While companies know that today the focus is primarily on instant conversion, some of them choose to go all out and resort to unfair methods.
Fictitious grants and the illusion of great deals
In theory it looks like the best way to quickly conquer Excel sheets, but ultimately it backfires on companies. UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny has just issued a decision that ruthlessly exposes the inner workings of Mobile Marketing Center. This company, selling multimedia language courses through the online platforms poliglotos.pl and speaking.pl, decided to create an original and simultaneously extremely unfair sales algorithm aimed at manipulation.
The main magnet attracting confused consumers was the special domain funduszwsparcia.eu. The entrepreneur cleverly suggested the existence of official public funding, referring to a non-existent entity named "European Fund for the Support of Foreign Language Sciences and Education". Huge discounts on language courses up to 87% were promised.
Sounds like a great investment? The problem is that this fund never existed, and the entire complicated narrative was intended to create a limited-time price opportunity. Equally devious was the design of the alleged "free course receipt" mechanism.
To receive free educational materials, the consumer had to make a purchase of another fully paid product. This key information about promotion conditions was cleverly hidden and presented in a completely unclear manner.
See also: Price collusion in Polish stores. UOKiK President: "Five years of overpaying". Check if you lost money
Marketing dark patterns and blocking consumer rights
Manipulation proved to be only one side of the coin – a significant part of the blatant violations was aggressive telephone sales. Mobile Marketing Center consultants operated in a way that, with more publicity, would have triggered an immediate, huge image scandal. During phone calls, marketers deliberately did not provide clear information about the commercial purpose of the contact, did not reliably identify the entrepreneur’s data, and did not inform consumers of their right to withdraw from the contract.
Moreover, the company unlawfully considered contracts binding and concluded already during the call itself. Polish law, however, clearly requires confirmation of the consumer’s will on a durable medium after the call ends.
When confused clients realized that they had fallen victim to manipulation, they then encountered another digital wall. The company unlawfully denied them the right to withdraw from the contract for delivering digital content (such as multimedia courses). MMC shamelessly claimed that activating a special access code automatically disables that possibility.
For violating the collective interests of consumers, UOKiK President imposed a fine of 2,232,000 PLN on Mobile Marketing Center. Importantly, the office also applied a mechanism of personal managerial responsibility. This will certainly encourage other companies to think, as the penalty is borne not only by the company but also by specific individuals managing the entire unfair operation.
An individual manager was fined an additional 420,000 PLN for willfully allowing such blatant violations of the law. Although the UOKiK decision against the company is fully binding, the managing person appealed it to court.
For the company’s image, this is still a definitive, image knockout.
See also: UOKiK strikes a mass of companies in Poland! Harmful substances detected in their products
Source: UOKiK
