{"id":6967,"date":"2025-11-06T11:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T11:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/?p=6967"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:30:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:30:49","slug":"punishment-for-misleading-retailers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/?p=6967","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 special discounts.<\/strong><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text wp-block-paragraph\">There are plenty of tricky online retailers who believe customers cannot easily catch them from the wild online ocean. Most victims of the cheat fail to find a way to get justice. It is a cumbersome process. But some customers are smart and resolute to teach the cheaters a lesson. Digital Age Retail faced a harsh penalty and learned a lesson that 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&nbsp;Digital Age Retail (FirstCry)&nbsp;for 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 (www.firstcry.com). 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.&nbsp;<\/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 stating 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. CCPA has ordered the company to display both the original and discounted prices always, inclusive of all taxes, and to clearly disclose any additional charges, such as shipping or convenience fees.<\/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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-byte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967","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=6967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6969,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967\/revisions\/6969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dazzling-chebyshev.103-73-189-254.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}