Online retailers don’t comply with the law during discount campaigns, the Romanian Competition Council found during an investigation in the e-commerce sector. Moreover, the Council also discovered that the reference price was increased or maintained artificially during last year’s Black Friday sales campaign.

During its analysis, the competition authority noted that the price at which the discount was applied (the reference price), displayed by the retailers, was higher than the level required by law for about 80% of the monitored products. Under the law, any retailer that wants to make a discount must relate it to a reference price, which should be the lowest price displayed for that product in the past 30 days.

Moreover, the Competition Council found that in the case of approximately 29% of the products monitored during the 2017 Black Friday campaign, the reference price was even higher than the maximum price displayed in the past 30 days. This indicates an artificial increase/maintenance of the Black Friday reference price.

“This practice of raising or maintaining artificially the reference price during a discount campaign (for example Black Friday) creates consumers the impression that they get a much better deal than it actually 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, "said Bogdan Chiriţoiu, president of the Competition Council.

The competition authority’s investigation also revealed that more than half of the sales volumes of major retailers are usually at promotional prices. This means that most of the products sold by the major online platforms monitored for this analysis have had reduced prices for long periods of time (even over 75% of the time).

“Thus, the prices charged by online retailers for the Black Friday campaign are comparable to those of other campaigns. Therefore, Black Friday stands out more like a volume campaign rather than a discount one,” the Competition Council said.

As a result, the competition authority recommends a change in the legal framework, so as to require online stores to display for each marketed product information on the evolution of the reference price and the price charged in the last 30 days.

Black Friday is the day when most retailers in the country offer big discounts for a large variety of products, from gadgets to clothing and footwear, books, toys, cars, or other products. During last year’s sales campaign, Romania’s biggest online retailer eMAG, which brought the Black Friday concept in Romania in 2011, registered sales of RON 360 million (some EUR 77.5 million).

Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com