The UK Prime Minister has announced that he will be rolling out a series of ‘everyday fixes’ to help people with the cost of living, kicking off with two measures today.
Pretend prices and deceptive deals will be a thing of the past under the Prime Minister’s plans to ban retailers from making misleading claims to customers about discounts. Shoppers have increasingly complained about outlets artificially inflating prices to give a false sense of value, such as increasing them only to then immediately advertise ‘discounts’ to make savings look larger than they really are, News Cover reports, citing the UK government's official website.
This includes discounted prices being the same as they were before the discount, intended to trick consumers into thinking they are getting good value whilst saving them nothing and creating an uneven playing field for honest competitors.
The Prime Minister also wants to see an end to subscription traps, where people find it hard to cancel their subscriptions and contracts are automatically renewed at a higher cost. New rules will now come into force in January 2027, in time for when customers often start new subscriptions for the year ahead.
Saving an average of £14 a month for every unwanted subscription, the changes will mean businesses will need to provide clearer up-front information, regular reminders and a much easier exit to contracts. A new 14-day cooling-off period will also let consumers cancel after a trial or long-term contract renews.
With households still watching every pound, it’s right to act to restore fairness. There are around 155 million active subscriptions in the UK, with consumers spending an estimated £1.6 billion a year on ones they don’t actually want, a direct hit to family budgets.
For the many businesses who already give customers plenty of notice before subscriptions renew and make contacts easy to leave, very little is changing. They will benefit from clearer rules and a more level playing field, without being undercut by competitors who have more complicated processes that rip off consumers.
Certain charitable memberships for cultural and heritage organisations will be excluded from the new subscription rules given the unique role they have in preserving and opening up access to the nation’s history, landscapes, and cultural collections.
