It’s a story that warms the heart and lifts the soul: last week, Virgin Media was fined a record £28m by Ofcom for repeatedly preventing customers from cancelling their contracts. Its methods were insidious: deliberate call-dropping, unnecessary call transfers and constantly putting customers on hold. For anyone who has experienced the mental anguish of attempting to cancel a contract or subscription, only to be met with “cancellation friction”, their comeuppance conjures a feeling of economic justice.
“Rip-off Britain” has long been a popular narrative about our country, and feels ever more prescient in a time of stagnant living standards and cost of living pressures. Whether it’s extortionate energy and water bills, food prices, subscription traps, consumer scams, defective goods, unfair fines or hidden charges, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that you are being constantly shaken down. It’s an issue that unites us in frustration: little wonder that the money-saving expert Martin Lewis is the most trusted man in Britain. Reassuring people you’ll help protect their hard-earned money is one of the most surefire ways to make them feel you are on their side.
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The good news is that across successive governments, Britain’s consumer rights landscape has strengthened. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act of 2024 introduced significant reforms to ban subscription traps, fake reviews and “drip pricing” – a sales tactic in which a company advertises a lower headline price, only to add on mandatory fees later in the checkout process. Significantly, the act gave the Competition and Markets Authority the ability to directly fine companies. As Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which?, tells me: “It’s been positive to see those [powers] used against firms like StubHub UK.” Last month the ticketing website was ordered to refund more than 50,000 customers and pay a £900,000 fine for drip pricing.
Since then, the Labour government has announced new laws to make it easier for customers to cancel subscriptions and get refunds for unwanted auto-renewals, with the changes to come into effect in spring 2027. This is significant considering that in the UK, of 155m active subscriptions, about 10m of them are believed to be unwanted.
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The risk, though, is that consumer enforcement rights in Britain remain more headline than lived experience, particularly as outcomes against companies are relatively uneven. Take Virgin Media: unlike StubHub UK, they won’t be forced to pay automatic compensation to affected customers. The fine goes directly to HM Treasury. Those who feel they experienced friction when attempting to cancel with Virgin are instead encouraged to compile evidence and submit a complaint. That sounds exactly like the kind of friction that Virgin was fined for – and somewhat ironic considering how successful such tactics are in fostering inertia among consumers, as they feel powerless to claw their money back.
That sense of powerlessness is further shaped by the fact that existing consumer rights law focuses on public enforcement and empowering regulators to take action against companies, rather than on compensating individuals. Investigations of large-scale systemic breaches on issues such as drip pricing and subscription traps are certainly welcome, but where they do not result in automatic compensation of consumers, the real felt impact on those who have already experienced being ripped off is limited.
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Championing consumer protection also often feels like a story that is only told from Whitehall, or large statutory bodies. Right now, consumer rights are won nationally, even though it is an issue that is also experienced locally. That is where our incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, and his place-based devolution agenda could make a real difference.
The hollowing out of local authority trading standards teams has left parts of the high street resembling a consumer rights wild west. National regulators pursue headline cases against big corporations, but day-to-day enforcement is left to local officers who have been stripped of the capacity they need. The result has been a boon for rogue traders, whose substandard products and services cost consumers £71.2bn in 2024, up from £22.9bn in 2015. As reported in LocalGov, “19 local authorities failed to carry out standard inspections of businesses”, while dozens more had “deprioritised vital enforcement measures that exist to protect both consumers and businesses”. What good are headlines of national enforcement and corporations being fined if you can still be ripped off down the high street and can’t do anything about it?
But Burnham’s devolution agenda could bridge national policy with the everyday consumer experience. Giving metro mayors and local authorities greater responsibility for consumer enforcement, backed by robust funding, would mean that they could police local markets and intervene before poor practice becomes widespread.
There is also the issue of effective political comms, at which Keir Starmer was notoriously poor. Consumer rights is hardly a glamorous subject, but look to New York, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s landmark “click-to-cancel” rules don’t look so different from Labour’s own plans to crack down on unwanted subscriptions. And yet Mamdani has packaged them in a way that is snappy and enticing: “If it’s easy to sign up with one click, it should be just as easy to cancel with one click.” It helps, of course, that Mamdani wears his action with personality – he’s said that he has subscriptions he “didn’t even know” were still active. But there’s a clear lesson for Burnham: good consumer policy is incomplete without a strong message.
Local enforcement that actually exists, compensation that arrives automatically, boisterous and uncompromised political championing of consumer rights: these are achievable interventions, if governments have the will. Otherwise, another record fine against a big firm becomes nothing more than another headline, with any sense of justice muted.
