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back to article OFT to hammer online pricing, behavioural tracking

The Office of Fair Trading is to give internet advertising and pricing a thorough going-over between now and next summer. The fair trade quango has launched two studies which could force online retailers and advertisers to change their business models - or not, depending on the outcome. The first study will look into "online …

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  1. john loader

    How about "In Stock" or "despatched" - the John Lewis way

    Gets you to buy rather than find another supplier but Johnlewis.com have a new meaning - not on John Lewis premises. Indeed in my case not even on the supplier's premises or even capable of being manufactured as discontinued. Then there's "desptached". JL think that this means that is between 2 warehouses and not on its way to the customer but nobody really knows where it is so meaningless. It seems they have 2 ways of selling you a high price item (over £1,000 in my case) - if they have it in a nearby shiop you can have it in a couple of days, if not then somebody in Germany may or may not be making it and you can have it in a couple of weeks possibly. An interesting internet shopping experience!

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  2. David Evans

    About time

    That'll be RyanAir fucked then.

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  3. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Are you serious?

    "Complex prices (three for two, etc)"

    I am really hoping you were being sarcastic with the bit in parethesis - but are the OFT seriously suggesting that the UK public is so think so as to not be able to work out what "3 for 2" means?

    Or is that up there with other "complex prices" - such as "2 for 1"?

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  4. Da Weezil

    Selective probes.

    Shame the OFT wont start at the grass roots and sort our limited "unlimited" internet, or those headline bargain prices that a few months later revert to a higher price advertised in much smaller print.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    More money wasting by a bunch of clueless idiots

    "This will examine "behavioural advertising and customised pricing", where vendors use info culled from the customers' web habits to set pricing."

    Does that mean I no longer get a good deal on my MOT work at the local garage for being a loyal customer for 20 years? Or I get a 20% off a tin of beans if I bring in a coupon cut out of a magazine. Or doris who cuts my hair gives me a good deal on replacement double glazing because her lad can get them wholesale?

    This is bonkers - all the interweb is doing is copying social conventions that have been around for thousands of years.

    Or are you saying they up the price? That'd be commercial suicide as soon as someONE figures it out and tweets it.

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