Black Friday: false promotions, dangerous products... Consumers called to be vigilant

The French's favorite promotional period goes hand in hand with a boom in fake promotions and other scams. The Directorate General for Competition and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) calls on consumers to remain vigilant during this period, particularly if they are shopping online. False promotions, sale of dangerous products on marketplaces, delivery problems, rise of fake reviews... E-commerce sites are full of traps at the end of the year.

“E-commerce is an opportunity for the consumer. It allows you to access a very wide assortment of products, and it can be very practical when you don't have physical stores near you, notes Sarah Lacoche, director of the DGCCRF. But the whole challenge is to ensure that consumer protection there is as good as in stores, while fraud and abuse are easier to implement there, and affect more people.

Consumers are the first to spot these frauds. Out of 215,000 reports made to the DGCCRF since the start of the year, 60,000 relate to e-commerce. The DGCCRF has made this theme a priority, and controls more and more commercial websites: they represented 12% of controls in 2022, 17% in 2023. Since the start of the year, 9,182 sites have been controlled and the half were at fault.

Also read: Black Friday 2023: tips to avoid scams

The sale of dangerous products and false promotions were the most frequent breaches. Last year during Black Friday, a third of the stores and sites checked were in violation – on this point, physical stores are no less guilty than online sites. And to point out a Breton furniture seller who indicated that he was offering discounts of up to 50%, which he actually only applied to two products in his assortment.

The sale of dangerous products affects online commerce more, and in particular marketplaces, these sites which connect end customers and third-party sellers. A DGCCRF survey carried out in 2022 showed that half of the products checked on these marketplaces were non-compliant or dangerous. This was particularly true with regard to glues (65% dangerous products), plant protection products (60%), toys (41%) or cosmetics (16%).

Also read: Black Friday: watch out for “dark patterns”, these manipulation techniques that lead you to buy

Not all marketplaces, however, are created equal. “On one of the targeted marketplaces, no non-compliant or dangerous products were noted, while on another, nearly nine out of ten products pose a problem,” notes the DGCCRF, which specifies that low prices do not necessarily mean with scam. In the wake of new European bonds, some have sorted out their sellers and improved the quality of their offer. The DGCCRF emphasizes that sites which practice “dropshipping”, that is to say which have products ordered directly shipped by suppliers, are more often in violation. Unifab (the French association for the defense of intellectual property law, which brings together 200 companies and professional federations) also encourages consumers to be wary of counterfeits available online during the Black Friday period.

The DGCCRF is also adapting its controls to new fraudulent practices. It has developed a tool, Polygraph, responsible for detecting false online reviews, and is now focused on identifying the increasingly frequent “dark patterns”, which can mislead consumers and encourage them to buy: countdown, hidden subscription, basket filled without the customer's knowledge...

To force the low-cost Wish website to remove dangerous products, the DGCCRF did not hesitate to delist it. It does not refrain from imposing a new sanction of this type in the future. In accordance with a decree published at the end of 2022, "we will practice more 'name and shame' in the future", also promises its new director. A practice currently rare at the DGCCRF, but often more effective than a fine for a major e-commerce player.