Gosh, it’s getting hard to figure out the real price of stuff. And I’m not even talking about the madness surrounding tariffs, taxes, and international trade wars — I mean that companies will just straight-up lie about their real prices to make “discounts” look good. That’s what HP did, allegedly, and it’s paying a cool $4 million to affected customers.

That’s the end of a class-action lawsuit that started over four years ago, when two American plaintiffs complained that HP displayed “strike-through prices” on its store that weren’t actually real, thus inflating the discount that it looked like they were receiving. According to the report on Ars Technica, the plaintiffs allege that HP lied about how much quantity was available, in the familiar “only one left at this price” sense.

I say allegedly, because this is a civil suit, not a criminal case of false advertising, and HP has admitted no wrongdoing or liability as a condition of the settlement. It’s basically a $4 million “leave me alone” check. Though the plaintiffs did accuse HP of violating the US FTC’s deceptive pricing laws, it doesn’t appear that any actual law enforcement is involved. And it’s not as if these practices are isolated. The “FOMO” and time pressure sales tactic is omnipresent online, new variations of sales techniques that I remember from the infomercial days and before.

One personal bugbear of mine is a little company called Lenovo, the largest seller of laptops on the planet by volume. Whenever it announces a new ThinkPad model I truly, genuinely don’t know how much it costs, despite covering its products for over a decade. This is because the “manufacturer’s suggested retail price” often has zero relationship to the price that actually appears on Lenovo’s own shop and third-party sellers. It’s madenning. That’s why you should look very closely at any deal that claims a Lenovo laptop is $1000+ off.

But back to HP. You’re eligible to join the class-action settlement if you bought a laptop, desktop, mouse or keyboard from HP’s US online store, and it was marked as “on sale” for more than 75 percent of the time between June 5th, 2021 and October 28th, 2024. Products include generic HP, Envy, Spectre, Pavilion, AllinOne, Chromebook, Chromebase, Slim, Victus, and Omen lines, with very specific product numbers. You can get $10-100 back if your purchase qualifies.

For reference, HP posted 56.3 billion dollars in revenue in 2024.

Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld