Online selling has become part of our lives already and in fact, almost everybody in the neighborhood is doing it. Simply because it’s very convenient. You do not have to have a strategic place where you can display your product. You simply need an internet connection and a smartphone and voila! You are ready to sell online. You can sell wherever you are in the country as long as you have an internet connection.
You can sell anything online and just have it delivered to your customer’s address through different couriers. This brings ease and convenience for both the seller and the buyer. During the online transaction, many customers have noticed that sellers are not revealing their prices online and keep on commenting PM for the price or private message for the price. Some customers were annoyed by this kind of selling technique by the online sellers.
This kind of behavior did not escape the radars of the Department of Trade and Industry so DTI Regional Office in Sultan Kudarat reminded the online sellers that it is illegal to offer any consumer product without an appropriate price tag. The DTI also posted on Facebook a meme saying “HINDI COOL ang PM SENT sa online selling!”
The post garnered a lot of sympathies, especially from consumers. Republic Act 7394 or “Consumer Act of the Philippines” states that it is “unlawful to offer any consumer product for retail sale to the public without an appropriate price tag, label or marking publicly displayed to indicate the price of each article and said products shall not be sold at a price higher than that stated therein and without discrimination to all buyers.”
Many netizens also came into the defense saying that this is just a strategy to spark the curiosity of their costumers by telling them to send a pm for the price of the product they are interested in. Some are saying that they need to hide the price to protect the image of their resellers who might need to sell the product at a higher price to gain profit. – Karie | Helpline PH
