Amid hard economic times which Malawians are going through, top supermarkets in the country are worsening people\u2019s misery by defrauding them through deceptive pricing, an investigation by the Competition and Fair Trading Commission (CFTC) has found.<\/p>\n
The probe by CFTC comes on the back of another which our Business Times supplement conducted in February and June this year.<\/p>\n
In the Business Times investigation, we established that cash-strapped consumers are unknowingly losing more of their hard earned money at the till of some top retail shops in the country.<\/p>\n
We found that some till operators either charge for goods one did not purchase or use wrong codes for products.<\/p>\n
We also discovered that some retailers were quoting or tagging prices without Value Added Tax on their shelves only to make consumers pay a higher price with the tax.<\/p>\n
Despite the hyper-inflation rate prevailing in the country which has eroded buying power, the operators are taking advantage of the gullibility of the Malawian consumers to make them pay more money for goods or charging them for goods they did not purchase in the first place.<\/p>\n
Now in CFTC\u2019s investigation, the body has found that supermarkets are deceiving customers on pricing and has warned it will name and shame them if they continue to violate consumer protection laws.<\/p>\n
The commission carried out an inspection of the top ten supermarkets in the cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre where it was discovered that the shops were craftily engaged in deceptive practices.<\/p>\n
Among the fraudulent practices include displaying lower prices on the shelves and charging higher prices at the till, displaying lower overall amount on the till screen while the printed transaction receipt shows a higher amount, displaying edible food products bearing two expiry date labels or in other cases not displaying prices at all.<\/p>\n
In a statement about the investigation, CFTC said the practice is common among prominent supermarkets in Blantyre and Lilongwe.<\/p>\n
The Commission has warned that it will institute stiffer penalties for any trader engaged in any unfair or unconscionable tactics aimed at profiteering and taking advantage of consumers.<\/p>\n
It says such practices go against provisions set out in the Consumer Protection Act as well as the Competition and Fair Trading Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Competition and Fair Trading Commission (CFTC) has noted with great concern that some prominent supermarkets in the country are intentionally engaged in deceptive pricing with a view to defraud unsuspecting consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn view of this, the Commission would like to warn all supermarkets that it is an offence, under the Competition and Fair Trading Act and Consumer Protection Act for any trader to engage in any form of deceptive or misleading conduct,\u201d CFTC said in the statement signed by its Executive Director, Wezi Malonda.<\/p>\n
The offense attracts a penalty of five years imprisonment and a fine of K500,000 upon conviction by the court.<\/p>\n
The Commission has also advised the general public to ensure that they exercise caution when dealing with supermarkets which are blatantly bent on defrauding unsuspecting consumers.<\/p>\n
Responding to our earlier investigation, the CFTC said then that it had also received complaints on the matter and said the malpractice is common among till operators using the newly introduced Electronic Fiscal Devices (EFD) machines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amid hard economic times which Malawians are going through, top supermarkets in the country are worsening people\u2019s misery by defrauding them through deceptive pricing, an investigation by the Competition and Fair Trading Commission (CFTC) has found. The probe by CFTC comes on the back of another which our Business Times supplement conducted in February and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28190,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28186\/revisions\/28190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}