No rise is a good rise
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Have you read that the Price Commission has approved a price increase? Of course you hay but the report was wrong. The Price Commission does not approve increases.
Says Charles Williams, chairman. "All that the legislation allows the Commission to do is to look closely at an individual price increase and recommend a restriction if they think it necessary and if the company is not protected by the safeguards arrangements spelt out in Section 9 of the Price Commission Act 1977."
What Mr Williams considers even more serious is the fact that some firms seem to be implying to their customers that because the notification has been passed by the Commission, this means that the Commission has endorsed the increase.
"In effect, firms appear to be invoking official support for increases which they are trying to negotiate with their customers.
"Not only is this practice a distortion of the legal position but also it is deceitful and grossly misleading to the. customer," he says.
"We may well not support an increase. Every major company has to notify us of its proposed increases 28 days before they are implemented and during that period we have to decide whether to hold one of our three month investigations to look into the increases in depth.
"We receive 140 or more notifications a week, and we can, in practical terms, hope to launch only 40 or so investigations a year. So obviously we can only look in detail at relatively few applications for increases. It doesn't mean th. we are necessarily happy aboi all the rest.
"Any decision to increaE prices is wholly that of the fin concerned. If the firm wants I say as well that it has not hear from the Price Commission, th is all right with me. But to sw gest anything further, and i particular to suggest that have approved and endorsed a increase, is wholly indefeni ible."