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Change in Consumer Protection Regulations may affect your promotions
If you ever use sales promotions in which you offer a free gift with a purchase, there is a change in regulations coming soon that may affect you.
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (which implement the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive in the UK) will be implemented on May 26th.
These regulations include a schedule of “Commercial practices which are in all circumstances considered unfair” which includes:
“Describing a product as ‘gratis’, ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar if the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of responding to the commercial practice and collecting or paying for delivery of the item.”
Our current interpretation of this regulation is that if you are giving a gift conditional on the customer buying a product or service from you, you should not use the word ‘free’ to describe the gift.
There is nothing in the regulations that we can see that will prevent promotions of this kind. It is simply a restriction on the use of the word ‘free’.
No doubt there will be further clarification around this issue as there are currently some conflicting reports circulating, but for now it is our recommendation that you err on the side of caution until such time as more information is available.
Read the full draft regulations here
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