With the DMCCA now in place, the UK’s consumer law landscape has shifted to an enhanced statutory regime that includes harder-edged enforcement. At the forefront of the changes is a key focus on tackling subscription traps, fake reviews, and drip pricing.

I spoke to Nicola Chilvers, Senior Associate at Bird & Bird, to understand more.

The DMCCA introduces a comprehensive new statutory regime targeting "subscription traps".

These are (in essence) business-to-consumer contracts for goods, services or digital content (with certain exclusions, such as insurance and financial services contracts) that automatically renew or roll-over following the expiry of the initial subscription period (which is frequently offered as a free or discounted trial) into an ongoing paid subscription - without consumers fully realising or agreeing to this.

The four pillars of the new regime are:

1. Pre-contract information (section 256): Traders must provide "key pre-contract information" (including payment frequency, amounts, minimum liability, cancellation rights and renewal notice timing) separately and prominently at the point of sign-up (this should not be buried in terms or provided via a hyperlink).
2. Online acknowledgement (section 257): For online sign-ups, the final step must require the consumer to expressly acknowledge their payment obligation, failing which, the consumer may not be bound by the contract.
3. Reminder notices (sections 258–259): Notices must be sent before each renewal and before a trial converts to a paid subscription. These must contain certain prescribed information and give consumers a reasonable opportunity to cancel.
4. Straightforward cancellation (sections 260-261): Cancellation must be simple and free from unnecessary steps. For example, requiring consumers to phone to cancel a subscription that they signed up for online, or routing them through excessive retention steps, may be non-compliant. For online contracts, cancellation must be possible online, with instructions prominently displayed and written confirmation of cancellation sent within 24 hours.

Businesses will need to undertake a thorough audit of their existing subscription products, customer journeys and underlying systems.

Key areas of focus include:

• Journey redesign: Sign-up and cancellation flows will need to be restructured to ensure compliance.
• Automated reminder systems: Systems will need to trigger compliant renewal and cooling-off notices at the correct moments (including before trials convert and before annual renewals).
• Cooling-off rights: Consumers have a 14-day cooling-off right on entering the contract and again on each relevant renewal (including the first paid renewal after a trial). Proportionate refunds may need to be given and thus payment / refund systems need to be set up to facilitate this.

Yes, and the consequences of non-compliance can be significant.

Where there is a consumer law breach (whether relating to subscriptions or otherwise), the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA” - which is one of the UK’s main consumer regulators), now has direct enforcement powers to investigate, issue infringement notices and impose fines of up to £300,000 or 10% of global annual turnover (whichever is higher) without the need to spend time going through the courts.

Within the first year of having its new fining right, the CMA purportedly opened 14 investigations and imposed around £4.7 million in fines. These numbers are only expected to get higher.

Businesses should note that competitor non-compliance is not a good defence (i.e., defending your own non-compliant behaviour by saying that your competitors are doing the same thing will not garner any sympathy from the CMA), and that criminal liability (including up to 2 years' imprisonment) can apply for the most serious breaches.

Regarding subscription contracts specifically, the CMA has made it clear that businesses must be ready to be fully compliant with the new rules ahead of the 2027 commencement date. The message from the regulator to start preparing now is unambiguous.

The DMCCA prohibits the submitting or commissioning of fake consumer reviews (including incentivised reviews that conceal the incentive), publishing reviews or review information in a misleading way, and publishing consumer reviews without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent (or remove) the publication of fake or misleading reviews.

Companies are therefore exposed not only in respect of their own conduct but also for failing to have adequate moderation systems in place.

The standard is "reasonable and proportionate" steps applied contextually, meaning, a large review platform is likely to be held to a higher standard than a small independent retailer.

However, a business that publishes reviews without any filtering process at all is likely to be in breach.

The prohibition on commissioning fake reviews applies regardless to where those reviews appear.

That means that the submitting or commissioning of fake consumer reviews on a third party site like Trustpilot or Google Reviews is just as unlawful as doing so on your own site.

The duties in relation to publishing reviews, however, apply to businesses that either publish or facilitate publication of reviews themselves.

Drip pricing (presenting a low headline price and then adding mandatory charges later in the purchase journey) is prohibited under the DMCCA.

Under section 230, an invitation to purchase must include the total price incorporating all mandatory fixed fees, or (where a fee genuinely cannot be calculated in advance) an explanation of how it will be calculated.

Tiered or optional add-on pricing, on the other hand, is not prohibited. If a consumer can genuinely choose whether or not to incur an additional charge (for example, an optional premium upgrade or ancillary service) that charge does not necessarily need to be included in the headline price.

I believe that the most likely response in sectors where drip pricing has been prevalent is higher headline prices, where all mandatory fees are folded into the headline price.

Although this may sound like a detriment to consumers, this is actually the intended effect of the changing laws so that consumers have full visibility of the full price that applies to them (without any surprises later in the checkout).

This also allows consumers to make genuine like-for-like comparisons to ultimately make more informed purchasing decisions overall.

Enforcement is already underway.

In the first year of the CMA having its new fining powers, it fined the AA's driving school brands £4.2 million and ordered them to issue over £760,000 in financial redress / compensation to over 80,000 affected consumers after it was revealed that a mandatory £3 booking fee was not included in the total upfront price for consumers booking lessons online.

Further, in November 2025, the CMA opened investigations into 8 businesses across multiple sectors and sent advisory letters to 100 businesses spanning 14 sectors.

The CMA has said that it will continue to focus on hidden and unlawful partitioned pricing, with significant fines expected for continuing breaches.

The drip pricing, fake reviews and CMA enforcement provisions of the DMCCA are all in force and the CMA has been actively enforcing them.

Whilst the subscription contracts regime has been subject to delays, the Government has recently confirmed that secondary legislation (and associated guidance) is expected to bring the regime into force in January 2027.

Whilst this does give businesses additional preparation time in respect of the subscription contracts regime, the potential scale of operational change required (e.g. redesigning customer journeys, rebuilding reminder systems, updating contract terms, etc.) means that businesses should take action in good time before the January commencement date.

The DMCCA makes one thing clear: consumer law compliance must be designed into a business’ operations, systems and interactions with consumers, not patched on as an afterthought.

With the CMA’s stronger enforcement powers already in play and subscription reforms on the horizon, organisations should act early. That means stress-testing pricing and fee disclosures, tightening review governance, and rebuilding subscription journeys from start to finish.

Businesses that treat compliance as a trust and customer-experience upgrade, rather than just a legal hurdle, will be well-placed to avoid regulatory scrutiny whilst also building lasting customer confidence.