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Everything must go - but only with the indication of the old price
Photo: Christian Charisius / DPA
The German Retail Association (HDE) has clearly criticized the new Price Indication Ordinance, which will apply in retail from Saturday.
»The less affluent consumers in particular will feel the consequences of this unnecessary regulation because they will probably not be able to benefit as much from bargains in the future,« said HDE Managing Director Stefan Genth.
Above all, the rule that dealers have to indicate the lowest price that was asked for the product within the last 30 days for discount campaigns is criticized.
This is intended to make it more difficult for retailers to use tricks in the case of supposed discount campaigns.
This is "unnecessary," said Genth.
Consumers are already adequately protected from moon prices by the regulations in force to date.
Lunar prices are amounts of money that are set particularly high so that the actual price collected can be presented as a particularly good offer.
The HDE general manager warned that retail would face major challenges as a result of the new regulation.
"Price reductions will only be possible in the future if the retailer can state the lowest price in the last 30 days and mark it as a 'reference price'." That's not easy when there are many thousands of items in stores and online shops.
The EDP often does not archive the prices of the past.
For large campaigns »practical«
"Advertising with price reductions is also made considerably more difficult in certain media, since there are limits to the announcement of the previous price on radio or television," criticized Genth.
Certain forms of price advertising such as "20 percent off everything" would even be called into question as a whole.
"With such campaigns, it is completely impractical to provide all products in the range with a reference price," judged Genth.
The new regulation also leads to numerous uncertainties in the interpretation, which would probably have to be clarified in court.
For this reason, a clear reluctance on the part of many retailers to reduce prices is initially to be expected – to the detriment of consumers.
mamk/dpa