The Authority for the Protection of Consumers and Defense of Competition (Acodeco) detected 38 irregularities during the “Father’s Day” operation, carried out to verify special sales, offers or ‘baratillos’, in the different shopping centers of the country.
930 economic agents were visited (511 in the capital city and 419 in the provinces) and the different norms on advertising truthfulness, established in Law 45 of 2007, were verified. Most of the irregularities found were for not indicating the date of duration of offers (7); while supplies last, they did not indicate quantities to be offered, (7); the sales dates exceeded the three months established by law (6); products without double price (6); offers with expired date (5); they applied restrictions on advertising (3); confusing advertising (2); and untrue advertising (1). Also, a single lack of price in sight.
It should be noted that most of the economic agents are complying with their obligations with respect to the standards of veracity of advertising, since last year 41 faults were found and this year only 38. The constant training and guidance of Acodeco are giving satisfactory results, according to the last operations carried out.
The information of the special sale must meet some requirements, such as: announce the start and end or the minimum units to be offered; indicate if it is total or partial (you can use the concept “in selected merchandise”); the regular price and the new special sale price; when using the percentage offer, only the regular price and the discount applicable to that price should appear. Likewise, it should be noted that a special sale should not be for more than three months.
