Consumer compensation and fines – one billion forints worth of lessons learned from the GVH AboutYou case

The GVH launched competition supervision proceedings against the operators of three online stores, Answear, AboutYou and CCC, back in 2023. The authority suspected irregular price display in the case of all three companies, with particular regard to the way in which the promotional prices were displayed. CCC and Answear also concluded the procedure with commitments, within the framework of which they undertook to display the full and promotional prices of the products in a manner that is in accordance with the law, transparent and clear for consumers. Accepting the commitment also means that the GVH will not establish a violation in the case of these companies, but will instead oblige them to fulfill their commitments.

However, the authority took a tougher stance in the case of the third company, AboutYou. According to the GVH’s investigation, in addition to the price display deficiencies, the portal also used aggressive commercial practices, such as displaying a clock that counted down the promotional period every second and emphasizing the limited availability of the products, which exerted psychological pressure on consumers. Although AboutYou also made commitments – it undertook to introduce a compliance program and undertook a very serious consumer compensation in the form of coupons, totaling approximately 500 million forints – the company was still unable to avoid the finding of infringement and the fine. Thus, the GVH fined AboutYou an additional 500 million forints, equal to the amount of the compensation. It is worth highlighting that AboutYou’s infringements fall into the category of “dark patterns”, which have been the focus of attention of European consumer protection authorities in recent years. The GVH is expected to continue to place great emphasis on uncovering these practices.

The case is not unique in the authority’s consumer protection practice. Since the 2020s, there have been an increasing number of cases in which the GVH accepts the offered commitments but also applies fines to companies. This happened in the case of MediaMarkt, the Alza.hu web store, and the DIGI media service provider.

In other cases, the authority (similar to the Answear and CCC cases above) was content with imposing the offered obligations, for example, this happened most recently in the case of Lidl, Wish or Microsoft, where no infringement was found accordingly. Less frequently, but it also happens that the GVH accepts the offered compensation, does not impose a fine, but nevertheless establishes the infringement. This happened, for example, in the case of the Eventim ticket sales portal or WizzAir.

The above cases also show that the most ideal form of cooperation with the GVH and its outcome vary from case to case. It is therefore particularly important that businesses develop their cooperation strategy at an early stage of the investigation, bearing in mind that commitments regarding consumer compensation may not necessarily be sufficient in the case of infringements that the authority pays special attention to detecting.