COMPETITION COUNCIL CLOSED THE INVESTIGATION INTO A MISLEADING ADVERTISING BY UAB EUROCOM

Competition Council (KT) sent a Statement of Objections to UAB EUROCOM. According to the preliminary evaluation, advertising by UAB EUROCOM allegedly mislead consumers.

The KT‘s experts found that the advertisement promoted on the websites, namely labas.lt and youtube.com, as well as on the TV channels, namely BTV, Info TV, LNK, NTV Mir, RTR Planeta, TV1, TV6 and TV8, failed to comply with Article 6 of the Law on Advertising. In the advertisement Ugnė, a client of Labas kontraktas stated: „I switched from Tele2 to Labas kontraktas. In three months I saved 70 litas (20 euros) because of lower subscription fee.“. In the aforementioned advertisement Martynas and Monika claimed: „Tele2 used to be our telephone operator. Overall we used to pay 80 litas (23 euros) but now the fee is 30-31 litas (8,6 – 8,9 euros). Hence, we have 50 litas (14,4 euros) left to by diapers.“.

The fact that the KT has informed the company about the conclusions of an investigation does not mean that the infringement has already been established. Statement of Objections is a document issued by the authorised officers of the KT and sent to the parties. This document is not announced publicly. Having received the Statement of Objections, a suspected company is given an opportunity to familiarize with the material of an investigation and provide a written explanation. Explanations can also be provided orally at the open hearing. The KT takes into consideration all the explanations before making the final decision.

The KT has prepared Guidelines on Assessment of Misleading and Unlawful Comparative Advertising together with a brief note on that. Also, the authority regularly organises seminars on how to avoid misleading advertising.