SHEIN needs to quickly adjust its business operations, otherwise the Chinese online store may face a fine. Several regulators, including the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM), state that the company is misleading consumers with, among other things, unjustified claims and fake discounts.
For example, SHEIN states for various products that only a few are available, while in reality there is no scarcity. The company also puts customers under pressure by running a countdown clock and advertises with discounts that are not discounts at all.
Furthermore, the regulators see that there are misleading sustainability claims, that contact details are difficult to find, and that information is missing about rights that you have as a customer, for example, to get your money back.
The conclusions follow a joint investigation by regulators from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, and Ireland. They give SHEIN a month to indicate how it wants to adjust its business operations. After that, fines are threatened. The webshop has not yet responded to requests from NU.nl for a counter-reaction.
SHEIN sells many cheap products, especially clothing, and has become very popular in a short time, also in the Netherlands. Because other online stores from outside Europe, such as AliExpress and Temu, are also popular, EU countries are flooded with packages from outside the European Union.
These packages need to be checked, which entails high costs. Therefore, there are Brussels plans to introduce a levy of 2 euros for each package that comes from outside the EU.