Fideres is pleased to announce that, following the publication by The Guardian of its research into excessively priced Covid-19 travel tests, several organisations including the UK government have launched investigations.
On 31st July, a Guardian article spotlit Fideres’s findings that the government website which lists prices and providers for Covid-19 travel tests is misleading. Fideres analysed the top 50 ‘cheapest’ providers, and found that there was a significant gap between advertised prices and the actual price a consumer would have to pay – an average disparity of £60. Fideres also found that two thirds of the cheapest PCR travel tests listed on the government website were unavailable or inaccessible to consumers.
In the article, The Guardian reported that the Advertising Standards Agency is investigating, after receiving complaints from consumers about “inconsistent pricing”. Fideres’s research also made headlines with several other newspapers. Two days after publication, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid announced an audit of all providers listed on the government website. Javid spoke of concerns about “exploitative behaviour” and “unfair practices” in a letter to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Now, the CMA has also launched an investigation.
