• Maintenance fee, fee for a small order or for a packaging? Persons ordering in Glovo did not know how much the cost of the entire order would be.
• Drip pricing consists in adding of some previously unannounced additional mandatory fees at the last stage of placing your order.
• Some elements of the Glovo interface concerning the cost of the order may be hardly visible to the consumer.
• President of UOKiK has charged the Glovo platform with of misleading consumers for which it may be fined by up to 10% of the turnover.

Glovo is a popular platform available online and in the form of a mobile application for ordering products and services, most frequently food and shopping.

Glovo users select an option from the menu at which the price for a particular dish is visible. However, they cannot be sure that the price does not go up at a subsequent stage of the order performance and that no additional charges arise. The aggregate amount comprises some additional items that can be compulsorily charged: packaging fee or additional product fee, maintenance fee, small order fee and even bad weather delivery fee. The messages provided by Glovo may fail to correspond with reality or be transmitted at an inappropriate moment. Only at the last stage of the order will customers get to know all the required costs, i.e. they will find out how much they are to pay. Consequently, they cannot compare full prices of dishes when choosing them and are often forced to pay more although they seemed to choose a lower price option.

- The entrepreneur should build the interface in such a way that all key elements influencing the consumer's decision, in particular fees, are visible to the consumer. It is not acceptable if the relevant information is only available after being scrolled or otherwise concealed. The button used to place an order should not be active before all costs related to the order are presented to the consumer. Without giving a clear and comprehensible price together with all its components, the entrepreneur may mislead consumers” - says President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny.

In addition, reservations arose with regard to a failure to label the button used to place the order as required by the legal information “order involving payment obligation” or equivalent wording. Glovo's “Confirm your order” button does not provide sufficient information for a consumer to know that they are obliged to pay at as early as at this stage.

Some of Glovo's practices may be so-called dark patterns, i.e. using knowledge about consumer behaviour online to influence their shopping decisions in an unfair way. One of them is drip pricing, that is, adding some additional compulsory fees not previously announced at the last stage of the order placement process.

If the charges of misleading consumers being by Glovo are confirmed, the company is at risk of a fine of up to 10% of its turnover.

Consumer Support:

Phone: +48 801 440 220 or +48 222 66 76 76 – consumer helpline
E-mail: porady@dlakonsumentow.pl
Consumer Ombudsmen – in your town or district

Additional information for the media:

UOKiK Press Office
pl. Powstańców Warszawy 1, 00-950 Warszawa, Poland
Phone: 22 55 60 246
Email: biuroprasowe@uokik.gov.pl
Twitter: @UOKiKgovPL
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