Competition Watchdog Fines Online Retailer For “Black Friday” Promotion

Bulgaria's Competition Protection Commission (CPC) fined BGN 551 000 the Romanian company Dante International SA, owner of the emag.bg online store for its Black Friday promotion.

According to CPC, eMag violated the good trading practices and misled the consumers with the messages “Black Friday is the day with the most and biggest discounts in the year” and “Only today you get the biggest discounts in the year”.

In the same ruling the CPC imposed on Danter International SA a fine of BGN 207 000 for the campaign 1+1 Gratis Tassimo, in which eMag was offering a “buy one, get one free” promotion of coffee makers in which the user was getting a second, cheaper, coffee maker for free. According to CPC, this practice was forbidden by law.

Meanwhile, the online stores of several of the largest electronic and electrical goods retail chains, who launched Black Friday promotions, are malfunctioning due to the heavy web traffic.

The zora.bg website, which was offering a 50% discount on selected electrical appliances and 20% on all other products, was returning a 104 error “connection reset by peer” or 110 error “connection timed out”.

The technopolis.bg website showed a static page informing of a 10% discount in all physical stores.

The technomarket.bg website, which also had a “Happy Friday” promotion, was also showing a 110 error “connection timed out”.

Later Dante International told the media they were going to appeal the fines.

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