APPROXIMATELY 70 per cent of complaints made against merchants to the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) relate to misleading advertising.
This was stated by complaints officer at the FTC, Lyndel McDonald in an interview with JIS News. "Misleading advertising is pretty wide-scale, consumers have been misled with respect to prices, with respect to features and capabilities of various items (and) with respect to warranties and guarantees that is purported by merchants," Mr. McDonald said.
In explaining the concept of misleading advertising, legal officer at the FTC, Wendy Duncan, said this occurred when an enterprise or individual in the course of business set out false claims, "which are likely to deceive the consumer, or which actually deceive the consumer."
Instances of this include double ticketing, where a supplier places two different prices on an item and, in this case, she said the consumer should get the item at the lower of the two prices.
Another example is sale above the advertised price, where merchants advertise goods at a certain price in order to get consumers in their store in the hope that once they are there, they will just pay the higher price instead of going elsewhere.
BARGAIN PRICES BUT FEW PRODUCTS
A most common practice of misleading advertising, Mr. McDonald said was for merchants to advertise goods at bargain price, though they do not have the product in reasonable quantity. They then try to persuade consumers to buy a different item, which was actually at a higher price.
Mr. McDonald said again, the aim of this practice was to attract buyers to the store, by using the bargain price as bait, with the hope of selling them another item at a higher price.
The complaints officer also noted that the Commission had received several complaints of instances where products were labelled with a particular price, but the same goods were given a different price in the cashier's machine.
Mr. McDonald stated that all these offences were in breach of the Fair Competition Act. In assessing cases, he said that the FTC would exercise discretion in determining the intent of the merchants' actions, which sometimes proved to be negligent rather than malicious.
"Once a complaint comes in (and) it is properly supported, we contact the other party and they are allowed to respond, and if we figure that there isn't a matter that amounts to a breach under the Act, then we don't proceed," he said.
He added that it could be a misunderstanding and a merchant might decide to give a refund or resolve the issue by some other means.
