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Belgium commits to tracking down everyday scams
In stores, particularly attractive discounts are too often misleading. “Broken prices” … But are they really? Difficult for the consumer to verify.
This is why a draft bill carried by the Minister of the Economy Pierre-Yves Dermagne, the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne, the Minister of Independents and SMEs David Clarinval and the Secretary of State for Protection of consumers Eva De Bleeker, is in the process of being developed. The text aims to deal with the many scams that Belgians are confronted with on a daily basis, thanks to a clarification of the rules on price reduction announcements.
Thus, any price reduction applied to a product will be prohibited without taking into account a reference price. This “reference price” corresponds to the lowest price applied for at least 30 days before the announcement of the promotion.
And on the web
In addition, the draft law seeks to combat “ghost customers”. On the web in particular, fake reviews praising the qualities of products or invented recommendations are legion. The text therefore envisages making this kind of practice illegal, as well as truncated messages or the overestimation of positive messages by deleting negative ones.
Finally, the draft law provides for an increase in the maximum amount of the amendment of 4% or 6% of annual turnover depending on the degree of seriousness of the offense. These sanctions will be economic by the Inspectorate.
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