The UK's e-tail industry body has already made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), arguing that this manufacturer is depriving internet shoppers from getting competitive prices for its products.
If it has not restored fair trading terms to all IMRG Members by the end of National Consumer Week (which runs from 31st October to 4th November), it will be named and its illicit and anti-competitive trading practices will be exposed.
The IMRG accuses the scheme, known as Dual Pricing, of deliberately making dealers who sell online uncompetitive. It says it is killing their trade, thereby stifling competition and introducing the probability of price inflation.
The scheme appears to "reward" bricks-and-mortar retailers for having physical shops, according to the group, which has also raised the issue with a senior European Commission representative. "This scheme is either illegal or should be," said the unidentified figure.
The argument for Dual Pricing is that it costs more to run a physical shop than it does to run a virtual shop. The IMRG says this is neither true nor relevant: The costs of running a virtual shop properly – with rich information, high stock holding levels, convenient delivery options and first-rate customer service – are as high if not higher than those of a conventional retail outlet, it argues.
In a statement issued today, the IMRG argues that there is therefore no compelling market or national economic reason to prop up the bricks-and-mortar distribution channel if it is becoming uncompetitive – "particularly through an anomalous manufacturer-imposed subsidy."
The IMRG's CEO, James Roper, said: "This serious abuse by a global brand of both its position and consumers' rights must be stopped immediately."
He argues that 24 million British consumers have embraced internet shopping and are collectively investing £6 billion a year in PCs and internet connections that give them their own, personal shopping environments – a High Street at home.
"These consumers are directly bearing many of the costs previously carried by bricks-and-mortar shops," said Roper, "which is a major reason for internet shopping prices being highly competitive, so it is completely inappropriate to disadvantage them through Dual Pricing."
The IMRG has asked the OFT to "stamp down" on the scheme before it is copied by other manufacturers and adopted by other sectors.
The RNIB's Digital Policy Development Manager, Julie Howell, pointed out that for many disabled people, popping to the shops just isn't an option. "The advent of the web has made the simple act of shopping, that so many of us take for granted, possible for increasing numbers of disabled people," she said, expressing alarm at the news that disabled people might be forced to pay more for goods purchased online.
Roper points out that thing had been getting better. "Britain's high street used to be woefully uncompetitive and anticompetitive," he said. "A few years ago, government intervention ended the ultimate mechanism for stifling competition – Recommended Retail Prices – but the other main problem remained: there was not enough competition."
The internet changed all that, he says. But the IMRG says it will not tolerate rogue trading countermeasures that threaten the e-tail industry. It vowed to take all necessary steps to ensure they are stamped out whenever they are discovered.
The deadline for the Dual Pricing manufacturer expires at noon on 7th November.
