What we do with information you provide

We are grateful to everyone who takes the time to contact us about areas where there may be a breach of legislation.

We are not an ombudsman. We cannot act on individual consumer complaints. We cannot get involved in individual consumer or business issues. We will give you information about your rights to help you resolve the issue yourself.

We record all the information we receive on our database. We do this in line with data protection legislation and best practice. We analyse our database on an ongoing basis to identify where markets are not working well. This analysis helps us to prioritise our work in the areas where it can have the greatest impact.

We may investigate an issue if:

• we feel there is a potential breach of the law, and
• we are satisfied that it meets our prioritisation criteria

Due to the volume of contacts we receive, it is not possible for us to respond to individuals about any possible investigation we may take.

If we carry out an investigation and believe that a business is in breach of legislation, we have a number of enforcement tools we can use. These include:

• administrative enforcement
• civil proceedings – prohibition orders
• compliance notices
• criminal proceedings
• fixed payment notices
• publishing trader names

If enforcement action is not appropriate, we can use our advocacy role to try to bring about changes to make markets work better.

Examples of possible breaches of legislation which we review:

• Anti–competitive behaviour including:
  • price fixing
  • market sharing
  • bid-rigging/collusive tendering
  • abusing a dominant position
  • limiting production
• Clocked and/or crashed cars
• Consumer Rights Act
• Misleading advertising
• Package holidays
• Pricing
• Product safety
• Pyramid schemes

To report anti-competitive behaviour or practices you can make a complaint to us.