The CMA’s new enforcement powers granted under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (“DMCCA”) come into force on 6 April 2025, bringing major change to the consumer protection regime. Provisions relating to drip pricing and fake reviews also come into force on this date.
Under the DMCCA, the CMA will, for the first time, have the power to enforce consumer protection laws directly through administrative proceedings (rather than enforcing consumer rights in a court process). This includes the ability to impose fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover, as the CMA can do in competition law cases. Apart from financial penalties, other enforcement tools at the CMA’s disposal include enhanced consumer measures and online interface notices, the latter of which can require a party to remove or modify content, disable or restrict access, display a warning or delete a domain name.
The CMA has indicated that it will imminently publish an approach document which will include detailed information on its enforcement priorities during the first 12 months of the regime. The focus will, at least initially, be on breaches that the CMA considers to be ‘most egregious’, including:
– aggressive sales practices that prey on vulnerability
– providing information to consumers that is objectively false
– contract terms that are very obviously imbalanced and unfair
– behaviour where the CMA has already put down a clear marker through its previous enforcement work
– where the law tells us that a practice is always unfair
Although provisions relating to drip pricing and fake reviews will come into force on the same date, the CMA will not seek to enforce the new rules on fake reviews for the first three months of the new regime in response to feedback that businesses will need more time to implement mechanisms to detect and remove fake reviews, as well as revising internal processes for handling reviews and complaints made about the review process.
In these three months, the CMA will focus on supporting businesses with their compliance efforts and has also confirmed that it will run a further consultation on drip pricing in Summer 2025.