Yoox fined for 5 million euros

The giant online luxury retailer Yoox Net-a-Porter has just been handed a 5.250.000 euro fine on behalf of Antitrust, which has recently reported the company's unfair practices. The assessment conducted by the Authority states that in the past four years, the platform has carried out misleading promotions and internal policies not clearly presented to consumers, frequent product repricing, and "fake" sales. At this time, the company has sixty days to demonstrate to Antitrust how they will fix the issue, although the sanction still remains. 

In more detail, an Antitrust investigation has surfaced an internal company policy restricting return policies, which was omitted to consumers. Basically, in the case of the return threshold exceeding, consumers had their accounts blocked and the ability to purchase on the website interrupted. The Competition Authority (Agcm) states that the company «deceptively envisaged sale prices and the effective discounts applied to them». Enticing consumers with appealing offers Yoox used to fix promotions, eventually making the discounted price identical to the starting one. In August 2022 the Swedish finance group Richemont, which has owned Yoox Net-a-Porter since 2018, sold 50% of the online company, 47,5% of which to the competitor Farfetch.