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The local football club is organizing a fun competition once a year.

Bobs company has been hired for security and information services every year for a very long time. There have never been complaints about his work nor about the price he offers.

This year, the football club informed Bob that the job was given to a competitor, because they had offered the service for a considerably lower price. Bob is very disappointed, because he hasn't even been asked for a quote this year.

Bob suspects that

a) the competitor knew what he was asking and could thus offer a lower price without Bob having the chance to react.

b) the competitor offered a significantly different service, and because the (new) lead of the football club didn't know Bobs real efforts as it had always "just been there" for them, they just saw the lower price tag without comparing the service.

I guess there's nothing Bob can do about b), except see that the crowd will not be happy about the sloppy cheap service of the competitor. But is a) legal? Can the football club take Bobs last year price and ask around for who would do it for cheaper?

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    I'm not Swiss, but it's hard for me to imagine that Switzerland outlaws consumers saying how much they paid for things.
    – bdb484
    Commented Jun 9 at 14:29
  • @bdb484 That's also what I think, but I found a German website that said it might be illegal e.g. if the price was so low as to push a competitor out of business and/or considerably below one's own expenses.
    – PMF
    Commented Jun 9 at 15:33
  • Aren't those totally separate issues, though? No matter how low Company A's price is, the Football Club would still be allowed to say how much it paid Company B.
    – bdb484
    Commented Jun 9 at 15:56
  • @bdb484 That's a fair point. But if A's price was unfairly low, B could at least expect to get a chance of filling in a new offer (and possibly know A's price)
    – PMF
    Commented Jun 9 at 18:11

1 Answer 1

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The scenario you describe is permissible, unless:

  • the pricing information was protected by a contractual confidentiality clause (see e.g. Husky Oil Operations Limited v. Anadarko Canada Corporation, 2004 ABCA 154 at para 2); or
  • this was part of some government procurement process where the government entity is obligated to keep the pricing information confidential (see e.g. Burlington (City) (Re), 2015 CanLII 21979 (ON IPC)).
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