The Competition Council published today the results of an investigation carried out in Romania during 2017, and to no one's surprise, he came to the conclusion that the reductions are generally a lie, especially Black Friday. According to those from the Competition Council, in most of the discount campaigns in Romania, the reference prices are higher than the law stipulates, so online stores deceive most of their customers, or only visitors.
The Competition Council came to the conclusion that 80% of the monitored products have the reference price, and the discount price, higher than the level provided by the law, that is, the former is higher than the lowest price practiced in the last 30 days. Here we are talking about the general situation, but in the case of Black Friday 2017, 29% of the monitored products had a reference price higher than the maximum price practiced 30 days before the promotions.
The Competition Council: Discounts in Romania are a LIE
The Competition Council has come to the conclusion that online stores generally do not respect the law regarding the promotions applied for discounts, and the customers' perception of the promotions is "distorted". Online stores are accused by the Competition Council of artificially maintaining the reference price for discounts in order to deceive customers that the discount is higher than in reality, but everyone knew this a few years ago.
"This practice, of artificially increasing or maintaining the reference price during promotions (e.g. Black Friday), gives consumers the impression that they are benefiting from a bigger discount than it really is. In fact, consumers pay a price close to the one outside the campaign, which may constitute a violation of the legislation in the field."
The Competition Council also found out that the majority of sales made by online stores are for discounted products, but also that a large part of the stores' products were sold at a reduced price for over 75% of the time. The prices paid by customers for the products sold on Black Friday were also comparable to those of other previous promotions, so Romanians did not benefit from who knows what good promotions.
The Competition Council highlighted the "evidence", that is, it does not tell us anything new at all, but only reiterates what we already knew, without saying whether it intends to sanction someone for breaking the law. Considering that most online stores violate the law, it is almost impossible for fines to be issued by the Competition Council, so the only solution is to amend the legislation and monitor its violations more carefully, plus punish them.
