HLE blogger Deborah L Parry wonders if supermarkets are off their trollies
"Last week, four of the UK’s biggest supermarkets were the focus of a report on supermarket price wars for BBC1’s Panorama, which suggested many of the pricing tactics used by supermarkets could potentially be illegal.
Supermarkets, like all other retailers supplying goods to consumers, have to comply with the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (SI 2008/1277).
Regulation 5 prevents traders giving false information or information which deceives or is likely to deceive the average consumer about, the price of products or the existence of a specific price advantage and which causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision they would not otherwise have taken.
Regulation 6 prohibits misleading omissions where material information is omitted, hidden, unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely and causes an average consumer to take a different transactional decision from that he would otherwise have taken.
To assist in interpreting these very broad and general prohibitions, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has issued the Pricing Practices Guide (November 2010).
This guide has no mandatory force and may, in some instances, go beyond what the law requires. It does, however, take into account the requirements of the Regulations and provides guidance for traders ‘on good practice in giving information about prices’. One would hope and expect our leading supermarkets to do their utmost to follow it.
In light of the current supermarket ‘price wars’, there are concerns over the way some products are marketed and the wording used in relation to prices. Asda, for example, in addition to their ‘Rollback’ pricing promotions, also have had items marked, both on the shelves in supermarkets and online, as ‘WOW’ items...”
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