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The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced a significant enforcement and compliance initiative under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 aimed at tackling misleading online pricing tactics.
United Kingdom
Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
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The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has
announced a significant enforcement and compliance initiative under
the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act
2024 aimed at tackling misleading online pricing
tactics.
Here is an ‘at a glance’ summary of the key
points:
Investigations opened into 8 businesses:
StubHub, Viagogo, AA Driving School, BSM Driving School, Gold’s
Gym, Wayfair, Appliances Direct, and Marks Electrical.
Advisory letters have been sent to 100 businesses
across 14 sectors highlighting concerns about practices
such as:
Drip pricing (adding mandatory fees late in
the purchase process).
Misleading countdown timers and pressure
selling tactics.
New CMA guidance on Price Transparency has been
published to help businesses comply with price
transparency rules (see link at the bottom of this note). The
CMA’s message is that consumers must see accurate,
upfront pricing and genuine sales offers to shop with
confidence.
Context: The crackdown follows a
cross-economy review of 400+ businesses since
April 2025, when the CMA gained its new powers and the new DMCC Act
came into effect.
The start of things to come: These are the
first enforcement cases under the CMA’s new
powers, which allow it to choose which businesses to
investigate, conduct the investigation (using strong powers to
compel disclosure of confidential information), and decide if the
business has breached consumer law — all without going to
court. It can then impose fines of up to 10% of global
turnover and order compensation for affected consumers, as
well as elicit undertakings to ensure businesses change their
practices.
New Price Transparency Guidance
The new Price Transparency guidance, which businesses across all
sectors are expected to follow, can be found here.
Consent For Additional Charges
They also issued guidance on the topic of getting consent for
additional charges, which can be accessed here.
It makes clear that if you are offering optional extras linked
to the main product you are selling, you should not charge for
those extras by default.
Consumers must have genuine choice over whether to pay for an
extra product or service they may or may not wish to choose. You
can’t use pre-ticked boxes or other forms of automatic opt-in
for optional extras, if that means the customer will have to pay
for them unless they take action to opt out.
Optional extras can include things like insurance, express
delivery and making donations to charity.
You need to get your customer’s express consent for any
additional payment – they must actively choose to make the
payment (so avoid pre-ticked boxes).
You must:
clearly explain any additional payments that consumers can
choose to make
make sure that customers expressly consent to additional
payments before they are charged
give customers a way to check and confirm what they are paying
for.
Next steps
If your business received a letter from the CMA – you’re on
notice that you need to review your pricing practices, and take
action to bring your practices into alignment with that, to avoid a
CMA investigation and enforcement action. Don’t hang
around!
If you didn’t receive a letter from them… congratulations!
But you still need to urgently review your pricing practices, to
ensure they align with the new guidance to avoid future enforcement
action.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.