This scam concerns you if you buy on the markets

© Unsplash/Jacopo Maiarelli

Stocking up on stalls on Sundays (or other days depending on your city) at a market, picking up 1 euro bags early in the afternoon, negotiating the best prices… These habits remain deeply rooted among the French. And for good reason: it is possible to make your shopping basket at prices that often defy the competition from retailers such as Carrefour, Leclerc and Auchan.

All with the feeling of buying products that are, in the end, of better quality; from less industrial, more local, more protective of the planet production methods. In practice, regardless of the place of purchase, standardized labels across the European continent make it possible to ensure the origin of a food product.

Buying on the markets forces one to remain very attentive to the risk of scams

This can give the consumer confidence, in a context where open-air markets have a rather good image. And yet, 60 million consumers alert, DGCCRF in support of a multiplication of illegal commercial practices. One of the frauds identified by the inspectors is a scam that consists of passing off imported fruits and vegetables as French products.

A relatively easy practice to carry out since it is enough to attach the products to a label indicating information to this effect. The seller can, thus, collect a more comfortable margin while selling the product cheaper than the normal sale price of legal foods. This can involve, among other things, affixing the word “Organic” on products that are very far from being so.

The authority thus points out a lack of transparency on the origin of the products because of this type of fraud. At a very worrying level since out of the nearly 5,000 checks carried out on stalls this year to verify the French origin of products, nearly 35% revealed anomalies. 60 million consumers therefore advises customers to ask themselves what a sale price really means.

Especially when we talk about food. Buying with confidence on the stalls simply by asking the question of prices is not only falling into what looks from a distance like a 'small scam'; which many buyers will consider for budgetary reasons. The practice suffocates local producers – whose products are constrained by a higher selling price.

The association therefore recommends always being wary of prices that are too low, and taking seasonality into account. If, for example, a product is labeled French on a stall while the rest of the market declares other origins, it is undoubtedly because the seller has fallen into this type of practice, and that #8217;it will therefore be better to avoid buying.

• 60 million consumers warn of the development of a scam on open-air markets.
• Some stalls disguise the origin of their products to sell them more expensively.
• The scam, which is widespread, impacts consumers as much as the most virtuous producers – potentially very affected on the financial side.

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