The Italian Competition and Market Authority (ICMA) requested the closure of the Bompiano.com website for failure to deliver products sold on the web.
The company, which apparently operated the website and qualified itself as an affiliate of Mediaworld, has actually turned out to be non-existent. Dozens of complaints have been received in the last month, ICMA said.
The Italian Competition Authority has sent a complaint to the Registrar (NameCheap) of the domain Bompiano.com to activate the fraud and abuse procedure against the company Bompiano s.r.l. of Palermo. It appears to be operating the website Bompiano.com, which offers electronics and household appliances for sale at heavily discounted prices.
Over the past month, the Authority has received dozens of complaints from consumers, both directly and through Mediaworld , which ICMA said falsely describes itself as an “affiliate” of, complaining about the non-delivery of products purchased on the website and paid for by bank transfer.
From these complaints and from the checks carried out thanks to the collaboration of the Antitrust Unit of the Guardia di Finanza (Italian Finance Police), it appears that Bompiano s.r.l. is a non-existent company and that consumers, after placing the order for the products online, receive an email with which they are asked to pay by bank transfer to natural persons. After making the payment, however, consumers do not receive anything and cannot manage to have any contact with the alleged seller.
ICMA said: “This conduct constitutes a serious and obvious unfair commercial practice, and for this reason the Italian Competition Authority has adopted a swift and effective procedure to request the revocation of the Bompiano.com domain.”
ICMA reminds consumers, before making online purchases and payments, to carefully check the earnestness of websites (which sometimes imitate the official ones of operators with established brands on the market) and to be wary of payment requests on bank accounts or credit cards in the name of natural persons.
