Gmarket·Auction Prohibit Unfair Prices Over 10 Times
11st Builds Automated Monitoring System
[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] Open markets are cracking down on unscrupulous individual sellers who exploit unfair pricing to make excessive profits or repeatedly use deceptive discount tactics. Ahead of large-scale discount events, they also plan to strengthen monitoring of bait-and-switch consumer deception, where sellers temporarily raise the original price to make discounts appear larger.
According to industry sources on the 11th, eBay Korea, which operates Gmarket and Auction, will prohibit sellers from setting unfair product prices through changes to the seller membership terms starting next month on the 1st. Although there are no specific numerical criteria, prices that deviate from common sense levels, such as 10 to 100 times the normal price, will be blocked as they are judged to cause serious inconvenience to consumers in order to protect them.
During the 'mask crisis' in January and February last year caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), some sellers raised mask prices up to 12 times, sparking public outrage. Many unscrupulous merchants also appeared who canceled deliveries claiming items were out of stock after orders were placed, only to relist the products at higher prices. The Korea Consumer Agency received about 60 complaints related to masks over just two days, January 28-29.
11st will also build an automated system as early as the second half of this year to prevent sellers from deceptively raising prices just before specific promotions. A typical example is when a product previously sold for 8,000 won is listed at a normal price of 10,000 won and promoted as if it is being sold at a 20% discount. The system will prevent sellers from raising prices from the product registration stage during large-scale events such as 'Monthly 11th Day Sale,' and it is expected to take more than six months to build. Currently, category-specific merchandisers (MDs) monitor and catch such cases manually.
Open markets’ active enforcement against sellers is seen as a response to social criticism that they cannot avoid responsibility amid the growth of the e-commerce market. In November last year, domestic online shopping transaction volume reached 15.0631 trillion won, a 17.2% increase compared to the same month the previous year. Among this, mobile shopping transactions amounted to 10.2598 trillion won, up 21.9%.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
