The Office of Fair Trading is investigating four British electronics retail websites over possible misleading advertising and unfair practices, as part of a wider European Commission effort to protect buyers.
In addition, two website operators outside the UK have been censured, the consumer watchdog said on Thursday. It added that its investigation had begun by looking at 14 online electronics stores and resulted in the six identified as potentially unfair to consumers.
"We had concerns over misleading price indications, contact details, or that the geographical or email address of the trader was not present on the website," said an OFT spokesperson. "We also had concerns about whether [order] cancellation details were provided."
The sites under scrutiny are the most-used online electronic retailers that had the most customer complaints, according to the spokesperson, who declined to name the UK sites involved for legal reasons.
"All sites selling online have to comply with distance selling, economics and consumer protection regulations," said the spokesperson. "Both the OFT and Trading Standards have powers to enforce those regulations."
The wider European crackdown, which is being co-ordinated by the European Commission, started in March. On Wednesday, the Commission released details of the operation so far. Out of 369 websites that have been checked, 55 percent had irregularities, the regulators said. The majority of the websites checked sold PC-related equipment.
"We discovered that more than half of the retailers selling online electronic goods are letting consumers down," EU consumer commissioner Meglena Kuneva said in a statement. "There is a lot of work to be done in the months ahead to clean up this sector, Europe's consumers deserve better."
National consumer watchdogs are now entering the second phase of the European operation, in which they determine whether to take further action against problem sites.
Talkback
I have complained about Amazon.co.uk adding shipping costs to customers bill's when a third party partner does not charge themselves for shipping the items. I asked for the money back from the third party, but they said Amazon take it for the deal. This is wrong as it is not shipping it is a scam. My example they charged me £12 for two sdhc cards. £6 per card, but in the same packet.
How do they get away with charges that dont even apply.
dog.walker@live.co.uk
Gathered for the official reports is conclusive then yes the fair trading organizations should go ahead and name & shame all the company's involved, I also notice how the UK government never fails to get its tax's from online small business from sites like ebay, and yet they turn a blind eye to greedy companies.
The other point raised that i do come across more often than not is correct contact details from various websites, and the bigger the company the less likely hood of the customer ever finding them.
All heads of relevant departments for online business should by law have contact details easily obtainable on the purchase websites, and if not then they shouldn't be allowed to trade simply as that.
I think these company's should be fined and all the money that they have maid from bogus shipping prices starting as far back as the date they started trading, should be handed back to all the people who purchased goods, after all everyone has to register to buy something in the first place.
If this is not possibly then all that money should be discounted across the whole range of goods currently for sale across the home website business that was found to be guilty, every last penny of it and if business chair men don't like it then they should be jailed for theft.