CMA taskforce receives nearly 21,000 COVID-19 related complaints

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it has received nearly 21,000 COVID-19 related complaints in a month since it established a taskforce to tackle unscrupulous business practices during the crisis.

Over 2,500 complaints were related to large price rises for personal hygiene products, such as hand sanitiser, and food products. The CMA said it has written to 187 firms accounting for these complaints.

The largest price increases concern hand sanitiser, with a reported median rise of 367 percent. The average increase across all reports is 130 percent. A large majority of price complaints (86%) concern prices in stores, the rest refers to online purchases.

An analysis of the around 14,000 complaints received online, however, shows that the complaints about price rises are decreasing, from over 90 percent of all complaints on March 20 to around 10 percent on 19 April.

The number of complaints about cancellations and refunds has seen substantial growth over this period, which now account for around four in five complaints.

The online complaints refer to just 6,000 businesses, which represents a very small minority of the more than 5.9 million private sector businesses in the UK, the CMA noted.

CMA added that it will set out next week further steps on how it intends to tackle issues around cancellations and refunds.

“The majority of businesses are behaving in a reasonable way at this time, but the CMA will not hesitate to take enforcement action if there is evidence that businesses have breached competition or consumer protection law,” it said.