COMPETITION COUNCIL FINES JSC PB GROUP FOR MISLEADING ADVERTISING

On 25 July, the Competition Council (KT) determined that JSC PB Group (the Company) advertisements posted on the website www.delfi.lt as well as the Google engine were misleading and, therefore, imposed a fine of 29,500 LTL.

The advertisements stated: “The lowest-cost leader in Lithuania! VIANOR“, “The cheapest tyres in Lithuania! VIANOR“, “The lowest prices in Lithuania!“, “The lowest price“, “100 per cent best price“, “Nokian Tyre. Sale! – 50 per cent discount!“.

The Company failed to prove that VIANOR retail network offered the lowest tyre prices since the same or even lower prices were offered by other tyre salesmen. Moreover, the investigation revealed that not all Nokian tyres were discounted by 50 per cent.

When imposing the fine, the KT took into account the duration and scale of the infringement as well as the fact the Company hindered the investigation which is considered to be an aggravating circumstance under the Law on Advertising.

In 2013, the KT presented the Guidelines on Assessment of Misleading and Unlawful Comparative Advertising (the Guidelines). The Guidelines lay down major criteria applied in the assessment of advertising.  Traders, advertising practitioners and other parties in advertising are advised to use the aforementioned criteria for assessing whether their advertisement is not misleading. The document includes a number of examples from the KT’s practice and court cases and summarizes  information from the Law on Advertising, Law on Prohibition of Unfair Business-to-Consumers Commercial Practices, Law on Competition as well as provisions of the European Union directives, practices of courts and other sources. The Guidelines also clearly outline the wording to be avoided in advertising.