Caveat Emptor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
When an e-mail message from the executive director of Senator Clinton’s campaign committee, Patti Solis Doyle, landed in our in-box last week, we had to chuckle. It announced that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign fund-raising operation would once again start selling $55 designer T-shirts with images of Mrs. Clinton’s face affixed to their fronts. Less than six weeks ago, on March 29, the huckster had written, “Next week, we’ll be placing our final fulfillment order with our printer and we will stop taking orders on Thursday, April 1st…for those of you who have yet to partake, we want you to know that supplies are low and demand is high. Reserve yours now before our last order is finalized!!”
This is so old a racket that New York State even has a law about it. Article 29-F of the New York State Consolidated Laws concerns “going out of business sales.” It notes that such sales “have often been conducted and advertised in such a manner as to mislead and defraud the public and otherwise to result in harm to the public interest.” Says the law: “Such fraud and imposition on the public has included the misrepresentation that the operator of the sale is selling merchandise on hand at the time when the necessity, which is the occasion of such sale, arose, when in fact he is replenishing his stock with additional merchandise both prior to the commencement and during the conduct of such sale ….” Among the terms that are regulated by this state law are “closing out,””end,” and “final days.”
Well, no one’s going to prosecute a senator for this kind of thing — we certainly wouldn’t advise it — and most New Yorkers we know are street-smart enough not to fall for the sort of “Reserve yours now before our last order is finalized!!” pitch. Mrs. Clinton’s fans aren’t tourists. They are thoroughly sophisticated shoppers who wouldn’t fall for a ploy like that. Why, in the last six weeks, Mrs. Clinton also said she wouldn’t serve as Senator Kerry’s running mate, and she published a long article about her plans for fixing the health care system in America. Whatever Mrs. Clinton is selling these days, buyers would be wise to beware.
