Office of Fair Trading Sweep Analysis

Wednesday 3rd December 2008

As part of its follow up to their Internet shopping report published in 2007, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published the findings of a web sweep survey of the UK’s top retail websites. This report is the final part of a series of follow up actions, and was carried out in December 2007 by officers in 90 Trading Standards Services across the UK. It looks at the compliance with regulations of the top retail websites selling to UK customers.

Results suggest that most online retailers are complying with key consumer protection requirements, but the report also identified some areas where there was room for improvement:

• 14% of sites did not provide a physical address, or only a PO Box number.
• 15% did not comply with the requirement to give shoppers information on their right to cancel within seven working days.
• 31% appeared not to comply with the requirement to refund the full cost of the goods.
• 40% of sites did not indicate that compulsory additional charges would be added (such as postage) when the price was first shown.

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