Suppliers of nicotine-free hookahs, smoking pipes and vaporizers have filed a pre-trial class action against the Wildberries market to challenge fines totaling more than 600 million rubles against more than 160 entrepreneurs.
According to the company, the fines imposed are not legally justified, since the platform has introduced a ban on the sale of products that contain nicotine, and nicotine is not present in its products.
On behalf of the sellers, the CEO of law firm Fox Legal Consulting, Alexander Yefimov, who provided documents to Forbes in the case, added that the sellers also filed police reports to contest the fines.
As a result of market actions, many suppliers cannot export their products (or export only for a fee of 113 rubles per item), and some have even lost access to their personal accounts on the online platform.
The sellers’ claim specifically states that Wildberries applied sanctions unilaterally and without notice of changes to the offering agreement.
Representatives of the platform claim the opposite: they claim that they warned sellers about changes to the contract (in force since January 31), and on February 3 they sent messages about the introduction of a ban on nicotine-free products, since sellers unscrupulously sold nicotine products under his guise.
The sellers claim that all nicotine products have been removed, but due to the technical characteristics of the platform, the removed product listings remain in the “Basket”, so the system continues to believe that the products are still for sale.
To solve this problem, Wildberries released a special bot, the vendors appreciated the efforts, but they still couldn’t solve all the problems immediately.
At the same time, some of the products that were subject to penalties marked “Penalty for Violation of Site Rules” generally “had nothing to do with prohibited products, for example, pipes or hookahs.”
Market vendors demand the full abolition of fines and the ability to pick up goods for free (or return all legal opportunities for their sale).
The complaint was filed on March 2 by certified mail (because the market representatives did not allow an initiative group of sellers who wanted to personally deliver the documents to the management to the assembly).
Wildberries now has 30 days to consider a class action complaint, which the company views as a public relations move, as no official documents have been received.
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
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