COMPETITION COUNCIL: ADVERTISING BY CAMELIA MISLED CONSUMERS

The Competition Council (hereinafter – Council) found that UAB Nemuno vaistinė (hereinafter – Company) made false claims about 30 per cent cheaper products sold in the pharmacies of Camelia (hereinafter – Camelia), and thus breached Article 5 of the Law on Advertising.

The Council opened the investigation after receiving a complaint stating that in various time periods between 1 September 2015 and 30 November 2015 the Company might have disseminated false claims about the discounts applied in Camelia from 13 p.m. till 15 p.m. The Council found that all advertising claims contained false information –  discounts did not apply to reimbursable pharmaceuticals and medicinal products purchased with the passport of reimbursable pharmaceuticals. Besides, the radio advertisement was incomplete – it failed to make clear that only Camelia low-price card holders can receive the discounts. The Council believes that if consumers had correct and complete information, they might have looked for more favourable offers in other pharmacies instead of purchasing products in Camelia.

For the widespread misleading advertising the Council fined Camelia EUR 8 688.

In 2015 the Council‘s experts examined 427 notifications related to misleading advertising and sent out 159 letters encouraging companies to amend potentially misleading advertisements.