UK Office of Fair Trading to launch wide-reaching inquiry into online shopping

[mandy]

The Office of Fair Trading is to launch a wide-reaching inquiry into online shopping to test levels of consumer protection and confidence in the rapidly growing web marketplace, worth about £18bn in Britain, or 2.5% of household spending.

The study, to be published in the spring of 2007, will focus on four of the most popular areas of online retailing: auction websites, airline ticket sales, electrical goods and web music stores, including download sites.

The OFT pointed to a recent consumer survey which found 29% of shoppers said they were deterred from buying, or never bought, goods and services online because of security concerns. Another survey suggested a third of online consumers had fears about the state in which their purchased goods might arrive, if at all...

full article: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1763220,00.html