringing the store up asking if it had arrived (Just incase I was fed the line that there was no stock of it as an excuse for it being delivered late)

To my surprise, the camcorder I was waiting for, priced £437.99 had INCREASED IN PRICE to a whopping £529.99 - An increase of £92

This is BEFORE any VAT increase - the 15 stock items they had in their warehouse before the mystery price increase, if sold, would give Curry's an extra £1380 in profit, at the expense of the customer!

As if this wasn't ripping the customer off enough, check out their "Sale" price on the camcorder I returned.
Normal price Christmas eve, was £349.99
Sale price less than a week later was £349.99 but now with a big red "sale" card advertising that anyone who bought the camcorder would be "Saving £50"

Now correct me if I am wrong, but under Trading standards law, does the higher "before" price have to be charged for 28 days prior to the "sale" price?
It wasn't just the camcorder concerned that was priced this way, a different brand of camcorder was also being advertised at a sale price of £499.99 - exactly the same price as it was not three days earlier.

Disgraceful practice by Currys - clearly misleading their customers as regards "sale" prices at the same time as increasing the price in the example given by more than 18% for no apparent reason other than to increase profit margins!