The consumer platform “Halo, Inspector” has announced another general boycott of stores and services in Croatia tomorrow, February 7th, due to record-high prices, followed by a seven-day boycott of a single retail chain starting Saturday. Josip Kelemen, an advisor in the “Halo, Inspector” platform, stated that Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH), Serbia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo will also join the boycott. Unlike in Croatia, a two-day boycott has been called in BiH, but no specific chain or store has been mentioned.
“Consumers have asked us not to give up and to keep going. We’re going all in again: retail chains, bakeries, services, products, payment transactions…” Kelemen told reporters in Zagreb.
He announced that this Friday, all forms of purchasing goods and services will be boycotted, and starting Saturday, a specific retail chain will also be targeted. Citizens are deciding which chain it will be through a poll posted on the platform’s Facebook page.
Kelemen added that the poll, opened yesterday, generated such massive public interest that the server crashed twice.
“At midnight, we will close the poll and announce which chain will be the first to face the seven-day boycott. All chains will have their turn, but someone has to go first,” Kelemen said.
According to him, retailers have not understood the message sent by the previous two general boycotts, noting that one retail chain raised the price of a single product by more than 60% before recently freezing the prices of 250 products.
“They are literally lying to us, taking everything they can from us, the money we worked hard to earn,” Kelemen stated.
In Croatia, a seven-day boycott of three retail chains ended yesterday.
As a reminder, a boycott was organized in BiH last Friday. Stores were empty, but the Tax Administration reported that spending on that day was higher than in previous days.
