In Settlement for Mass. Pricing Lawsuit, Staples Gives $7.50 Vouchers to Customers

E-mails flew over house lists. The rumors spread like wildfire. Staples was having an amazing sale—they were giving out vouchers for $7.50 that could be spent on almost anything in the store.

Most students were not aware that “Customer Day” at Staples on Sept. 25, was nothing more than a settlement for a lawsuit that accused the office-supply chain of violating Massachusetts state item pricing regulations.

“Unlike other settlements that came about for similar lawsuits, this was really the first time that a retailer sought to provide some benefit directly back to customers,” said a spokesman for Staples, Owen W. Davis.

To settle the suit, Staples gave out $7.50 coupons to the first 1,200 shoppers at its 64 Massachusetts locations. The coupons were valid for that day only.

Davis said that Staples did not violate state pricing regulations, which require stores to clearly mark prices for all items on shelves.

“Staples clearly marks its pricing on the racks and we also offer a price scanner,” Davis said.

But Staples may have benefited from the “Customer Day” it advertised over a week in advance.

“We were pleased with store traffic that day,” Davis said.


With Free Stress Tests, Scientologists Sell Books, DVDs

Scientologists aren’t just in Hollywood anymore.

They were in Harvard Square last year in the T stop, and this spring they sat by Out of Town News for shelter.

Most recently, they have been giving free stress tests to strangers, hooking them up to pressure sensitive machines and talking to them about the various stress factors in their lives.

They are members of The Hubbard Dianetics Foundation of Boston, a group of volunteers that promotes a book, “Overcoming Ups and Downs in Life,” and a DVD that promises to improve your life by allowing you to be who you truly are.

Jane H. Grondin is one of the volunteers who has manned the station in Harvard Square for the past two years.

She approaches passerbys, and after telling them to hold two metal bars, she asks them to think about people and events in their lives.

“I’ll look up at a person and sometimes they’re crying,” Grondin says.

When a person recalls a particularly stressful experience, the dial on the machine jumps to the stress end.

“Sometimes people laugh because they know exactly what it is,” she says.

She explains that the machine works by sending an electrical current through the subject.

“Mental stress actually has some mass to it. When you think about it, [the machine] measures the resistance to the electrical current,” she says. “You can see a thought. Its really real.”

Although she is promoting a product, she says her work has an important mission.

“To tell people about the stress in their lives and tell them that there is something they can do about it.”