The UK's Fake-Discount Crackdown: What the DMCC Act Means for Shoppers

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act — the DMCC Act — is the UK's biggest consumer-law overhaul in years, and since April 2025 it lets the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fine businesses directly for pricing tricks like fake 'was' prices, drip pricing and paid-for fake reviews. The short version: the rules got sharper, but you still need to know what a genuine discount looks like.

What is the DMCC Act, in plain English?

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 received Royal Assent in 2024, and its consumer-protection provisions came into force in April 2025. It pulls a patchwork of older unfair-trading rules into one modern regime aimed squarely at the sort of behaviour that has quietly become normal online.

The headline change is about who holds the whip. Before the DMCC Act, if the CMA believed a retailer was misleading shoppers, it generally had to take them to court — slow, costly and rare. Now the CMA can investigate, decide a breach has happened and issue penalties itself, reaching up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover. That is the number that made boardrooms suddenly care about their 'was' prices.

What actually changed for shoppers in 2025?

• Fake reviews are explicitly banned — commissioning, writing or knowingly hosting fake reviews is now against the law.
• Drip pricing is targeted — unavoidable fees shouldn't be hidden until the final screen; mandatory charges are meant to be in the price you first see.
• Misleading 'was' prices face real scrutiny — a struck-through price is supposed to reflect a genuine recent selling price, not a number invented to flatter the 'now'.
• The CMA can act faster — direct fines replace the old court bottleneck, so enforcement no longer has to take years.
• Subscription 'traps' are on the way, but not here yet — the Act also aims at hard-to-cancel subscriptions, with clearer upfront information and an easy way to cancel, but those specific rules still need further legislation and haven't taken effect.

None of this bans discounts, and it doesn't mean every sale is a scam — plenty of retailers run genuinely good promotions. What the Act does is raise the cost of faking one.

What counts as a fake 'was' price?

The classic trick works like this: a product sits at £199 for a day or two — or at a price almost nobody actually paid — then gets 'reduced' to £129 and marketed as a £70 saving. The 'was' price exists only to make the 'now' price look generous. It's the retail equivalent of raising a flag just so you can lower it.

Under UK consumer law, a reference or 'was' price should reflect a real, recent selling price — not a fleeting high or an aspirational figure. The DMCC Act doesn't invent that principle, but it gives the CMA sharper teeth to enforce it, which is why 'was/now' labelling is under more pressure than it has been in a long time.

Drip pricing: the fees that appear at the worst moment

Drip pricing is when the price climbs as you move through checkout — a 'service fee' here, a 'booking fee' there, a mandatory charge that only shows up on the final screen once you're psychologically committed. The DMCC regime pushes against unavoidable fees being hidden this way: if a charge is compulsory, it belongs in the headline price, not sprung on you at the end. It's especially common in tickets, travel and hotels, which is exactly where a small 'fee' can quietly add up.

The catch: the law still leans on you noticing

Here's the honest bit. A stronger law doesn't put an inspector behind every product page. The CMA prioritises cases, investigations take time, and enforcement tends to follow patterns and complaints rather than police every listing in real time. A rule that fake 'was' prices are illegal is not the same as every 'was' price on your screen being true today.

So the DMCC Act is genuinely good news — it shifts the incentives and gives regulators real power. But the fastest way to know whether the deal in front of you is real is still to check it yourself, at the moment you're about to buy.

How price history lets you verify a deal yourself

This is the whole reason recorded price history matters. If you can see what a product actually cost over the past weeks and months, a fake 'was' price falls apart instantly — you can see the 'was' never really happened. It turns a marketing claim into something you can check rather than something you have to trust.

1. Look at the price trend, not just today's tag — a 'discount' off a price the item held for two days tells you nothing.
2. Check whether the 'was' price was ever a normal selling price, or just a brief spike right before the 'sale'.
3. Compare the same product across retailers live — the best price on one site isn't automatically the best price overall.
4. Watch for mandatory fees at checkout, especially on travel and tickets, and judge the total you'll actually pay.
5. Treat countdown timers and 'only 2 left' banners with the scepticism they've earned.

That's exactly what WEM is built to do: it compares the same product live across Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and major retailers on the page before checkout, filters out counterfeits and fake 'was' prices, and shows recorded price history so you can see whether a discount is real. It's free for shoppers — WEM only earns a retailer-paid commission when you actually pay less, and checkout always happens on the retailer's own site.