Three suggestions for a merchant from the new directive

From May 28, 2022, all changes to the law made in Estonia on the basis of the 2019/2161/EU or “Omnibus” directive will apply. Here Evelin Kanter, Ringo Heidmets, and Tristan Karu present some of the points on which we have been asked the most for advice.

Yellow price tags, actual price and discounts. From now on, each notice of price reduction must indicate the previous cheapest price applied by the company for at least 30 days before the price reduction. The trader may not create the impression of an artificially higher discount. This protects the consumer from unfair trading practices.

Fake reviews, consumer feedback:

• The trader must be able to prove that the review is based on real experience. For example, if a person has ordered a product from an online store, he can leave a review about the product he actually ordered. If in reality the person has not ordered the goods, but decides to leave a so-called “bad review”, the trader must remove the review or be able to show whether the reviewer has actually left a review or indicate that it is an unverified review.
• Deleting negative reviews or transferring positive reviews to another product is prohibited.

Automated pricing, i.e. adjusting the price according to the consumer’s behaviour, means that the consumer must be informed if the price at which the service or product is offered to them has been adjusted personally by an automatic algorithm according to their activities . For example, in a situation where the system increases the price of airline tickets, if the consumer has visited the website a certain number of times from a device with the same IP address, the consumer must be informed about this.

In addition, the directive provides much more on unfair trading practices. Read more about the directive https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ET/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019L2161