Retailers are facing a nervous wait after the Australian Competition and Consumer (ACCC) announced an investigation into misleading sales claim over the recently concluded Black Friday sales.
Tipped by ChannelNews several weeks ago that that ACCC had set up an internal team to monitor Black Friday sales, the ACCC is now confident that there is evidence to pursue retailers for questionable marketing practices relating to their Black Friday discounting of stock.
Following consumer reports about a range of concerns during the recent Black Friday sales period surrounding the veracity of claimed discounts, the ACCC conducted a sweep of sales advertising by Australian businesses both online and in-store.
Some of the concerns that it had related to:
– Claims of store or sitewide sales: The ACCC identified several instances where ‘store wide’ discount claims have in fact involved exclusions.
– Fine print or disclaimers that seek to limit headline claims about the sale, including member only deals or excluding a range of products.
– ‘Was/now’ pricing: ‘was/now’ displays purport to compare the usual price of a product with its discounted price. In making these claims, retailers must ensure they do not mislead consumers.
– Use of ‘recommended retail pricing’ (RRP). In some cases, retailers are using the phrase ‘recommended retail prices’ as a base price to calculate an advertised saving. This practice may also be misleading if the business has not sold the product at the “RRP” price recently, and for a reasonable period of time.
– ‘Up to X% off’: ‘Up to’ claims can raise concerns where the ‘up to’ text is not prominently displayed, or where few or very few products are on sale at X% off.
Australian consumers have specifically raised concerns with the ACCC about the practice of was/now pricing, particularly when consumers report that prices increase ahead of any major sale period.
The ACCC is now is collecting data about the prices of retail goods, before, during and after the sales period.
It will review this data to determine whether businesses artificially increased the price of goods to create the perception of a bigger sale. It says that it has already seen examples of products that were ‘on sale’ selling for the same non-sale price.
“An ACCC sweep of Black Friday sales advertisements has uncovered a range of concerning practices, from ‘site wide’ discounts that are not in fact site wide, potentially misleading ‘was/now’ pricing, as well as dubious claims about the value of discounts on offer,” said ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe.
“We are further considering some of these examples for investigation and action, and the ACCC has already asked a number of retailers to justify their advertising claims. In the meantime, we are warning retailers ahead of post-Christmas sales that they must comply with Australian Consumer Law in all the claims they make.”
“We will continue our internet sweep of advertising practices throughout late December sales as businesses doing the right thing should not lose sales to businesses that are potentially misleading consumers.”
As ChannelNews has previously reported, the entire Black Friday sales phenomena has become a complete shemozzle, with rolling sales over several weekends rather than one major weekend of mega sales.
