Five-Line MAP Check Can Stop Holiday TV Pricing Violations

Black Friday falls on November 27 this year, and TV deals will be live well before that — which is exactly when minimum advertised price (MAP) policies break. Not because anyone decides to violate them, but because a bundle, a gift card or an open-box listing was never discussed before the promo went live.

Futuresource's Lucy Brenton showed in July that discounting intensifies in Q4 around the big retail events, with 5 to 10% cuts against the annual peak now routine. Circana's Marshal Cohen told TWICE last November that early deals finally got consumers to bite. Shoppers no longer wait, so brands and dealers can't either.

The fix, argues Alex Chaidaroglou, founder and CEO of price-tracking firm Altosight, is deliberately boring: one page, agreed between brand and dealer before the first ad is built, covering five things.

What breaks first: cart prices?

Most MAP policies restrict what you advertise, not what you charge. The FTC describes the shape: a brand adopts a pricing policy on its own, offers it "take it or leave it," and may stop dealing with a retailer that ignores it.

"See price in cart" sits in that gap, and policies treat it differently. One TV maker's dealer policy allows a cart-only price on MAP models but not on models under a unilateral pricing policy (UPP), where selling more than $3 below the stated price is a violation. Another brand treats any "click for price" button that ends below MAP as a violation — but leaves the final checkout page out of scope.

Where do bundles and gift cards hide discounts?

A soundbar thrown in with a TV is the oldest move in the November playbook, and it's where listings slide under MAP without anyone meaning to: the TV sits at MAP while the bundle price implies a discount on it.

Real policies diverge sharply. One brand lets dealers bundle another display product at up to 100% off the second item's MAP, provided no value-add is netted out of the TV price. Another caps value-adds at 10% of the stated price, wants every bundle approved, and bars stacking bundles with other promotions unless it signs off.

Gift cards are the same trap. A $100 card with a $1,000 TV is a 10% discount in the shopper's head. Policies range from counting a card as a value-add within a cap, to allowing it on UPP models only for future purchases, to saying nothing at all — and the silence is where arguments start. Funding matters too: a brand-run promotion can usually be netted into the advertised price; a dealer-funded card usually can't. Identical to a shopper, completely different to a compliance team.

What about open-box units?

Appriss Retail's Kara Holthaus, citing a LendingTree survey, noted that four in ten consumers admit to buying something planning to return it — 43% for electronics. Those sets come back opened, and somebody has to price them.

One brand's policy defines open-box as anything used, returned, opened or demoed, allows it at up to 15% below the stated price with a clear "not factory new" label, caps it at 5% of that model's volume, and restricts it to eBay among marketplaces. A custom-install distributor requires recertified units to be clearly labeled.

How should violations actually get flagged?

This is the line most pages skip, Chaidaroglou writes. A weekly price check is fine in March; in November prices move daily, and many drops go live after hours. He recommends agreeing on who checks — the brand, the distributor, or automated daily MAP monitoring — and what counts as evidence: a screenshot with date and URL, not a phone call from a rival dealer.

Escalation paths in the policies he's read run from a written warning to model suspensions and eventual de-authorization, with each violation counted separately. Antitrust counsel at Foley & Lardner put one rule plainly last year: enforce on your own, consistently across all resellers, and never target a violator because another dealer asked you to.

None of this needs a lawyer in the room — just the brand's channel manager, the dealer's merchandiser, the holiday SKU list and an hour before the first ad is built. The dealers who ask for that page before the promos start, Chaidaroglou writes, are the ones who don't spend December arguing about a soundbar.