14:47,
YEREVAN, JULY 27, ARMENPRESS. The amendments to the law on trade and services initiated by the Commission for the Protection of Competition will take effect July 31 and seek to regulate promotional pricing such as discounts and sales and counter deceptive pricing.
Commission for the Protection of Competition Member Tigran Markosyan said that they studied the area and heard out customers and businesses before making the changes.
“We’ve recorded a number of problems many times in the promotional pricing area,” Markosyan said, adding that they have encountered deceptive promo methods used by businesses such as the offered discounted price of a product being actually higher than the original price.
There were cases when businesses announced promo discounts indefinitely, which spanned for years. But the new regulations stipulate that discounts can last only up to three months. The next requirement relates to businesses being required to disclose full information. “Information must be provided clearly. And the pre-discount original price must be visible for customers,” Markosyan said.
Other promotional ads will also be regulated.
For example, some shops reward their customers with a gift or several products are sold as one package and their combined price is lower compared to each product taken separately. To rule out this deceptive behavior, lawmakers defined the following: businesses cannot give out gifts with a purchased product if they are raising the price of the product to such degree that the cost of the gift gets included in it.