France fines Boohoo €2.3 million over deceptive discounts on website

PARIS, Aug 20 (Reuters) - France's consumer watchdog fined British fast-fashion retailer Boohoo €2.3 million ($2.7 million) for deceptive practices such as fake discounts on its website, it said on Thursday.

Boohoo exaggerated the discounts it was offering, giving shoppers a false impression of the savings they were making, the DGCCRF (Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control) said in a statement.

Of the promotions analysed by the watchdog, 40% were not real price reductions, 7% were a lower reduction than advertised, and 48% were in fact a price increase, it said.  

Boohoo also used terms like "leather" or "suede" to sell synthetic products, going against French rules on product labelling, the regulator said.

A spokesperson for Boohoo said the issues related to a period from October 2023 to February 2024, when the business was under its previous management, and are now resolved.

"We have cooperated fully with the regulator, and continue to review how we price and label our products," the spokesperson said.

Shares in Boohoo parent Debenhams were down 2.4% at 1125 GMT.

The French government has led a crackdown on online fast-fashion businesses, particularly targeting Chinese platforms Shein and Temu, and lawmakers in June passed an anti-fast-fashion law imposing fines on what they called "disposable" clothing.

In July last year, Shein was fined €40 million by France's antitrust agency for misleading discounts.

($1 = 0.8543 euros)

(Reporting by Helen Reid, Inti Landauro and James Davey. Editing by Kirsten Donovan)