Source: the Competition and Markets Authority press release Trainline, Virgin Atlantic and RED Driving School investigated for drip pricing, published 19 August 2026, and the CMA's three open case pages for Trainline, Virgin Atlantic and RED Driving School. All three investigations were opened on 18 August 2026 and the CMA has made no finding of wrongdoing.
Here is the thing most of the coverage got wrong this week. It framed drip pricing as a story about small fees, and then treated the smallness as the reassuring part. It is the opposite. A fee that is small enough to shrug at, arriving at the moment you have already chosen, already entered your card details and already mentally spent the money, is not a minor annoyance that happens to be cheap. It is the most efficient charge a business can levy, because it is designed to land after the only moment you were ever going to say no.
Our view is that the real cost of drip pricing is not the 59p. It is that it quietly disables the one thing a household on a tight budget actually has going for it: the ability to compare. If a mandatory fee sits outside the headline price, then every comparison you make — between two sellers, between two dates, between doing the thing and not doing it — is being made on a number that was never the number. You can be a disciplined, careful shopper and still be beaten, because you were shopping on figures that did not add up to what you paid. That is why this is a budgeting problem and not just a fairness one.
What the CMA actually said
The CMA opened three consumer protection investigations on 18 August 2026, announced on 19 August. The concern in each is the same: whether mandatory fees were included in the total price shown to customers at the start of the buying process. The published detail is unusually specific, and it is worth reading the actual figures rather than the word "fees":
- Trainline — whether all mandatory fees are in the upfront price for train and coach tickets bought in advance on the app and website. The CMA says it observed transactions with fees ranging from £0.59 to £2.79 for train travel, and a £1.50 booking fee on coach bookings.
- Virgin Atlantic — whether mandatory resort fees and local taxes are included in the upfront prices shown to customers buying package holidays. The CMA notes these vary but "can cost hundreds of pounds".
- RED Driving School — whether a mandatory booking fee and a "digital" fee, which the CMA puts at £7+ per booking, are included in the total upfront price.
Three things in that announcement deserve more attention than they got. First, all three firms had already been sent advisory letters in the CMA's first consumer protection drive under its new powers, and the CMA says concerns remained after ongoing monitoring. These are not surprise investigations. Second, the CMA can now order compensation for affected customers and fine up to 10% of global turnover. Third, this is not a warning shot into an empty field: the CMA says it has already secured more than £1.95 million in refunds and levied fines close to £6.2 million, with driving schools AA and BSM and ticketing site StubHub UK already fined and refunding customers over drip pricing.
Emma Cochrane, the CMA's Executive Director for Consumer Protection, put the principle in one sentence: "The first price customers see should be the price they pay."
Why the law is already on your side
A detail worth holding onto, because it changes what you can do about it today: this is not a proposed rule. The prohibition of unfair commercial practices in section 225 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025. The CMA published dedicated price transparency guidance (CMA209) on 18 November 2025, covering drip pricing and partitioned pricing explicitly.
So the standard has been live for well over a year. What is new this week is enforcement reaching three more names. If you have been paying compulsory fees that appeared after the headline price at any point since April 2025, you have not been failing to read the small print. You have been on the right side of a rule that is still being enforced into place.
What it actually costs a household
Illustrative. The fee amounts are the CMA's own published figures; how often this household buys is an assumption, stated so you can swap in your own.
Take a household with two adults who book advance train tickets through a reseller twice a month, a seventeen-year-old learning to drive with lessons booked individually, and one package holiday a year with a resort fee attached.
- Train bookings: 24 a year. At the bottom of the CMA's observed range (£0.59) that is £14; at the top (£2.79), £67. Call it £36 at a mid-range £1.50.
- Driving lessons: 30 individually booked lessons at the CMA's £7+ per booking figure — £210.
- Holiday resort fee: the CMA says these can run to hundreds of pounds. Take a conservative £200.
£446a year in charges that were not in any price this household compared
That is £37 a month. To put it against numbers we have already worked through on this site: it is almost three times the £150 Warm Home Discount that thousands of households will miss this month over a paperwork deadline, and it is more than double the largest £220 bank switching bonus currently on offer. You would have to switch your current account twice over, and win the top prize both times, to claw back what this household paid in fees it never chose.
And notice what the £446 is not. It is not overspending. It is not a lack of discipline, a treat too many, or a budget that needs tightening. This household did the thing we ask people to do: they compared, they chose, they bought. The money left anyway, after the decision was made, in amounts small enough that no individual one was ever worth a phone call.
What to do this week
Two things, both of which take minutes and neither of which requires waiting for the CMA.
1. Run the two-tab test on your next three purchases. Before you buy anything online this week, open the seller you were about to use and one alternative — for train tickets, the train operator's own app or website alongside the reseller; for a holiday, the operator alongside a direct booking. Take the identical purchase to the final payment screen on both, and compare the number at the bottom, not the number in the advert. Do not buy on either until you have both totals in front of you. This is dull and it works, and it is the only reliable defence while the rules are still being enforced into place. If the totals differ from the headlines, you have just found money — and our guide to cutting your bills covers where else the same trick applies.
2. If you have already paid a fee that was not in the headline price, put it on the record. Complain to the seller in writing first, so there is a date and a paper trail. If that goes nowhere, the free Citizens Advice consumer service is on 0808 223 1133 — advisers can pass complaint details to Trading Standards, which you cannot do yourself, and the details are on the Citizens Advice consumer service page. You can also tell the CMA about a market problem directly. The CMA will not chase your individual refund, but this is exactly the monitoring that turned three advisory letters into three investigations. And keep your booking confirmations: if compensation is ever ordered, the people who can show what they were charged are the people who get paid.
What is still uncertain, and when we will know
Be clear-eyed about the timeline, because it is longer than the headlines suggest. The CMA has reached no conclusions and made no finding against any of the three firms. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act there is no legal deadline by which a consumer investigation must be completed. The published case timetable for all three shows initial evidence gathering running from August 2026 to January 2027, with the next case update due in January 2027.
So: no refunds are on the table yet, no fines have been issued here, and anyone telling you otherwise this week is guessing. What is certain is the rule itself, which has applied since April 2025, and what you can do with it — which is to stop comparing headline prices and start comparing final ones. If the wider problem is that the budget does not stretch however carefully you shop, that is a different conversation and a more urgent one: start with budgeting basics, or go straight to free independent help via MoneyHelper, StepChange or National Debtline.
Coaching, not advice. This is a comment on a live consumer protection story and general money coaching — it is not regulated financial advice, and nothing here is a recommendation about any specific product, provider or firm. Buzz Money Coach is a trading style of Buzz Money Ltd, which is not authorised to give regulated advice and does not. Where regulated advice is what you need, we say so and can introduce you to Equity & General, authorised and regulated by the FCA (No. 474163) — entirely optional, and E&G pays us a commission on introductions that convert, disclosed to you upfront.