• The start of the 2023 winter sales will be given on Wednesday in France.

  • For the first time, merchants will have to apply the European Omnibus Directive on the display of prices.

  • To detect false promotions, the Mosc mobile app allows you to consult the history of the prices charged by certain e-shops.

Good trick-or-treating deals.

Officially, the winter sales begin this Wednesday in France, while, for a few weeks now, most physical or online businesses have already set the tone with private sales.

Certainly, if the balances are no longer synonymous with frenetic consumption, it is clear that the large colorful cupboards displaying fabulous discounts are still having their little effect.

A small effect that can be biased, legally, by unscrupulous sellers, displaying "false" discounts.

To avoid this,

20 Minutes

has dug up Mosc, a mobile application allowing you to trace the price history of goods sold on e-commerce sites.

This way, you will know if your favorite sneakers at -50% are really at -50%.

For Robert Bréhon, representative of the UFC, what to choose in Hauts-de-France, doing the sales is a bit like planning a trip.

“The best way to avoid compulsive or unnecessary purchases and getting tricked is to be prepared.

By scouting, noting prices and having an idea of ​​what you need to buy, ”he explains to

20 Minutes

.

Without that, we have a good chance of falling for this fabulous thing that we already have less because, all the same, less 70%, it's interesting.

And indeed, it is interesting, if the discount is indeed minus 70%.

“Many merchants used to inflate prices just before sales so that when the day came, they could post bigger discounts,” he continues.

A new European directive

A practice that should be eradicated thanks to the European “Omnibus” directive, which came into force in France at the end of May.

Concretely, this obliges physical and online merchants to display the lowest price applied in the month preceding the sales.

“If the merchant wants to sell 90 euros for a product that he sold between 100 and 130 euros in the 30 days preceding the promotion, the price crossed out must be 100 euros.

The reduction displayed will therefore be 10%”, explains the UFC representative, adding that, if “the rule is not perfect, it is still progress”.


It is still necessary that traders play the game. This is where the Mosc mobile application becomes interesting.

Developed and launched two years ago by Mathieu Guffens, a 35-year-old Belgian, it is primarily aimed at the French market, "where e-commerce is used more than in Belgium", assures its creator.

The principle is the same as Waze, except instead of reporting speed cameras, Mosc users build a database of prices.

“As soon as a member of the community puts an item in their basket on an e-commerce site, the price of the item is archived.

This makes it possible to create a history that can be consulted by users to check price fluctuations,” sums up Mathieu Guffens.

A collaborative app

During sales periods, Mosc makes it easy for its users to check if a price has been revised upwards upstream.

“It's a way of detecting false promotions, believes the founder of the app.

But also to see that some e-commerce sites can sometimes change the price of the same good 15 times in a month.

In other words, even outside sales, the algorithm warns the customer of the best time to buy the coveted object at the best price.

As the app is collaborative, its effectiveness depends on the size of its community.

And two years after its launch, Mosc has nearly 20,000 members and a thousand referenced e-shops.

"We find in particular the most important ones, such as Amazon, Zalando, Decathlon or La Redoute, but also smaller shops", specifies Mathieu Guffens.

At the same time, Mosc is only relevant for products "of a certain value", such as household appliances, high-tech or branded clothing.

Anyway, even if a promotion is really interesting, the UFC Que Choisir insists on the fact that "we do not buy a discount, but a product".

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