The panic which went wild in the past few weeks has
brought to unpleasant and ignoble looting phenomena, with surge
of the prices of masks and sanitizing gels on the main ecommerce,
as well as the flourishing of products with inflated illustrations and claims. A
situation faced by the platforms themselves, but which could not pass
unnoticed.
For this theAGCM, the Competition Authority
and the Market, he has
announced that it has started
two separate investigations in
against platforms Amazon (in particular Amazon Italy Customer
Service, Amazon Eu, Amazon Service Europe) ed Ebay (Ebay Italy and Ebay Gmbh)
"concerning some profiles relating to the marketing of products
hand sanitizers / disinfectants, face protection masks
respiratory tract and other sanitation products on occasion
the health emergency resulting from Covid-19 ".
The subject of the two proceedings initiated are, on the one hand,
the presence of claims relating to the claimed effectiveness of the individual products in
terms of protection and / or contrast against the COVID 19 virus;
on the other side, the unjustified and substantial increase in prices made
register for the sale of the indicated products in the last weeks.
"After receiving numerous reports, collected by the
the aforementioned professionals information on the interventions carried out and
found the presence of both profiles for a large number of
articles, the Authority has decided to initiate the two proceedings, "reads the
AGCM website.
The Authority, in consideration of the particular moment in which the
traditional forms of trade are limited, he simultaneously decided to
focus one's attention on similar phenomena also operated on
other ecommerce platforms.
In a declaration a
Reuters, eBay has stated that
the company ready to cooperate with the authorities to identify any
abuse. Amazon is still analyzing the cards, but it must be remembered that it has
already taken some measures against the situation independently
contingent.