The Advertisement Board ("Board") closely monitors the discount sales campaigns, which have become a tradition in e-commerce, held in November and known as "Legendary November Discounts", "Fabulous Friday Discounts", where discounts at various rates are announced for a large number of products. The Board imposes administrative sanctions on discount sales advertisements and practices that deceive and mislead consumers and create the perception that there is a higher price discount than there actually is. Accordingly, in 2023, the Board examined and reached opinion on a total of 134 discounted sales cases, whereby it was decided to impose a total of TRY 4,041,59 in administrative fines in addition to the suspension penalty on 119 files that were found to be in violation of the legislation.[1]
Discount sale advertisements and advertisements containing price information are generally regulated under Article 14 of the Regulation on Commercial Advertisements and Unfair Commercial Practices ("Regulation"). In addition, the Board adopted and published the Guidelines on Advertisements Containing Price Information and Discounted Sale Advertisements and Commercial Practices (“Guideline”) as a principle decision in April 2022 in order to provide guidance to advertisers, advertising agencies, media organizations, sellers, providers, intermediary service providers and all persons, institutions and organizations related to advertising.
The Guideline rules in detail the principles for advertisements containing price information and discounted sale advertisements. Under the principles section, the Guideline sets out main principles and presents concrete examples for how to use price related expressions in advertisements. In ruling these principles, the protection of the rights of the general consumers were considered and sensitivities towards groups such as the elderly, persons with diasbilities and children, which are expressed as vulernable consumer groups were considered.
However, loyalty programs are not considered within the scope of discount sales. As a matter of fact, loyalty programs are generally defined as practices that allow consumers to collect points for future purchases. The Board has observed that loyalty programs have turned into a discount sales practice covering most of the goods or services offered for sale by an entity. Since it is possible to participate in a loyalty program easily, such as sending a text message, giving consent via a website or mobile application, or filling out a form, it has been observed that the legal rules for consumer protection regarding discount sales can be averted by using loyalty programs and a false perception of discount can be created in consumers.
Therefore, in its meeting dated 09.01.2024 and numbered 341, the Board amended the Guideline and introduced new rules for loyalty programs. A new paragraph 14 was added to existing Article 7 titled "Discount Sale Advertisements" to the Guidelines and it was ruled that advertisements for goods or services offered for sale through a loyalty program may not directly or indirectly create the impression of a discount by using phrases such as "discount", "savings", "special discount/opportunity for XY card/members", "pre-discount price" or visuals such as a downward trend graph.
In the administrative sanction decisions issued by the Board regarding discount sale advertisements, it is seen that the issues found to be in violation of the legislation in force are generally the misrepresentation of the price before the discount in discount sale advertisements and giving false and misleading information to consumers that a discount has been made, where, in fact, no discount is the case, not informing consumers adequately and clearly about the number of stocks and limited number of products subject to the discount, and selling to consumers at non-discounted prices although it is stated that a discount has been made. As evident from the aforementioned decisions, the Board approaches the issue of discount sale advertisements with sensitivity and conducts strict examinations in this regard. The Board clearly announces that it will continue its examinations on discount sales advertisements in the upcoming period.[2] Due to the new rules stipulated for loyalty programs within the Guideline, it is expected that the Board will begin to render decisions specific to loyalty programs that are misleading to consumers.