On 25 January 2017, the Italian Competition Authority closed a proceedings – also initiated at the request of consumer associations Federconsumatori Palermo and Unione Nazionale consumatori – on the methods of advertising and managing several promotional events characterised by the promise of assignment of products and/or rebates in case of purchase of the advertised goods.

The Authority identified a first misleading and aggressive commercial practice, considering, on the one hand, that the advertising messages either lacked or did not clearly show essential information, as the information regarding the nature of the promotion, the restrictions, conditions and modalities to obtain the promised prize/benefit, and on the other hand, that the participation procedures were particularly burdensome. With reference to misleadingness, promotional messages did not state clearly that the award of the promised prize or rebate was not immediately linked to product purchase, as indicated in the advertising, but could only be obtained subsequently, by following a procedure for the prize-competition the consumer was fully informed of only after purchasing the product and after reading the terms and conditions of the prize-competition Rules in full. 

With regard to aggression, the procedures adopted were such as to hinder consumers in the request and in obtaining the promised prize/benefit, as a set of, sometimes repetitive fulfilments were imposed, to be met within a short time. In addition, in some cases, customers were repeatedly asked to provide additional documentation (vendor’s declarations, original receipts and labels with IMEI); moreover, without an internet connection (or appropriate tools such as smartphones or personal computers) and/or a sufficient level of computer literacy, the customer could not be able to achieve all the intended steps.

The Authority also found aggressive the commercial practice linked to the collection of their customer personal data for marketing purposes, adopted by Samsung until 15 August 2016. Specifically, once a promoted product was purchased, Samsung required consumers, as a compulsory condition to participate in the promotion, to subscribe to the Samsung People platform and to consent to the use of their own personal data also for marketing purposes. It was not, in fact, sufficient to inform the consumer, at that time, that their personal data would be used to carry out dedicated marketing campaigns, as the consumer, who had purchased the promoted product in order to obtain a prize/rebate/gift, could not avoid to provide a series of personal information that fell beyond the prize-competition itself and the scope of consent to data processing for marketing purposes as well.

Given that the corrective measures taken in the course of the proceedings have a significant impact on the procedures for participation in prize-competitions and that Samsung has spontaneously interrupted the second contested practice, the Authority reduced the amount of the administrative sanction imposed for the first practice to € 2,125,000 (two thousand one hundred and twenty five thousand euros) and the amount of the administrative sanction imposed for the second practise to € 975,000 (nine hundred and seventy five thousand euros).

Rome, 10 February 2017