Hi Craig,

The UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) sets advertising rules over here and produces several ‘code of practice’ documents.

One includes the display of prices to consumers:

http://bcap.org.uk/The-Codes/CAP-Code/~/media/Files/CAP/Codes%20CAP%20pdf/CAP%20Section%203.ashx

“Quoted prices must include non-optional taxes, duties, fees and charges that apply to all or most buyers. VAT-exclusive prices may be given only if all or most consumers pay no VAT or can recover VAT; marketing communications that quote VAT-exclusive prices must prominently state the amount or rate of VAT payable if some consumers are likely to pay VAT.”

The VAT-inclusive prices for consumers falls under the misleading advertising code of practice.

Remember the law only applies to UK advertisers. However, it’s still useful for most advertisers to promote a price on their website which is correctly reflected in their cart.

A certain large Spanish “downloads” site gets this very wrong all the time. See a GBP price on their website and the GBP cart price is very different – often much more expensive.

Why? They take the USD price (which is often cheaper), convert to GBP and then do not add VAT on their homepage, but is added in the cart.

Chris.

Hi Michael,

Good point. Thanks for contributing this information!

craig.

Hi Christian,

We’ll be taking a close look at this item. Nonetheless, it’s nice to hear that this topic is resonating with people regardless of the system in place.

cheers,

craig.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the local information about the UK. Do you have a link to the law where readers can read it for themselves? That would be very helpful for the community.

cheers,

craig.

Please don’t forget to implement it in the price polling xml interface too!

Few developers realise that it’s illegal to promote prices to UK consumers where the advertised prices differs from the purchase price – the price they see on the store homepage should always match that in their checkout, under UK law.

On top of this, you also need to display VAT inclusive prices to UK consumers.

There are good examples out there where popular “downloads” site regularly advertise software at GBP prices that differ widely from the sale price. They use USDGBP conversion to set the final buy price, don’t always take in to account the different VAT rates across Europe and more.

We take pricing seriously. Any prices you see in our store, in the supported currencies, should match the final price you see in your Cleverbridge-powered cart. There are no currency conversions, no tax increases or similar.

Chris.

Hi Frank,

Haha! Good idea! Now if we can only distribute food via digital download, then the we have a real Big Mac Index!

cheers,

craig.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, and let us combine the multiple local currencies with the Big Mac Index to integrate purchasing power parities and Cleverbridge has another industry first. 🙂

All the best,
Frank

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Frank Alperstaedt
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Hi Frank,

Yes, it’s fairly obvious for those of us that do multi-currency e-commerce on a regular basis, but there are plenty of people that forget what customers in other regions see. I like your suggestion and will bring it up with Martin later today, but contact your Client Manager to have them help you round your prices in the interim period. We will be exploring the topic of how to price your products in other currencies in a future post this year

Thanks for the comment and have a great day!

cheers,

Craig.
http://twitter.com/CraigVodnik