Where can one report a business who illegally charge surcharge for customers paying by card?

Question

In the last few years it became illegal in the U.K. for businesses to charge £0.5 or what have you to customers who choose to pay by card. What was the name of the law that enacted this, what is the penalty for such a business and what enforcement mechanisms exist for the rule ?

Answer 1

The original (secondary) legislation is The Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, which prohibited excessive fees.

This was then amended by paragraph 12 of Schedule 8 to the Payment Services Regulations 2017, with effect from 13 January 2018, to remove all such fees.

The official government guidance contains more details. In particular, pages 10 & 11 mention that enforcement is shared between a number of bodies, including:

local authority Trading Standards (or the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland)

and

the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), local trading standards (or DETI in Northern Ireland) and certain sectoral regulators

with courts having the power to enforce the regulations.

The only penalty is that any fee paid by a customer must be refunded. Beyond that:

the court can grant an enforcement order. This will require that the trader does not continue or repeat the conduct. These orders are injunctive in nature and prohibit future breaches of the provision rather than penalising previous breaches.