The Honeymoon is Over: Consumer Protection Law After DMCCA's First Year

27th January 2026

When I wrote about the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (“DMCCA”) last April, the legislation was fresh on the statute books and both the business world and the regulator was still getting to grips with what it might mean in practice. The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) made clear its intentions for the first twelve months: guidance and support, not enforcement. Focus on the most egregious practices. Time for businesses to adapt. A sigh of relief for businesses.

That grace period is coming to an end. The warning signs were evident even before April 2025. The CMA's high-profile actions against mattress retailers Emma Sleep (facing court proceedings in a pre-DMCCA case), Simba Sleep (giving formal undertakings) and the ASA's ruling against Origin Sleep demonstrated the direction of travel.

In November 2025, the CMA launched its first eight investigations using its new direct enforcement powers under DMCCA, targeting businesses for drip pricing, misleading time-limited offers and automatic opt-ins for optional charges. Advisory letters went out to a hundred more businesses across sectors including homeware retailers. The message is unambiguous: the soft landing is over, and enforcement has begun.

Nearly a year on from DMCCA’s consumer provisions taking effect, it's worth examining how these reforms are playing out in the daily reality of running a furniture business in Britain's digital marketplace. The changes run deeper than many anticipated, but they're also creating advantages for businesses that have stayed ahead of them.

From Theory to Reality

The CMA's new guidance has crystallised over these months - on unfair commercial practices and fake reviews in April 2025 and on price transparency consulted on in summer and finalised in November 2025.

Each piece adds definition to what was initially a framework requiring interpretation. The furniture sector, with its inherent dependence on delivery charges, optional assembly services, and increasingly, online reviews, sits squarely in the CMA's sightline.

What we're seeing is how legal principle translates into commercial practice across individual websites, marketplaces, Instagram shops, and TikTok feeds simultaneously. Three areas touch almost every furniture retailer: product descriptions across platforms, pricing transparency, and responsibility allocation when things go wrong.

The Consistency Imperative

Here's a scenario that will feel familiar: your oak dining table is perfectly described on your website, abbreviated for Instagram's character limits, and somehow morphed into slightly different wording by a marketplace's auto-population tool. Legally speaking, you've just created three potentially different products.

The regulatory expectation has crystallised: if you're selling the same product across multiple channels, descriptions must be consistent and accurate everywhere. Not approximately the same. Actually consistent. The CMA's guidance makes clear that platforms aren't an excuse for imprecision, and its recent investigations into major retailers demonstrate this isn't theoretical.

This sounds straightforward until you actually implement it. Different platforms have different technical constraints, different audiences expect different tones, and you've probably got different people managing different channels. The businesses handling this well have invested in centralised product information systems and accepted that if a platform can't accommodate accurate descriptions, you don't sell there.

The harder truth? The most conservative claim you make anywhere becomes the standard everywhere. Describe that wardrobe as "solid wood" on Instagram and "wood veneer" on your website, and you'd better hope it's solid wood.

Pricing: The CMA's Primary Target

The CMA's November 2025 investigations focused heavily on pricing practices, and for good reason. But the enforcement story began earlier.

The mattress sector provided the testing ground: Emma Sleep now faces court proceedings scheduled for June 2026 over reference pricing and urgency tactics the CMA argues were misleading.

Simba Sleep, by contrast, did not push back Emma Sleep style and cooperated by giving formal undertakings in July 2024 after a CMA investigation, committing to ensure "was/now" prices reflected genuine prior selling periods.

The ASA upheld complaints against Origin Sleep for Halloween promotions featuring countdown timers and crossed-out prices that lacked proper context.

These cases prompted the CMA's August 2024 guidance on discount and reference pricing for selling mattresses online. Though sector-specific in title, it's viewed as a blueprint for all retail, including furniture.

The principles apply directly to furniture: reference pricing must be genuine, urgency claims backed by hard sales data, pricing history meaningful in both time and volume, promotional tactics non-misleading, and businesses must retain supporting evidence.

The guidance introduced what's become known as the "1 to 2 ratio principle": for a "was" price to be genuine, you should have sold at least a third of items at that higher price relative to the number sold at the discounted price. The duration at the "was" price cannot be shorter than the promotional period. For example, if you sell 120 identical coffee tables over two months, at least 40 should have been sold at full price for at least one month before the promotion began.

Reference pricing, namely the "was £999, now £699" formula, has always been fraught. The digital environment has made it more complex but also served as a catalyst for forcing clarity.

The rule is straightforward: that higher price must have been genuine, offered for a meaningful period, and the comparison must not mislead. The CMA's mattress guidance suggests twenty-eight days as a baseline, though context matters. What's critical is that real customers could actually have bought at that price. A price that existed only during a quiet Tuesday afternoon while your website was being updated doesn't count.

The Origin Sleep case illustrated this: even where discounted prices were genuine, the ASA found that omitting context about how briefly the higher price was charged still misled consumers.

Platform-specific pricing adds another layer. You can run a marketplace promotion while maintaining higher prices on your website, but you must be precise about comparisons. "Our lowest price ever" claims reach across all channels. "Marketplace exclusive offer" is platform-specific. The words matter enormously, and the CMA's price transparency guidance published in autumn 2025 provides detailed direction.

Drip pricing? Not on our watch (or your wallet)

Drip pricing, i.e. holding back the total price payable until checkout, has become a particular enforcement focus.

DMCCA now prohibits it outright as an unfair practice. For furniture, this typically means delivery and assembly charges appearing late in the journey. The CMA's position is clear: if most customers will pay it, show it upfront. Include all mandatory charges in the headline price or display them prominently at the first opportunity.

Some delivery costs are genuinely variable and can only be calculated once the customer provides their postcode. That's understood. But if 90% of your customers require delivery and the charge is predictable, that cost belongs in or alongside the advertised price. The businesses investigated in summer-autumn 2025 learned this the hard way.

Limited Time… Unlimited Scrutiny

Countdown timers and "limited time" claims also warrant caution. The Emma Sleep case centres partly on whether such urgency tactics reflected genuine constraints or manufactured pressure.

The Origin Sleep ruling found that promotional urgency was misleading when the same offer reappeared shortly after under a different name. If you're using countdown timers for seasonal (Valentine’s, Easter’s) promotions, ensure the deadline is real and the offer genuinely expires when stated.

Platform Responsibility: Still Finding Its Feet

Many retailers wonder: when you sell through a marketplace, who owes what to the customer? This is where the law continues to evolve, and furniture businesses need alertness.

Legally, if you're the seller, you're responsible for product quality, safety and contract compliance. The marketplace provides infrastructure but doesn't typically assume product liability. Consumers often see it differently. They bought from Amazon or eBay, and they'll go back there when something's wrong.

Platforms increasingly require sellers to maintain service standards and may intervene in disputes, but this doesn't transfer your legal responsibilities. What's emerging is a practical expectation: you need clear processes for handling consumer issues regardless of originating platform and contractual clarity with platforms about who does what.

For suppliers selling both direct and through retailers across various platforms, complexity multiplies. The legal responsibility chain doesn't change, but the practical customer service challenge does. The successful businesses have accepted that multi-channel selling means multi-channel support, and they've resourced accordingly.

Social Commerce and Influencer Partnerships

Perhaps the biggest shift over these months has been social commerce maturation. Instagram, Etsy and TikTok aren't just marketing channels anymore; they're point-of-sale platforms. This convergence of inspiration and transaction is brilliant for conversion and complicated for compliance.

The CMA's fake reviews guidance, published in April 2025 alongside updated unfair commercial practices guidance, has implications beyond traditional review platforms. Influencer partnerships require clear disclosure, placed where consumers will easily see it before engaging. A hashtag buried among dozens won't suffice.

When you repost customer content showing your furniture, you're adopting any claims in that content. An enthusiastic customer describing your sofa as "100% leather", when it's actually a combination of leather and fabric, creates your liability once you've amplified their voice. The CMA's guidance on reviews for businesses makes this explicit.

The businesses getting this right treat social content with the same compliance rigor as traditional advertising. That means review processes, clear partner guidelines, and someone senior enough to say no to commercially attractive but legally risky content.

What November's Enforcements Means for You

The CMA's first eight investigations under its new powers tell a clear story about enforcement priorities. The businesses under investigation span an array of different sectors, from secondary ticketing to driving schools but - critically for this sector - three homeware retailers.

Wayfair, Appliances Direct and Marks Electrical are being investigated to determine whether time-limited sales ended when advertised, and whether customers are being automatically opted in to purchasing additional services. These are significant businesses with sophisticated operations. The message is clear: neither size nor sector sophistication provides insulation from scrutiny.

The CMA can now directly impose fines up to 10% of global turnover or £300,000, whichever is greater, without going to court. While it indicated fines might be lower initially given most infringing conduct would necessarily be post-April, the deterrent effect is already evident.

For furniture businesses, the practical imperatives are clear: invest in systems ensuring consistency across channels, establish governance over pricing everywhere, map your customer journey to identify where legal obligations arise, and ensure contracts with platforms and partners clearly allocate responsibility.

The businesses struggling are those treating each channel as a separate domain with separate rules. The businesses thriving recognize that consumer protection law doesn't respect channel distinctions. On the contrary - a customer is a customer, a claim is a claim, a price is a price, regardless of where the interaction happens.

Looking Forward

The CMA has published its complaints guidance, actively encouraging businesses to report competitors gaining unfair advantage through non-compliance. This creates both risk and opportunity. Risk, if your practices aren't compliant. Opportunity, if you've invested in getting it right while others haven't.

The regulatory environment will only intensify. But here's the advantage: businesses building trust through transparent, consistent, fair practices across every channel aren't just complying with law. They're building competitive advantage in an environment where consumer trust is increasingly hard-won and easily lost.

DMCCA was always going to change how furniture businesses operate online. Nearly a year in, the honeymoon is almost over.

The question now isn't whether your business needs to adapt, but whether you've already done so - or whether you're waiting for an investigation to prompt the change.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice.  For tailored advice on consumer law-compliant sales and promotional practices, contact Natalia Samodina at natalia@interiordesignlawyer.co.uk.