• The President of UOKiK has reviewed the practices and regulations of Poland’s largest auction houses.
• Concerns included situations in which employees posed as bidders and artificially drove up prices during auctions.
• Thanks to UOKiK’s intervention, auction houses have eliminated potentially misleading practices and amended their regulations.

The preliminary investigations covered the five largest auction houses dealing in works of art: Desa Unicum, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Polswiss Art, Agra Art and Rempex. The President of UOKiK reviewed standard contract forms, regulations, and complaints procedures. He then requested that the auction houses change practices that raised concerns and could result in a breach of collective consumer interests or constitute prohibited contract terms. The irregularities have now been rectified.

Under the hammer

UOKiK’s objections concerned, amongst other things, situations set out in the regulations where auctioneers or auction house staff were permitted to participate in auctions while posing as ordinary customers. Their aim was to achieve the so-called reserve price, i.e., the minimum amount for which an item may be sold. This is a confidential price agreed between the seller and the auction house. According to the analysis by the President of UOKiK, four out of the five auction houses investigated – Desa Unicum, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Agra Art and Rempex – reserved the right to participate in their own auctions. Their employees, posing as ordinary customers, were able to bid on items up to the reserve price, sometimes effectively outbidding themselves. Such behaviour distorts the picture of actual interest in the auctioned item and may lead to artificial inflation of the final price.

– To ensure that consumers were not misled, we asked auction houses to cease the practice of driving prices up to the reserve price. Bidders may not have been aware that they were bidding against auction house staff. They might have interpreted each bid increase as genuine interest in the item and a genuine offer to purchase it. This could have significantly altered the dynamics of the auction and artificially inflated the prices of the items on offer – says Tomasz Chróstny, Tomasz Chróstny, President of UOKiK.

Under the microscope

During the proceedings, other practices and contractual provisions applied by individual auction houses were also called into question. UOKiK’s concerns included, amongst other things, the limitation or exclusion of liability for hidden physical and legal defects in items, errors in item descriptions, and the possibility of changing auction terms once an auction had begun. The President of UOKiK also intervened with regard to clauses concerning the auctioneer’s withdrawal of an item without valid and objective grounds, the possibility of re-auctioning an item after the hammer had fallen, and the introduction of changes to catalogue descriptions. He also drew attention to incorrectly specified deadlines for withdrawal from the contract, lodging complaints and responding to them.

All the auction houses under investigation – Desa Unicum, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Polswiss Art, Agra Art and Rempex – cooperated with UOKiK during the preliminary investigation and complied with the comments of the President of UOKiK.

– Thanks to our intervention and the dialogue we initiated with the major players in the art market, we have ensured transparent auction conditions. Auction houses have amended their regulations and contract clauses that were disadvantageous to consumers, and have also eliminated the possibility of artificially inflating prices. Higher standards of conduct were established during the proceedings, and art lovers will no longer be exposed to misleading practices – Tomasz Chróstny, President of UOKiK.