Whitey - 9:44 pm on Nov 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

Did they try?

In the sense that the principles of promotional deception are the same via a website / promotional practice and conventional deceptive / bait advertising and techniques.

It's a big task and I've seen attempts from regulatory authorities in some jurisdictions which have been successful in adjusting promotional methods. But it takes many forms and the commercial enterprises are agile in getting around things.

Major travel agency Flight Centre has been ordered to dump its main advertising slogan for five years and issue a swag of corrections by the competition watchdog. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it had accepted court-enforceable undertakings from Flight Centre which is one of the nation's largest travel agencies. It will not be able to continue the "lowest airfares guaranteed" slogan it had used for 17 years. Source : [smh.com.au...]

The bottom line from a commercial viewpoint [ and not the morale viewpoint ] is it worth the disruption to a business to run this risk. Most will say it is and clearly some of the largest perpetrators, such as RyanAir or some of the the other competing discount carriers of this form of advertising are also successful business'. Customers will put up with the whole package of bad websites, being mislead , and poor service if the eventual deal is sweet enough - even if they do complain in their 10's of millions.

They also tend to target the big guys to make an example. So airlines are fair game and there are not many of them. But the funnel to catch the smaller players via key distribution channels and methods at strategic points is probably getting easier.

Perhaps the only deterrent to poor corporate promotional practice is the institution of gaol sentences and heavy personal fines to corporate executives responsible for these decisions, such as those being now imposed for anti competitive practices , like collusion with price fixing, particularly in the US, but the Courts may not deem these questionable promotional methods serious enough to warrant these penalties.

The EU does have substantial resources though and if competitors are "forced" to lower their standards to compete, then something will have to break. I guess it's a case of taming the jungle.

btw - it's not just the travel industry that will be caught in this loop. Google will need to be careful in ultimately what it publishes, although it's defended things well to date. But the ACCC case [ ACCC versus Google [accc.gov.au...] on false and misleading advertising ] in Australia and several French Court decisions relating to misleading methods are a constantly evolving test for the online industry.