BEUC – together with 25 members from 21 countries – filed a complaint today with the European Commission and European consumer protection authorities against SHEIN for its use of deceptive techniques (‘dark patterns’). These push consumers into purchasing more than originally intended and fuel the environmental and societal problems caused by the fast fashion industry.
I’ve never used SHEIN so I can’t tell if they are using these practices or how bad they are, but from the article I see they allegedly use fake urgency messaging, which I know has been sanctioned before in the EU (the company I used to work with had to rush removing it from our eCommerce site).
A company can tell you that the item you’re looking at happens to be the last one in stock, if it’s true. But if they lie about it, so you rush into a decision to buy it before it’s gone, then it’s a deceptive practice.
Everyone does that all the time though. I can’t remember the last time I bought something online that wasn’t supposedly either the last one in stock or one of like 5 left. It’s obviously bullshit and everyone is doing it.
It’s one of those things where periodically someone gets sanctioned and a few others get scared and stop doing it (or tone it down) for a while.
I guess SHEIN are either overdoing it or they crossed the popularity threshold where companies become more scrutinized