Posting Prices

any legal issues?

[JamesR]

Say you want to post price comparisons on a site for your visitors. Are there any legal issues involved with this? Do you have to keep the prices current legally or if you let them slide is that no big deal? May be a dumb question but I would rather not find out the hard way later. Thanks.

[drbill]

JamesR on thing that comes to mind is False Advertising....

[Vishal]

I don't think that there is anything illegal in doing so. However you can take few steps for precautions. The web page where you show this comparision, also show a disclaimer like

"These results are obtained from respective companies web sites, and are subject to change without notice."

You can also put the date when you got those results. But if you are maintaining more than one web site, I would say, skip the part of putting the date.

Mention the company's name clearly without tempering with their Title. If you wish, you can also link the title to that company's home page.

Well if you do so, you are good to go. Legally they cannot do anything to you. And even if they don't like it, if you keep update with their price they cannot do anything. Cuz all what you are doing is providing consumers the necessary "Information".

Anybody please correct me if I am wrong.

[Added] - [satisfactionbureau.com...]

[JamesR]

Vishal, thanks much for the detailed response. I am just whining about not wanting to go back and check sites every week. Your methods sound good with some good safety valves. Hopefully it is enough to prove that there was no malicious intent.

drbill, that is a great point. I wonder how that works with things like the Google cache that would store out of date pricing information on web pages...hmmm.

[Xoc]

Note that certain countries (France?) outlaw comparison ads. Not much they can do about the Internet, though.

[Vishal]

Well on my web site, I am planning to put a ranking report showing "My Ranking" Vs. "My Competitors Ranking". Has anyone done that? anyone care to share the expericene? I know all those competitors will be ticked off - but they cannot do anything legally, as long as I date those reports.

[Marcia]

>how that works with things like the Google cache that would store out of date pricing information on web pages

This is guesswork because I don't do JS, but wouldn't the pricing inside a pop-up Javascript window work to keep it out of the Google cache?