Inspectors catch luxury stores cheating customers

Retail inspectors say a new spot-check of luxury stores in central Prague made in the run-up to the tourist season produced "extraordinary" results, with 30 stores out of 31 found to be breaking consumer protection regulation.

Fake designer goods in luxury boutiques, overcharging and lack of proper price information were all uncovered in the Retail Inspection Office (ČOI) operation carried out over two weeks in February.

ČOI spokeswoman Miloslava Fléglová said inspectors had already confiscated counterfeit goods and imposed sales bans on certain others, warning that "along with these measures already taken, the inspected shops will be subject to administrative actions and fines."

The inspectors said they put sales bans on luxury watches and jewelry worth "several tens of millions of crowns" because they did not carry sufficient pricing information.

Luxury boutiques were found to be selling counterfeit versions of Burberry scarves, hats and umbrellas.

The inspectors said the sale by cafés of cups of fruit juice and pieces of fruit was found in some cases to have no volume or weight associated with it, and in one case the amount of juice poured was significantly less than what was charged for.

"When randomly weighing a plastic cup, the difference was more than 80 grams," Fléglová said, adding that this amounted to as much as a third of the juice sold.

Five luxury candy stores were found to be weighing the bag along with the sweets, which in three cases produced an overcharging of more than 10 Kč on a sample purchase.

Some of the free-standing stalls in the popular Palladium shopping center were also criticized by the ČOI for not displaying prices.

In addition to the city center checks, the ČOI also inspected Prague's Holešovice market, where a large variety of counterfeit clothing was uncovered included replicas of Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Diesel, Lacoste, Nike, O'Neill and Replay.

The ČOI said that due to the high level of violations uncovered, it had already decided to run the same checks again in its next round of inspections.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com