对话脚本

Eric

Lily’s colleague (Younger voice)

Hesitant in making judgments, always unsure of himself

2.1

Lily

This week I was asked to come up with some poster designs for a mooncake promotion.

Lily

<In a loud and energetic tone>

Eric, this is my draft for the poster. Any comments?

Eric

<In a loud, happy voice>

It looks fantastic. However, I think there’s something wrong with it.

Lily

<Shocked tone>

Oh, please tell me.

Eric

<Calm tone>

Do you remember the offence of False Trade Description?

Lily

I remember it’s an offence if a trader:

Applies a false trade description to any goods/services supplied or offered to be supplied to a consumer; or

Supplies or offers to supply goods/services to a consumer to which a false trade description is applied.

Eric

So what is a trade description?

Lily

Please click on the information in the poster which may be considered as a “trade description” under the TDO. You may select more than 1 answer.

Eric

Correct.  

Here are the correct answers.

Lily

Trade description is any indication by whatever means directly or indirectly about how a product is supplied, or its standard, quality, grade, availability (time and quantity), price (calculation, advantage or discount), after sales service, etc.  A trade description is false if it is not true to a material degree.

Eric

<In a calm tone>

Correct, but there is something wrong with one of the trade descriptions in the poster!

Lily

Oh, I found it, the discounted price is wrong! It shouldn't be $120 since 55 times 2 is only $110. The discounted price should be lower than $110!

David

<In a calm tone>

Correct. According to the Club’s Trade Descriptions Compliance Framework, we have to verify the accuracy of any product information before we communicate with or publish any communications to our customers.

Lily

Sure.

2.2

Eric

<Whispers>

Lily, this is the SMS advertising message that I have prepared for our Levade shop. Do you have any comments?

Lily

Eric, I think you have missed something.

Lily

<In a calm, easy going voice>

A trader commits an offence of misleading omissions if it:

Hides / omits any material information,

provides important information in a manner that is unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely, or

fails to identify its commercial intent (unless it is already apparent from the context) and

as a result, it causes the consumer to make a transactional decision that he would not have made otherwise.

Eric

Oh yes, I remember now!  I have to mention the Material Information which is essentially any important information.

Generally, “Material Information” is important information that a consumer needs to know for making an informed transactional decision.

Lily

Please help us to compose the SMS with the material information in the context of the Club’s operations.

Correct.

Here are the answers.

Lily

<Surprise, lively tone, turns to Eric>

Look! On the news today, a dried seafood shop was fined $20,000. The dried oysters, scallops and shrimps were confiscated.

The shop displayed 3 signs for those products with two different price units ($X/catty and $X/500g).

The “500g” was very small and could easily be interpreted as meaning 1 catty.

The shop also purported that 1 catty equals 476g when in fact 1 catty equals 604g.

The shop was convicted of committing the offence of misleading omission by providing material information (i.e. the price unit) in an unclear, ambiguous and unintelligible manner.

Eric

<Shocked and hurried>

But there is limited space in my SMS message. What should I do?

Lily

According to the Club’s Trade Descriptions Compliance Framework, if it is impracticable to provide all the important information about the goods/services due to limitations of the communication medium available, you should indicate to the customers where the information can be found.

For example, by including a link to the webpage where the important information can be found.