Office of Fair Trading v Purely Creative Ltd and Others: ChD 2 Feb 2011

The OFT sought an order to restrain the defendants from continuing what it said were unfair commercial practices in the arrangements it made for prize draws.
Held: Each of the promotions relied upon by the Office contravened the Regulations. The order was granted requiring the respondent not to: ‘create the false impression that the consumer has already won, will win, or will on a particular act win a prize or other equivalent benefit, when in fact taking any action recommended by the defendant in relation to claiming the prize or other equivalent benefit is subject to the consumer paying money or incurring a cost which is either
(a) a substantial proportion of the unit cost to the defendant of the provision to the consumer of the thing described as a prize or other equivalent benefit; or
(b) in the case of a charge stated to be for delivery and insurance, used by the defendant to finance in whole or in part its acquisition, handling or other cost of the making available of that thing other than the actual cost of its delivery to the consumer and insurance (if any) in transit.’
Briggs considered a request to look at the ways in which different countries within the EU had implemented the Regulations, saying: ‘In my judgment recourse to differences of implementation of a directive intended to have uniform effect throughout the EU is likely to prove a time-consuming and ultimately fruitless exercise, as will become apparent from [counsel]’s attempt to pray in aid the different language of the Irish regulations implementing paragraph 31 of Annex 1 to the UCPD.’

Judges:

Briggs J

Citations:

[2011] EWHC 106 (Ch), [2011] WLR (D) 34, [2011] ECC 20

Links:

Bailii

Statutes:

Enterprise Act 2002 215, Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 3, Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Cited by:

Appeal fromPurely Creative Ltd and Others v The Office of Fair Trading CA 29-Jul-2011
The appellants sought to challenge undertakings they had been required to as to the mode of conduct of prize draw competitions. The Regulations forbad misrepresentations that the addressee may already have won a prize. In particular they challenged . .
At first instancePurely Creative And Others v Office of Fair Trading ECJ 18-Oct-2012
ECJ Directive 2005/29/EC – Unfair commercial practices – Practice of informing the consumer that he has won a prize and obliging him, in order to receive that prize, to incur a cost of whatever kind . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Consumer, European

Updated: 02 June 2022; Ref: scu.428677