Consumption warns that in the last Black Friday 70% of the discounts offered in online stores were false

He Black Friday It is one of the periods of the year most anticipated by consumers due to its great discounts and the period with the highest turnover for companies. It is also a time when more scams occur. In fact, the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 announced this Friday that in last year’s campaign it detected that the 70% of discounts on e-commerce operators were false or misleading. This is clear from a study by the Internet Consumer Observatory.

The department he heads Pablo Bustinduy monitored more than 800 products in 19 marketers from different sectors, between September and December 2023. The analysis found fraudulent practices by some e-commerce operators, for example that almost three out of every four products had false discounts. According to current regulations, price reductions are applied to the reference price and this must be the lowest price in the last 30 days. In this sense, 70% of the cases did not comply with the regulations, since in the days before the sales period, operators had raised their prices and then reduced them during Black Friday and were thus able to label them as “offered” or “discounted.”

They also observed that approximately 50% of the products analyzed deceived the consumer with messages in which they announced a specific discount, such as “today only”, or “offer valid for the next 24 hours” and, at the end of this period, it is verified that the original price is maintained. Along the same lines, price reductions through codes or coupons available to the general public have a high prevalence of non-compliance, around 65%.

Bustinduy already announced earlier this week that it would sanction operators who fail to comply with the regulations and announce ‘false sales’, with fines of up to 100,000 euros.

The Organization of Consumers and Users (OUC) also warned that there were more price increases than decreases in this Black Friday campaign. In fact, according to their calculations, compared to 30% who today have “some type of discount”, 43% are now “more expensive”, while 27% have “the same price as the minimum set in previous months.