End of Black Friday as we know it. Rule changes coming

The American holiday of sales has permanently settled in Poland. Although originally closely related to Thanksgiving in the United States, it is also celebrated on the Vistula River. Everyone loves sales.

This year we are still celebrating Black Friday with the old rules, where “dirty” seller tricks are common and allowed. But soon there will be a big revolution in commerce, especially e-commerce. All thanks to the EU Omnibus Directive, which is designed to limit the unfair practices of sellers.

Crossing out prices

One such practice is the use of artificial promotions, in which sellers try to convince the buyer to buy a higher price, strikethrough.

“A clear message about the price change should tell us that when we buy a product, we “receive” 50 PLN. In fact, when we decide to buy a product, PLN 150, i.e. most of the original amount disappear from our wallet. With such techniques, salespeople try to change our way of thinking, thinking about profit, which triggers completely different mental processes in us, we begin to appreciate how much we save, how frugal we are … even in the case of products that we currently do not need. , says Katarzyna Sekczynska, psychologist and economist, Associate Professor at the Department of Business Psychology and Social Innovation at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw, in an interview for Wprost.pl.

Many sellers, instead of actually reducing the price, raise it a few days before the planned “sale”. Then regular-priced items are displayed as discounted items, drawing the attention of shoppers.

The Omnibus Directive forbids this practice. When the implementing provisions come into force, the seller will be required to inform the buyer not only of how much the item cost yesterday, but also of the lowest price it has reached in the last 30 days.

Product Reviews

False promotions aren’t the only dishonest seller practices that the new rules should crack down on. Companies very often take advantage of the fact that customers are guided by the opinions of others when making a purchase decision. Almost every platform gives you the option to leave a product review. However, not all of them come from people who actually bought such a product and use it. Many of them are simply bought or published by the platform itself.

The new rules should force sellers to clearly inform their customers about where product reviews come from and under what conditions they are posted on the site.

The same applies to positioning in search engines. The merchant will need to clearly communicate to the customer that the higher placement of products in the search results is the result of the purchased service.

The end of “chemistry from Germany”

Among the changes in the regulation, we will also find one that will consider it an unfair market practice to introduce “identical products” to those sold in other EU countries, but in fact different from them, for example, in composition or functionality. .

Here the problem primarily concerns cosmetics and cleaning products. Many Polish consumers believe that chemical products produced for the German market have a better composition than those available in Poland under the same brand names. And they are often right.

Once the Omnibus Directive comes into effect, the company will be subject to heavy fines, up to 10%, for differentiating products based on the market they target. turnover. The Office for Competition and Consumer Protection will monitor and punish entrepreneurs who break the rules.

Omnibus delayed

The EU directive banning pseudo-advertising came into force in 2020. Member states were supposed to implement it in 2021, but for some, for example. Polish, the case dragged on. The implementation regulation was adopted by the Seimas only on 27 October.

The bill was considered by the Senate on October 16. It was passed, but the Senate proposed several amendments to it, mostly of a technical nature. Therefore, now she will have to return to the Diet again.

According to the current draft, the law should come into force only in January 2023. On Black Friday the following year, he found.