More than 40 % of controlled sites do not comply with legal obligations, such as display, as a basis for the discount, of the lowest price applied over the last thirty days, according to a study by the European Commission.
MO12345LEMONDE
The deadline has become almost unavoidable for consumers wishing to save as part of the holidays. The Black Friday, or “Black Friday” in French, commercial tradition imported from the United States, opens the period of Christmas shopping with massive discounts in the store during the last weekend in November. But it is also accompanied by its share of unfair practices.
The European Commission published, Monday, December 19, The results of controls carried out during the merchant operation. A control deployed, in collaboration with thirteen national authorities, to verify how the merchants present their reductions. After the analysis of 16,000 product references on 176 online sales sites, the European body discovered that 43 % of controlled websites are in violation of European regulations.
To respond to the problem of false reductions displayed by certain brands, the European Union has posed rules. And the “omnibus” directive, applied in France since May, hardens the sanctions.
Protect consumers
Thus, when they announce a discount, traders must take as reference the lowest price applied to the product over the last thirty days, and display it. Companies who do not respect this rule expose themselves to sanctions that can go up to “two years’ imprisonment and 300,000 euros fine”, specifies the public service site. while more than half of the products controlled this year presented a reduction for the Black Friday, 23 % of these promotions did not comply with this legal provision.
The services of the European Commission called on artificial intelligence to carry out their study. The tool developed at European level has enabled local entities to closely monitor the fluctuations in prices displayed during the thirty days preceding Black Friday for active sites on their territory.
National authorities can now contact merchant sites in violation to ask them to modify their practice and apply the law in force. They will also be able to impose fines if these unfair commercial practices are not corrected.
inflated price
For the Federal Union of Consumers-Que Choisir (UCF-Que Choisir), these methods are “not a surprise”. “We also denounced the bad practices of certain merchants on the occasion of the last Black Friday,” she reacts on her site, adding that these offenses “represented only part of a much wider phenomenon”. The association points to the limits of the “omnibus” directive in terms of consumer protection.
In an article published on November 24, UFC-Que Choisir showed how several brands went around the regulations by inflating the price of certain articles a month before the deadline of Black Friday, in order to announce more important discounts. The association underlines how “difficult” it is to “get an idea of the normal price of an article”. An observation far from reassuring when approaching the launch of winter sales on January 11.