We were commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade to assess the prevalence of drip pricing among online sellers in the UK and to estimate the harm that the practice may cause consumers.

We manually collected and analysed data from 525 online providers in four sectors. One good or service was purchased from each provider, and we collected detailed information about the checkout process and any charges involved. Furthermore, we calculated the number of providers that utilise the most harmful types of fees and estimated the additional cost to consumers through an economic model, to understand how UK consumers are impacted by the practice.

We found that drip pricing is common across online providers, although the specific characteristics of the dripped fees vary across sectors. It is also common for providers to utilise dripped fees that meet at least one criterion of harm. Our economic model showed that the practice causes UK consumers to spend an additional £595 million to £3.5 billion online each year. These findings demonstrate that greater scrutiny of drip pricing is needed in the UK to protect consumers.

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