The infallible EU tool that detects scams in online purchases

The popular proverb says that “You catch a liar sooner than a lame person”. And sooner or later the tricks used by marketing companies to get consumers to buy a certain product end up coming to light.

Unfortunately, in recent times citizens have been encountering bad practices by some companies specialized in commerce. on-line. This ruse consists of raise the price of different products a little before sales periods and then lower its price minimally. With this, they manage to convey to the consumer the feeling that the discount has been greater.

In order to monitor these fraudulent practices, the European Commission (EC) has developed the tool Price Reduction Tool, which allows you to control in real time whether the offers made in times of high consumption comply with the regulations on price indication.

This instrument, for example, has been used by the General Directorate of Consumer Affairs, belonging to the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030to detect scams in the already traditional Black Fridaythe massive discount days that take place at the end of November.

In one of their investigations, it was found, for example, that between November 18 and 19, 2023, sports shoes were offered for 29.99 euros. On November 20, the price of the sneakers was raised to 48.95 euros; and on November 24 – already coinciding with Black Friday – the price of the sneakers was lowered again to 29.99 euros.

“In this way, consumers are exposed to false belief of being able to purchase a product with a discount of 18.96 eurossomething that does not correspond to reality since its price was raised in the previous days,” they have pointed out from Consumption.

The Association of Financial Users (ASUFIN)for its part, has denounced after carrying out a study that the prices displayed at the beginning of the last summer sales suffered notable increases of up to 4% within a week in relation to those three months before and 1.52% compared to the previous month, which “generates in the consumer the false belief that you buy taking advantage of the first price drop of the season.”

What the law says

For an offer to be legal, the price on which the discount is calculated must be the lowest price that the merchant has applied during the immediately preceding 30 days to the announcement of the offer.

“Whenever items are offered with a reduced price, the previous price must clearly appear on each item along with the reduced price, except in the case of items put on sale for the first time. The previous price will be understood as the lower price that would have been applied to identical products in the preceding thirty days (…)”, reads point 1 of article 20 of the Retail Trade Regulation Law

The Ministry of Consumption has sanctioned seven companies with the payment of fines of up to 350,000 euros for selling as sales fake discounts during the last Black Friday. Of them, three have acknowledged having carried out these deceptive practices and the remaining four have appealed the fine. For the moment, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has issued two orders in which it endorses the sanctions of the department headed by Pablo Bustinduy.

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