The National Institute for the Protection of Consumer Rights (Pro Consumer) announced that preventive operations are being carried out to avoid misleading advertising and scams to consumers on “Black Friday”, which is celebrated on November 25.
The head of the entity, Eddy Alcántara, said that the institution has more than fifty inspectors, advertising analysts and good commercial practices who are already touring the main provinces of the country visiting the establishments with the highest commercial flow for this date.
“With these preventive operations, Pro Consumidor seeks to protect the rights of consumers before, during and after this celebration, in which a large number of goods and services are sold with offers and discounts to attract potential buyers,” he stressed.
Alcántara explained that the entity’s staff is currently working on verifying the prices of the different items that are generally placed in offers for Black Friday.
“With these inspections we seek to verify that the offers of the businesses correspond to the original price of those items that were being sold two or three months before this commercial celebration,” he said.
The official insisted that the fundamental objective of his management is to prevent misleading advertising, for which innovative mechanisms have been implemented in his administration with excellent results, such as the
prior verification, “thus managing to reduce to zero the claims of the day after Black Friday for that violation that is sanctioned by Law 358-05 on consumer protection.”
Likewise, he maintained that these mechanisms have been shared with the member countries of the Central American Council for Consumer Protection and the Dominican Republic (CONCADECO), which by implementing them have also had excellent results with this verification process in advance of high consumption dates such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Three Kings’ Day and Christmas, among others.
Alcántara stated that upon his arrival at the institution, a consumer protection mechanism was agreed with the businesses, which consists of publishing the prices of the last five weeks of the items of greater commercialization, so that consumers can verify them and make better decisions at the time of their purchase.
Finally, the director of Pro Consumer invited citizens to follow up on the actions and the different means that the entity makes available so that they can verify the name of the business, the cost and the behavior of the prices of each of those items “so that in case of finding some type of irregularity can be denounced and thus the entity will act accordingly”.
