50 years ago in Expo history: It was the good old days, when concerns of fair price-gouging were unfounded and most other complaints were without ‘much substance’

The Spokane Chamber of Commerce formed a committee to answer this question: Were Spokane businesses price-gouging during Expo ’74?

The answer appeared to be no.

The committee’s express purpose was to provide a forum for people to report any price-gouging problems. So far, “not a single complaint about the price, quality of merchandise or service of a Spokane retail firm has been lodged,” the committee reported.

“I think our merchants are living up to the fair treatment concept with Expo visitors,” the committee’s head said.

Or maybe those complaints were being made elsewhere.

Expo’s Hospitality Services office said it was receiving three or four complaints a day about hotel-motel prices and quality.

Yet even those complaints were few and far between, since about 1,200 hotel-motel bookings were handled every day.

The consumer affairs division of the State Attorney General’s office said it had been “pleasantly surprised” at how few complaints it had received. Most were from out-of-town tour groups, and the office said “there wasn’t much substance to most of them.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1843: First wagon train departs Independence, Missouri, for Oregon with 700-1,000 migrants.

1939: Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini sign the “Pact of Steel” formalizing the 1936 alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis