Selling to consumers: are you ready for April changes?

6 April 2025 is a key date for those businesses that sell products and/or services to the general public. New legislation coming into force on that date introduces heavy corporate and individual penalties for breaches of consumer protection legislation.

There are also new rules in relation to fake reviews and subscription-based contracts.

Businesses selling to consumers are advised to review their terms and conditions and their sales and marketing materials, including in-store, website and social media content, to ensure they comply with the rules.

Background

The consumer protection provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) give new powers and penalties to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to enforce consumer laws, including fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover and fines for individual directors. Although most of the practices targeted by the rules were already unlawful, until now the CMA’s only option for enforcing them has been by using court proceedings. The new direct enforcement powers under the DMCCA therefore represent a step-change in the compliance risk profile for businesses involved in consumer sales. 

The following types of commercial practice are covered by the DMCCA:

‘Banned practices’: a total of 32 practices which are always prohibited, including false health and medical claims, falsely claiming a product is scarce, and falsely describing products as free. From 6 April, the use of fake or misleading product or service reviews (including those that do not disclose that a review has been paid for) will also be a banned practice.

Unfair practices: including:

• misleading customers through what you say, or omit to say, about a purchase they are considering (e.g. claiming that a price promotion will save a customer money when this is not true);
• aggressive sales tactics;
• omitting ‘material information’ from a product listing, meaning that the customer does not know all the key terms before making a purchase. This particularly applies to ‘drip pricing’, where hidden additional charges are only revealed to the customer after purchase.

Subscription contract practices: the DMCAA brings in new rules to regulate subscriptions, including in relation to the information a consumer must be given upfront, together with the reminders that they must be given about upcoming renewals and their rights to terminate. These particular rules will not come into force until 2026, allowing some time for businesses to review their practices and make any necessary amendments.

Recommendations for businesses

Sales and marketing to consumers often involve multiple communications using product descriptions, price promotional banners, online customer reviews and price calculation tools, as well as the terms and conditions of sale. All of these touchpoints with consumers are potentially in scope of the DMCCA and should be reviewed to ensure they do not include any banned or unfair practices.

In our experience such reviews will often identify misalignment between different types of content (e.g. price information in a calculation tool and in marketing statements) that results from different pages being updated at different times or by different teams. Catching and correcting such errors is likely to improve customer satisfaction with your sales process as well as reducing the risk of your content being found to be misleading.

If you would like to discuss assistance with such a review, or further information about the application of the DMCCA, please get in touch.