The framework, after 2024
Unfair commercial practices in the UK are now governed principally by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which replaced the previous consumer protection regulations in this area and made a significant change to enforcement.
The substantive prohibitions are familiar in shape: a general prohibition on unfair commercial practices, specific prohibitions on misleading actions and misleading omissions and on aggressive practices, and a list of practices that are banned outright in all circumstances.
The change is in enforcement. The CMA can now decide that a practice breaches the rules and impose penalties directly, rather than having to bring proceedings. That alters the calculation for any business considering how close to a line it wishes to operate, and it is the most consequential development in UK consumer pricing law for some years.
Reference pricing
A reference price is any higher figure presented alongside a current price to indicate a saving: a was price, a recommended price, a previous price, or a comparison with another seller.
The legal question is whether the comparison is genuine, which turns on whether the reference price is a real price at which the product was actually offered, for a meaningful period, in a way that makes the comparison fair. A reference price that was never a realistic selling price is a framing device rather than a comparison, and presenting it as a saving is capable of being a misleading action.
The general test throughout this area is whether the practice causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision they would not otherwise have taken. That is a practical test about effect rather than a technical test about wording, which is why the presentation as a whole matters more than any single phrase.
Guidance on how the CMA approaches unfair commercial practices is published, and it is the place to look for the detail of how these tests are applied.
| Practice | How it is treated |
|---|---|
| Reference price that was never a real selling price | Capable of being a misleading action |
| Conditions of an offer disclosed after the decision point | Capable of being a misleading omission |
| Unavoidable fees added after a headline price | Addressed directly as drip pricing |
| Submitting or commissioning fake reviews | A banned practice |
| Publishing reviews without steps to prevent fakes | A banned practice |
| Failing to indicate a unit price where required | A price marking breach, enforced by trading standards |
Structure set out by this newsroom from the published rules named in the sources below. It is not a survey, a measurement or a market study.
Misleading omissions, which matter more than they sound
A commercial practice can mislead by leaving something out. Where material information that the average consumer needs is omitted, hidden, or provided in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner, and that causes or is likely to cause a different transactional decision, the practice can be a misleading omission.
In food retail this bites on several familiar situations. Conditions attached to an offer that are not presented with it. Exclusions from a scheme that appear only in terms elsewhere. Quantities that have to be bought to obtain a price. Loyalty pricing where the condition for the lower price is not clear at the point of decision.
The test is not whether the information exists somewhere. It is whether it is provided clearly and in time to affect the decision.
Drip pricing
Drip pricing is the practice of presenting a headline price and then adding unavoidable charges later in the process. The DMCC Act addresses it directly, with the effect that mandatory charges must be included in the price presented up front rather than revealed later.
In grocery this arises principally in online ordering and delivery, where fees, service charges and minimum order requirements sit between the basket total and the amount paid. The distinction the law draws is between charges that are unavoidable, which have to be in the headline, and genuinely optional extras, which do not.
This is one of the clearer improvements for shoppers in recent consumer law, because it addresses a practice that had become normalised across several sectors.
Fake reviews
The DMCC Act also addresses fake reviews, making it a banned practice to submit or commission a fake review, or to publish consumer reviews without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent fake reviews from appearing.
This is directly relevant to food, because reviews and ratings now mediate a large share of decisions about restaurants, delivery and groceries. The obligation on the platform to take steps, rather than merely to refrain from writing fake reviews itself, is the significant part.
Price marking is a separate regime
It is worth separating two regimes that are often conflated. Price marking rules require prices to be indicated: the selling price and, where applicable, the unit price, unambiguously, legibly and in sterling. That is a display obligation.
Consumer protection law asks a different question: whether the practice, taken as a whole, misleads. A display can satisfy the marking rules and still form part of a misleading presentation, and a presentation can be perfectly fair while a marking detail is technically deficient.
Both are enforced by trading standards at local authority level, and the CMA now has direct powers over unfair commercial practices in addition.
Where to take a complaint
Pricing complaints about a shop or a website go to the trading standards service for the local authority covering the business. Complaints about advertising go to the Advertising Standards Authority, which publishes its rulings. The CMA takes an interest in practices that are widespread rather than in individual disputes.
Where this stops
This article describes the framework. It names no business, makes no allegation about anyone's pricing, and quotes no prices. It is a description of consumer law rather than legal advice, and anyone with a specific dispute should take advice or go to trading standards.
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