Romania’s major online and offline retailer Altex, one of the main rivals of the market leader eMAG, was fined by the Consumer Protection Authority (ANPC) for “deceptive discounts” promoted as part of its Black Friday campaign, Hotnews.ro reported.

The discounts were misleading, expressed as against artificially increased “list prices” in the case of some 10,000 products - found ANPC, which slapped Altex a RON 50,000 (EUR 10,000) fine.

ANPC also proposed to ban Altex from operating during Black Friday day, on November 12. ANPC claimed that Altex representatives admitted the deeds, but defended themselves by claiming that they cannot be fair in a market where nobody is.

Indeed it became notorious that during the so-called Black Friday season, the electro-IT retailers report unreal discounts, calculated based on prices that were increased just before the campaigns.

But ANPC has not released yet the results of its inspections at the other big electro-IT retailers such as eMAG or Flanco or informed whether such inspections were ever carried across the whole industry.

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andrei@romania-insider.com