• President of UOKiK has charged popular online stores: born2be.pl and renee.pl with misleading consumers.
• The stores suggested that the time of the bargain would be limited while in reality the commodities were continuously available at promotional prices.
• Permanent promotions were a marketing attraction, they did not offer any actual bargain.

As many as 77 percent of Polish Internauts have been doing their shopping at online stores. Most frequently they shop for clothes and footwear. Precisely these two categories are offered by popular e-stores: born2be.pl and renee.pl which are members of the Azagroup. President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny has charged this company with misleading consumers by way of suggesting a limited duration of promotional campaign while the commodities were offered at promotional prices all the year round.

A consumer visiting online stores: born2be.pl and renee.pl saw that they might take advantage of their promotional offer and by entering a special occasional code they might do the shopping at a lower price. The codes were disseminated along with the communication of special occasional discounts such as “crazy Wednesday”, “birthday week”, “shopping night”, “extra 40% for all on the 11th birthday of Renee! Code: BDAY”.

A shopper might have an impression that only at that specific point in time they might have bought a dress or shoes at a very profitable, reduced price while in reality they were manipulated and subject to artificial pressure as the promotions at websites of those stores never came to an end. As soon as the promotional campaign has ended, there appeared on the website a new (or the same) discount code and next promotional campaign offering similar bargain began.

Additionally, at the top of the website you could see a watch counting down the time until the end of the promotion which even more enhanced the impression that the offer was time limited. As the promotion time has ended, reset was made, and the watch started to count down another fake special offer. This is an example of a so-called dark-patterns, that is, the practices using knowledge of users’ behaviour to affect their decisions.

- Suggesting by online stores that the time of some attractive price promotions is limited while they never come to an end is and illegal market practice. Permanent promotions are in fact a marketing-induced way of presenting regular prices which do not offer any bargains in fact but they extort artificial pressure and mislead consumers. The consumer’s decision-taking process should not be affected by any pressure or actions of social engineering nature - says Tomasz Chróstny, President of UOKiK.

If the charges are confirmed, the Azagroup company is at risk of a penalty in the amount of up to 10 percent of its annual turnover.

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