Wayfair, Appliances Direct and Gold's Gym have been fined a combined £6 million by the competition watchdog for misleading sales tactics that ripped off customers with fake sales and hidden fees.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fined Wayfair £4.8 million, while Appliances Direct was fined £1.2 million and ordered to refund customers around £432,000. Gold's Gym was fined £45,000 and ordered to refund customers around £9,000.
Wayfair and Appliances Direct were fined for misleading customers with time-limited offers that did not end when they said they would. The CMA's investigation found Wayfair advertised products through its "Daily Deals" and 24-hour "Flash Deals" section of its website, accompanied by messages such as "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow" and countdown timers implying customers needed to act quickly to get the best deal.
But the CMA found that many of the products were still available at the same price or lower after the deadline - so the offer was false. By stating these were one-day offers, customers could have felt under pressure to make a quick purchase so as not to miss out.
Appliances Direct also used pop-up countdown banners on some product pages which claimed that discounts of £10 to £25 were available for a limited time. But the CMA found the same discount codes appeared over several days, meaning customers could have been unfairly pressured into buying an appliance.
Appliances Direct was also fined for automatically opting customers into paid-for optional extras. These included the "Remove & Recycle Your Old Appliance" service, which took away a customer's old appliance at the time of delivery to recycle it, and the "Installation on Delivery" service, which installed the new appliance at the time of delivery. Customers were charged for services they had not actively chosen.
The fines are among the most significant the CMA has imposed for online sales practices, and they send a clear signal to retailers that manufactured urgency - countdown timers, "flash" sales and disappearing discounts - will be treated as misleading if the deals do not genuinely expire.
Consumer advocates have long complained that such tactics exploit well-documented psychological biases: the fear of missing out drives purchases that shoppers would not otherwise make. The CMA's action suggests the regulator is increasingly willing to follow the evidence from companies' own websites and penalise the gap between what shoppers are told and what is actually on offer.
Customers who believe they were affected may be entitled to compensation depending on the products they purchased. The CMA said its investigation formed part of a broader crackdown on misleading online selling practices.