EU rules price reductions must be based on the lowest price in the last 30 days

eur-lex.europa.eu

5 points·davidkuennen··5 comments

It makes sense that this prohibits doubling an item's price briefly then putting it back down and advertising it as 50% off

But if I'm understanding, this also means:

1. If you decrease a price incrementally you can only advertise a smaller discount (€100 -> €50 is "50% off", whereas €100 -> €50 -> €40 in same period can only be "20% off" because now €50 is a prior price)

2. You cannot advertise brief regular sales, like if you want to offer 50% off on the last friday of a month, because the previous sale was too close (even though it's at full price 97% of the time)

Which seem like unintentded consequences. I think using something like 25th percentile price over the last 60 days may have made more sense.

Are they trying to outlaw deflation now? I don't understand what they're trying to regulate. I can sell my property for whatever price I choose, no?

This case was against Aldi, a discounter supermarket chain, about how they marked their price reductions. Real estate sales isn't affected.

Oh, I see. So the EU is just trying to outlaw the practice of marking the price up for a day so they can then mark it "50% off" the following day. Good for the EU. That practice stinks.

You can reduce it all you want. What you can't do is say "this house is 50% off" because you doubled the asking price for half an hour the previous week and then dropped it again.

It's a false advertising issue, not price controls.

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