The Swedish Consumer Agency has raised serious concerns over six companies, including furniture giants Mio and Jysk, accusing them of misleading sale practices. The scrutiny follows an investigation into the companies' autumn sale events, which aimed to ensure compliance with accurate pricing regulations. Jysk recently received a hefty fine from the Dutch authorities as well.
According to the agency, these companies displayed inflated original prices, making the discounts appear more substantial than they were. By comparing sale prices to these exaggerated figures, the companies allegedly deceived consumers into believing they were getting significant deals.
In addition to Mio and Jysk, the investigation also implicated Sänghuset Elgen, and SE Möbler, as well as two clothing retailers.
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The Consumer Agency has issued orders for all six companies to cease these misleading practices, attaching penalties ranging from half a million to two million kronor. If the companies repeat these actions, they could face fines within this range.
CEO of Mio, Björn Lindblad, spoke with Ehandel: 'During our 60 years as a company, we have never considered adjusting the regular price to make a discount appear larger – and that will never happen.'
Sandra Martinsson, communications manager at Jysk also comments: 'First of all, I just want to say that "sales fraud" are the words of the Swedish Consumer Agency in their news article. But what the prohibition applies to is that they believe we have violated the Price Information Act, which states that you must be transparent about the lowest price of the product in the past 30 days. What we can say now is that since the Consumer Agency's review last fall, we have made a major update to our platform and we display the 30-day price on all products.'
Source: www.ehandel.se