Deceptive Marketing Practices Digest on April 17. The latest edition looks at the use of fake scarcity cues in online marketplaces and provides an update on drip pricing since a new, specific drip pricing provision was passed into law last year. The Digest provides guidance from the Bureau for digital advertising and sheds light on the Bureau’s enforcement perspective. Marketing practices that may mislead consumers into making purchases that may not be in their best interests, or even what they intended, will draw Bureau scrutiny.

Online shoppers are the focus of the Competition Bureau’s latest edition of the Deceptive Marketing Practices Digest. The Digest discusses two types of online marketing practices which could draw enforcement attention from the Bureau:

• Scarcity cues. These are claims that a price, product, or service has limited availability.
• Drip pricing. The practice of advertising a low price but then adding fees or mandatory charges so that the actual price is higher than advertised, particularly where those fees or charges are not government-mandated additional fees (like sales tax).

Scarcity Cues: Creating a (Fake?) Sense of Urgency

Consider someone shopping online for a hotel room. A pop-up informs her that only two rooms are left in stock for the dates she has chosen, and that over a dozen travellers are also viewing the hotel’s booking site right now. Not wanting to miss out on the deal, the consumer rushes to complete her booking without doing any...

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