Lululemon sued over ‘phantom discounts’

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California woman is suing the athleisure retailer Lululemon, claiming the retailer listed products on its website using “fictitious regular prices” and “corresponding phantom discounts.”

“This practice allows defendant to fabricate a fake ‘reference price,’ and present the actual price as ‘discounted,’ when it is not,” plaintiff Annette Cody states in her complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Friday.

In April, Cody says in her complaint that she purchased a pair of “Wunder Train high-rise” tights — yoga pants, essentially — in steel blue. The listed price of $59 was accompanied by a “strikethrough” price of $98, suggesting a steep discount of $39. According to Cody, those pants hadn’t been sold for $98 in quite some time, and not at any time since Oct. 8, 2025.

“These pricing and advertising practices reflecting high-pressure fake sales are patently deceptive,” Cody writes. “They are intended to mislead customers into believing they are getting a bargain by buying products from defendant on sale and at a substantial and deep discount.”

Cody cites written guidance from the Federal Trade Commission, which cautions businesses about using reference prices. The “regular price” should be, according to the agency, “one at which the product was openly and actively offered for sale, for a reasonably substantial period of time, in the recent, regular course of his business, honestly and in good faith – and not for the purpose of establishing a fictitious higher price on which a deceptive comparison might be based.”

Cody does not indicate how much money she is seeking, and her attorney declined to comment. She does say in the complaint that she is seeking injunctive relief, restitution, damages and punitive damages.

A spokesperson for Lululemon, a publicly traded Canadian-based company with more than 750 stores, did not respond to an email requesting comment on the lawsuit.

Such lawsuits over “phantom markdowns” are not uncommon, especially in California, with TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and J.Crew all having been targeted in the last 10 years. The footwear company Crocs was hit with a federal class action in 2025; the plaintiffs’ attorneys in that case, Scott Ferrell and Victoria Knowles of Pacific Trial Attorneys, are also representing Cody.

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