Menards penalized for deceitful rebates, price gouging

PLOVER – The week before Christmas Attorney General Josh Kaul announced a $4.25 million multistate settlement with Menards, the home improvement retailer. The settlement resolves claims that the company deceptively marketed its merchandise credit check program (commonly known as the “Menards 11% Rebate Program”) and engaged in price gouging during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kaul and the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection investigated a number of aspects of Menards’s sales practices, including allegations that:
• The company’s prolific use of “11% OFF” or “11% OFF EVERYTHING” advertising falsely claimed a point-of purchase discount, when Menards actually only offered an in-store merchandise credit for future purchases;
• Menards’s advertised prices reflected an 11% discount, which wrongly implied that customers could realize a savings at the time of purchase;
• Menards failed to appropriately disclose the material limitations of the rebate program because the disclaimers were in small print and removed from the discount representation;

• Menards told customers that “Rebates International” is a separate entity responsible for its 11% off program, when it is part of the same company; and
• Menards engaged in price gouging during the COVID-19 pandemic by raising prices on four-gallon bottles of purified water at two locations in Wisconsin (Onalaska and Johnson Creek).
“Figuring out how much you’ll have to pay to buy something should be straightforward,” said A.G. Kaul. “It shouldn’t be an adventure.”
As part of the settlement, the company will pay $4.25 million to the multistate group and Wisconsin’s portion of the settlement is over $750,000.
Under the terms of the settlement, Menards will incorporate various disclosures about the rebates, stop misrepresentation offering credit at point-of-purchase, acknowledge they are doing business as Rebates International and not to engage in price gouging.