Unplugged: Why Won’t Target Follow the Law?
Target has made headlines lately for its customer service debacle involving the launch of a designer line, but, unfortunately, the company’s woes with customers seem only to get worse. Today, Earthjustice filed a citizen complaint with the Federal Trade Commission because the company has withheld from its customers important energy information on appliances. Congress has…
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Target has made headlines lately for its customer service debacle involving the launch of a designer line, but, unfortunately, the company’s woes with customers seem only to get worse.
Today, Earthjustice filed a citizen complaint with the Federal Trade Commission because the company has withheld from its customers important energy information on appliances. Congress has ordered the FTC to ensure companies provide this information, and we are calling on the commission to initiate enforcement action against Target Corporation for repeated ongoing violations of the laws requiring this information.
We’ve been tracking Target’s website since January, when we saw that it was selling appliances without the required energy efficiency information.
We first sent Target a letter about its violations in April. In response, Target said it was aware of the rule and would fix the listings in its redesigned website “later this year.” But that website launched last month, and the large majority of the company’s listings are still in violation. We’ve made several attempts to contact Target about this since our initial letter, but its response has been to stall and ignore us.
Plenty of other companies we’ve notified have promptly updated their listings. Why can’t Target?
Here’s why this is so important: we know consumers want this information. Just last month 10,000 of you let us know that this information was valuable and that you want it to be front-and-center for every appliance listing.
Hopefully with our latest step, Target will realize that the right thing to do is inform its customers. If it doesn’t, it could be facing some hefty fines.
Jon Wiener was an associate attorney in the Washington, D.C. office, focusing on energy efficiency issues.
Earthjustice’s Washington, D.C., office works at the federal level to prevent air and water pollution, combat climate change, and protect natural areas. We also work with communities in the Mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere to address severe local environmental health problems, including exposures to dangerous air contaminants in toxic hot spots, sewage backups and overflows, chemical disasters, and contamination of drinking water. The D.C. office has been in operation since 1978.
