The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030 has announced that it will strengthen the monitoring of more products in view of the summer sales, which usually start in mid-June. According to the ministry, the aim is to safeguard consumers' rights and ensure that companies do not mislead consumers with “false sales”. If this is the case, they warn, penalties will be imposed on operators who carry out this practice in online shopping.
Likewise, the ministry lead by Pablo Bustinduy has opened two new disciplinary proceedings against two large e-commerce operators for allegedly misleading sales during the last ‘Black Friday’. These new proceedings are in addition to those opened a fortnight ago against two other large online shopping companies for this same practice of raising the price of various products before Black Friday and then reducing them to their original price.
These practices would be an infringement of Article 20 of the Ley de Ordenación del Comercio Minorista. This regulation indicates that when an article is offered, the previous price must be shown and that this price must be the lowest price that had been applied to that article in the thirty preceding days. In this way, according to the law, the consumer will be able to make a correct comparison. Based on this regulation and also on Article 47 of the General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users, ‘false discounts’ can be considered unfair practices and can be classified as serious offences with fines of up to 100,000€, an amount that can be exceeded up to four to six times the illicit benefit obtained.
Likewise, the Directorate General for Consumer Affairs has reminded that the investigation is still open to other companies, which could also be subject to disciplinary proceedings, thus extending the four that are currently open.
Source of information: Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030.