EE and Virgin Media, rent-to-own sector, Majestic Wine, Black Friday: your commercial news round-up

We’ve put everything that we know, and that you need to know, about commercial awareness into our brand new commercial awareness section on LCN. Use it as a starting point to work out what this valuable skill really means and how you can develop it. But before you do that, find out which commercial stories have been shaping the legal world this week:

• EE and Virgin Media have been fined £13.3 million for overcharging customers who terminated their broadband and phone contracts early. Regulator Ofcom said that around 400,000 EE customers were over-billed when ending their contracts early, totalling fees of over £4.3 million claimed by the mobile phone provider. Some 82,000 Virgin Media customers were overcharged by nearly £2.8 million. Ofcom said that the behaviour of both companies made their customers less likely to switch provider, which is against its rules.
• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced plans to cap the costs of buying domestic goods through rent-to-own shops. From April 2019 customers who use rent-to-own schemes will pay no more in interest than the cost of the product itself, signalling an end of interest rates that can reach up to 99% a year. Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the FCA said: "A cap will prevent firms charging over the odds for essential everyday items like cookers or washing machines. We believe a cap is the only intervention that will effectively tackle the highest prices."
• Majestic Wine will stockpile more than one million bottles of French, Spanish and Italian wine in case of a no-deal Brexit, the wine retailer said today. And if you want to keep up with the latest Brexit updates, Theresa May is currently addressing Commons about her Brexit agreement.
• The government’s incoming energy price cap will cost British Gas £70 million in the first quarter of next year as the energy provider prepares to move customers from higher tariffs. The price cap, coming into force on 1 January 2019, has caused shares in British Gas owner Centrica to drop almost 8% this morning because of this news.
• We couldn’t finish this week’s commercial news round-up without mentioning Black Friday – the one day a year where retailers drastically drop their prices before Christmas. It’s big business, with price comparison site GoCompare claiming that UK households are set to spend a massive £4.5 billion in the upcoming sales. However, Black Friday is rather underwhelming in the UK compared to the US, where prices are knocked by hundreds of dollars. The deals this side of the pond may be slightly tamer, but you can still get some good discounts – see the best deals here.

Be sure to check the News every Thursday for this weekly commercial news round-up. Follow @LawCareersNetUK on Twitter and like us on Facebook for instant business news updates.