Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Chapter 2, Section 1, Article 6, 1., (d)

(1) Presenting information on product price in pages of the trader's website which is not immediately found, constitutes a misleading commercial practice.

(2) The fact that the trader does not as such intend to make the information more difficult to obtain, does not change the assessment of the misleading character of the practice.  

The plaintiff provided information on the price of a certain telecommunication service in a rather specific and remote sub-section of its website. This required that consumers run additional searches in order to find the information.

The defendant found that price information published in this way was hardly accessible for consumers. As a result, they were considered not to be in a position to reasonably form a view and take an informed decision as to the pricing of the service in question.

The defendant considered that the plaintiff engaged in a misleading commercial practice when providing information in the described manner. The defendant banned these actions of the plaintiff.  

The court held that pricing information published on traders’ website in a manner such as in the case at hand was indeed difficult for average consumers to find.

Consumers might not be expected to always contact traders’ customer care teams (e.g. by calling the trader’s call center) in order to obtain such essential information. Such information must be clearly presented and easily accessible on traders’ websites.

Consequently, providing pricing information at sections of the website that was difficult to find qualified as a misleading commercial practice. Trader’s object (intent) was considered to be of no relevance to the qualification of the action as misleading.  

(1) Does presenting information on product price in pages of the trader's website which are not immediately found, constitute a misleading commercial practice?

(2) Does the fact that the trader does not as such intend to make the information more difficult to obtain, change the assessment of the misleading character of the practice?  

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The court upheld the first instance court’s judgment that confirmed the defendant’s ban.