Beware of Black Friday or Cyber Monday on the Internet: amazing discounts are often liars. Especially those in consumer electronics which make up a huge share of e-commerce.
Let us explain: often the prices on which substantial cuts are made by the online platform have previously been raised, and by a lot. To then be "cut" by 30-50 percent and capture customers. Thus the users - a great many unfortunately - who take the bait are convinced that they are making the deal of the century and instead often pay for the "very discounted" TV even more expensive than the prices in the shop.
We are dealing with thousands and thousands of household appliances, audio-video, PCs, smartphones and video games that are not even very current (some outdated but made up as new). And there is something even more serious: many one-member micro-companies operate on the Internet, such as “hit and run”, who take out devices of dubious origin for a few months at rock bottom prices, and then close everything leaving colossal tax holes and customers without assistance and often with scam products. But even the giants of e-commerce - as evidenced by the statements of numerous consumer electronics retailers we interviewed - could host uncontrolled and uncontrollable, unreliable operators who present super-discounted devices of which it is not known whether they are directly managed by the platforms and whether they are from third party companies (anonymous Chinese third party factories). In these very frequent cases, who gives the guarantee, assistance, maintenance, in short, the services connected by law to the purchase? Certainly not the platform that presents them.
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OPTIME AND THE GOVERNMENT HUNTING THE "HIT AND RUN" OF THE INTERNET
Consumer electronics and appliance retailers are angry. In traditional commerce, the system of taxes and duties, including local ones, often reaches levels of more than 50 percent of receipts. While the "hit and run" operators evade VAT causing, with their unfair competition that practices extremely low prices, enormous damage to legitimate retailers. That's why in Rome today, Tuesday 26 November, Optime, the Permanent Observatory for the protection of the Electronics Market in Italy, which has long raised the problem of "hit and run", participates in the legality day organized by Confcommercio. “We are grateful to Confcommercio – declares the president of Optime, David Rossi – for the continuous action on the issues of legality and I thank the Minister in particular Luciana Lamorgese for the attention it gives us. We look forward to the amendment by the president of the Finance Committee Carla Ruocco who listened to us by finally proposing a rapid intervention Task Force with which we will be immediately ready with reports and technical support".
AND EUROPE WITH EUCER DECIDES JOINT INITIATIVES
If this initiative goes ahead – the pressure is very strong – Ruocco will be able to get it approved shortly urgent measures to quickly shut down petty crime online. Article 23.bis states, among other things, that, thanks to the allocation of 1 million euros per year from 2020 to 2022, the special control units at the territorial offices of the Revenue Agency with the help of the Guardia di Finanza and the local police. The hunt for those who are causing hundreds and hundreds of shops to close, turning off the lights of cities and towns, with unchecked e-commerce, has begun. In Europe and in France in particular, it has already started, with very effective taxation, closures and legal actions. And it is for thanks to AIRES, the association that brings together in Italy the consumer electronics retail chains and groups, which all of Europe is organizing in a unitary way. In fact, it has recently been established EuCER Council, the European Consumer Electronics Retail Council, which among its founding objectives has precisely that of realizing -finally- a common regulatory and legal framework to defend European trade and traders who do business properly off and online. And which express a total turnover of 45 billion euros increasingly threatened by out-of-control operators.
