{"id":6832,"date":"2025-09-28T18:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/?p=6832"},"modified":"2025-09-28T18:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:01:13","slug":"punishment-for-misleading-retailers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/?p=6832","title":{"rendered":"Punishment for\u00a0 misleading retailers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"justify-text wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Sellers must clearly display all additional charges and provide a clear explanation of any extra charges, if applicable, while also indicating any&nbsp;special discounts.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text wp-block-paragraph\">The tricky online retailers, who betray customers, cannot escape easily. Recently, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) imposed a penalty of&nbsp;\u20b92,00,000&nbsp;under&nbsp;Sections 10, 20, and 21 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, on Digital Age Retail (FirstCry) for making false and misleading price representations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text wp-block-paragraph\">The retailer published misleading advertisements and engaged in unfair trade practices on its e-commerce platform (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstcry.com\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">www.firstcry.com<\/a>). FirstCry displayed products with the representation \u201cMRP inclusive of all taxes.\u201d But at the checkout stage, an additional GST was levied on the discounted price. That was a tricky sale of a product on MRP with additional GST, which negated the MRP tag. This created a misleading impression of higher discounts and misled consumers about the final payable amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text wp-block-paragraph\">The investigation revealed that the practice of advertising discounts on the MRP, but separately charging GST on the discounted price, significantly reduced the benefit to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text wp-block-paragraph\">The disclaimers, such as \u201cadditional charges may apply\u201d or \u201cGST and additional charges may apply on the discounted price,\u201d are negations of the stated MRP. By&nbsp;stating&nbsp;the price as tax-inclusive and then adding GST at checkout, the company engaged in \u201cdrip pricing,\u201d a dark pattern as per the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, which misled consumers about the final amount payable and undermined informed decision-making.&nbsp;CCPA ordered the company to display both the original and discounted prices&nbsp;always, inclusive of all taxes, and to clearly disclose any additional charges, such as shipping or convenience fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sellers must clearly display all additional charges and provide a clear explanation of any extra charges, if applicable, while also indicating any&nbsp;special&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-track"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6833,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions\/6833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}