In its ruling of 10.01.2017 (Ref.: 406 HKO 188/16), the Hamburg Regional Court ruled that advertising stating the recommended retail price (RRP) is inadmissible if the manufacturer no longer issues a recommended retail price at the time of advertising.
In addition, glasses (frame with lenses) may not be advertised with the addition “RRP” if the recommended retail price is an addition of the price of the frame and lenses, but the manufacturer does not state an RRP for the complete pair of glasses.

Opticians advertise with an outdated RRP

An online optician advertised Ray Ban glasses on her website, stating an RRP and a greatly reduced price.
However, at the time of advertising, Ray Ban itself no longer gave an RRP for the frames.
There was no separate RRP for the prescription glasses, but only one RRP for the glasses and one for the prescription lenses.
The optician added the two RRP’s together and stated the total in the advertisement with the note “RRP” and a greatly reduced price.

According to the Association for the Promotion of Commercial Interests, this information misleads consumers.

LG Hamburg: Advertising with false EIA inadmissible if it does not contain an annotation

Insofar as the optician advertises with a manufacturer’s RRP that is no longer up to date, she is in breach of fair trading regulations.
At least if she does not point out that it is no longer a current EIA.
This is because the advertising gives the consumer the impression that it is a current RRP.
This misleads the consumer.

Advertising with calculated RRP for composite products also inadmissible

The addition of the RRP information to a total value is also inadmissible, as such information simply does not exist from the manufacturer.
The consumer is led to believe that the manufacturer has deliberately stated an RRP.

This also misleads the consumer.
This is because the price of a composite product does not regularly correspond to the price of the individual components, but is many times cheaper.

Many consumers are therefore aware that the price of an overall product often differs from the sum of the prices of the individual parts and labor required to manufacture it and that the total price is often significantly lower than the sum of the individual prices when the components of the overall product are purchased separately.

According to the Regional Court, many consumers will attach more importance to advertising with a manufacturer’s RRP than to an optician’s composite price information.
Accordingly, advertising with the false RRP is also likely to cause the consumer to make a business decision that he would not have made if he had known the actual situation.