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The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has fined supermarket giants Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s each around £10 million have found them guilty of infringing the Competition Act 1998.

The allegations relate to the pricing of milk and cheese, with the accused parties found guilty of sharing pricing intentions through dairy processors, which resulted in price hikes in 2002 and 2003.

In total nine firms are facing penalties with Arla, Dairy Crest, McLelland, Safeway, The Cheese Company and Wisemans sharing the blame with the supermarket giants. The total fines reach nearly £50 million.

The scandal is thought to have cost consumers around £270 million as the companies forced a rise of 2 pence extra for a litre of milk and 2p extra on 100g of cheese.

Despite their involvement, food manufacturer Arla has avoided any kind of fine as it turned whistleblower, alerting the OFT to possible infringements. The fines were originally set to total £116 million but most companies were shown leniency after admitting to involvement.

Tesco, the UK’s biggest grocer, continues to deny any knowledge of the practice and will take the OFT to court if necessary.

This OFT investigation has lasted a over a number of years and featured a number of high profile mistakes. The regulator was forced to drop a large portion of the case involving butter price fixing, and they were also fined £100,000 for libel against Wm Morrison.

The price fixing investigation follows a long campaign by dairy farmers between 2001 and 2003 who demanded a higher the return on milk. Should Tesco win their appeal it could prove humiliating for the Office of Fair Trading following this lengthy process.

Do you think we pay too much at the supermarkets? Are Tesco right to appeal? Tell us in the comments section below.

When I think of loan sharks it conjures up imagine of night-club bouncer type men who would sooner break your legs than show come compassion. So if I was a little short of cash this Christmas, I wouldn’t be running to find my local loan shark and offering up my knee caps as collateral.

Apparently there could be more than a quarter of a million people are risk from loan sharks, and the recession and bad financial situations are only making it worse.

Now the main thing to remember is that loan sharks are in fact illegal. They hand out money without a license, and therefore decide to claim back ridiculous interest in order to make their money back. Also if you don’t have enough money to pay for Christmas, what makes you think that you’ll ever be able to get enough money to pay back the interest?

People have given reports of loan sharks threatening them and breaking into their houses because they want their money back. However, it has been said that loan sharks pile on so much interest because they want to make sure that you can never settle your debt, and then you’ll be making weekly payments to them forever. Sweet deal for them, but not so good for you.

So basically, the suggestion is that if you don’t have enough money to stretch over Christmas then you may just have to deal with it, because while a lot of presents and food etc would be nice, it is important that people stay safe and make sure they don’t put themselves in a bad situation.

Bank charges could be set for another court battle after a ruling by a Glasgow Judge cleared the way for a proof hearing into determining whether bank charges are fair.

The Supreme Court verdict last November ruled the Office of Fair Trading could not assess bank charges under section 6 of the 1999 Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts regulations, but suggested the banks might still have a case to answer under section 5 of the same act.

On Friday at Glasgow Sheriff Court, Sheriff Baird ruled against the Bank of Scotland in its attempts to prevent a customer amending her bank charges claim and fixed a full evidential hearing for the case.

Aided by solicitors from Govan Law Centre, the claimant succeeded in persuading the judge to allow a new challenge against the bank under regulation 5 of the UTCCR. What’s more, a request was also made asking the court to prohibit the bank from imposing future charges against the claimant under S140 of the Consumer Credit Act.

The proof hearing may result in the bank being forced to show that its charges were not excessive under the consumer credit act in a development which places the onus on the banks to prove charges are fair.

“Over the last few weeks, UK banks have been telling one million customers that there were now no grounds to reclaim bank charges, standing November’s Supreme Court’s decision. Of course, the Supreme Court itself had explained that charges could still be challenged under different legal grounds, and that is what Sheriff Baird has permitted our client to do today at Glasgow Sheriff Court,” said Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre, representing the successful pursuer.

“Bank of Scotland now faces a fresh challenge that charges were excessive and unfair under the Consumer Credit Act. That is a potentially devastating case for them to answer, because under this new law the onus of proof is on the bank to show that charges were fair. Given that our banks have admitted they subsidise ‘free-if-in-credit banking’ by squeezing more money out their poorest customers through bank charges, they will now have to defend the indefensible. And, they will have the added problem that we are asking the court to prohibit them from imposing future charges under the CCA”.

“In a nutshell, our new arguments are hugely more powerful than the ones deployed by the OFT in their unsuccessful test case. Evidentially, the new arguments require the bank to prove their charges were fair – which is tactically significant for consumers. The new arguments not only enable consumers to seek a refund of past charges, but entitle them to ask the court to prohibit future bank charges. That is hugely significant, and in many respects, we believe the new bank charges campaign is going to be a tougher propsect for the banks than the pre-July 2007 campaign. And of course that previous campaign saw refunds in excess of £1bn for consumers across the UK – so we are incredibly optimistic”.

It’s been a long time coming and will lead to major changes for those seemingly ‘white knights’ of the finance world – the price comparison sites.

In the finance world, there is a little known black art used by these sites which mean a lot of price comparison websites will rank certain financial providers sites at the top of their lists of recommended best buys based on the commission they’ll get from these providers, even when they are not the cheapest.

This gives a false impression to the user that the provider is either cheaper than everybody else or, for some esoteric reason known only to those with the combined secret finance knowledge of the Gnomes Of Zurich and the Bilderberg Group, that it a better product. This means you could potentially actually end up with a worse deal for taking the best buy advice than you could have got by choosing a different product or going direct to another provider.