In supermarkets every week offer new discounts sometimes happens that seems unusual: one Pingo Doce of Lisbon, for example, announced a 0% savings in pork bifanas

The relationship between retailers and the end consumer is, for several years, marked by strategies of successive discounts on product prices, to try to attract an increasingly consumer-focused on reducing every euro of your bill at the supermarket. But if the campaigns bring generous discounts, there are also sometimes unusual events, such as advertising the buyer a saving … 0%.

The image, captured on Monday in a Pingo Doce supermarket in Lisbon says (almost) everything. “Enjoy! Save 0%”. The pork bifanas before costing 2.38 euros per kilo … now cost 2.38 euros per kilo. The unusual promotion is no more than a lapse, as explained to Express official source of Jerónimo Martins.

According to the company that owns the Pingo Doce supermarkets, the year in question contemplated in fact a price of 2.38 euros, but the original price of the product was 3.98 euros (as it is published in the brochure that was in force in the week 17-23 November that insignia), with a 40% discount, so.

According to Jerónimo Martins, the unusual ad placed in the supermarket have been an isolated case, as the company has not received any complaints of its customers. The group manages the discount policy centrally and the printing of campaign materials is also done centrally generally. Some larger stores can, however, print your own materials and the introduction of the values ​​of the products, generating cases like this.

Deco, defense association of consumers say they are attentive to the relationship of supermarkets with customers, but notes that complaints in this sector are still inexpressive. “Deco will receive complaints about promotions in supermarkets, some of them linked to discount cards, but not for now claims that have a very significant size,” explains Rosario Tereso, Deco jurist.

“We are concerned whenever there is a discrepancy between what is advertised and what turns out to be charged but can not be said that there is a boom of complaints on this issue,” says the same charge.

Data published by the General Directorate of Consumer (DGC) show that customer complaints about supermarkets are now marginal. The DGC, which is the competent body to deal with complaints relating to unfair commercial practices in advertising, sued in the first half of this year only 127 complaints, of which 69 for lack of information, 26 linked to stocks and 13 by the product does not match expectations.

According to the DGC, the operator most complaints at this level during the first half was the continent with 36 complaints, followed by Pingo Doce, with 27 complaints, and E.Leclerc, with eight.

The stronger the stream of protests from consumers with the ASAE – Food Safety and Economic Authority, whose sphere of action goes far beyond the issue of unfair trade practices followed by the DGC. By June the ASAE had received more than 72,000 complaints, of which nearly 34 thousand a defective performance of the contract and close to 26,000 by poor care. Aggressive selling methods motivated only 119 complaints with the ASAE.

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