This year’s Black Friday was the last one in which the Consumer Protection Act amendment, which among other things determines how retailers will have to calculate discounts, has not yet taken effect. Which e-shops used this and fixed discounts?
Discounts will have given rules
According to analysis of the Shop Watcher service, supported by the companies Apify, Keboola and Topmonks, most of the monitored e-shops already followed the new rules and showed real discounts calculated from the lowest sale price in the 30-day period before Black Friday. This is exactly how merchants should present discounts.
If the merchant will gradually increase the price, they can quote it from the price in the 30 day period before the first discount is granted. However, the discount increase must occur continuously without interruption, for a defined period of time. Again, the decisive period is 30 days. If there was a price reduction in the monitored period, then its return to the original value before the discount and a further price reduction, then the discount should be indicated by the first price reduction.
In the case of products offered/sold by the seller for a period of less than 30 days, the reference price for the discount should be the lowest price applied since the product was put on sale by the seller. However, the amendment in question doesn’t go into effect until December or January, and so traders didn’t have to comply with it on Black Friday this year.
Who has already followed the new rules?
While Alza.cz, CZC.cz, Mall.cz, TSBohemia.cz, Datart.cz, ElektroWorld.cz, Pilulka.cz, Benu.cz and AAAauto.cz have already followed the new rules, some e-shops have complied to the ” tried” of tricks. They either fictitiously wrote the original price higher, or raised the prices shortly before Black Friday, so that the real discount was significantly lower than the declared one.
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Who set the discounts
There have even been instances where goods have been sold at a higher price on Black Friday than before the event. “For example, Trevi XR 9A5 Bluetooth speaker on Okay.cz. The product was included in the BF promotion with a “price after discount” of CZK 803. Also, the price before this “Additional 10% discount” is CZK 892 and the crossed out manufacturer’s MSRP is CZK 1499. However, Okay.cz was selling this product for CZK 600 for basically the entire month of October before BF, so it’s actually 36% more expensive in BF “, underlined the analysis.
Mironet.cz behaved similarly with the ARCTIC MX-4 2019 heat conducting paste, the price of which changes every day. For example, on November 27 it was sold for 76 CZK with a calculated discount of 41% (the reference price is 128 CZK). “However, practically throughout the year, this product is sold for about 75 CZK, and the aforementioned 128 CZK costs only a few days in October. The minimum price before BF was 73 CZK (in real terms, it became again more expensive),” the analysis added.
Lidl.cz also acted creatively, increasing the price of some products for one day in order to later use this price as a reference for the Black Friday discount. For example, the Crivit golf bag sold in BF for CZK 1,999 with a declared discount of 50% and a declared reference price of CZK 3,999). However, for 3,999 CZK, Lidl.cz only sold this product for two days this year (16/06 and 16/09).
clarifies the analysis.
You can read the full analysis at blog the founder of Apify, Jakub Balada.
