How to show prices on your website under the DMCCA: a plain-English checklist

If you have read about the CMA fining businesses over hidden fees and you are now wondering what you actually have to do to stay on the right side of the rules, this guide is for you. No legal jargon, just the practical steps.

The core rule is short enough to remember in one sentence: whenever you invite a customer to buy, the first price they see must be the full price they will pay, including every charge they cannot avoid. Everything below is just working out what that means for your website.

Step 1: Find every charge a customer cannot avoid

Start by listing every cost that ends up on a customer's bill. For each one, ask a single question: can the customer buy from you without paying it?

If the answer is no, it is a mandatory charge, and it has to be in your headline price. Common ones that catch businesses out:

Booking fees, service fees, admin fees, and handling fees. These are exactly what the AA was fined over. A booking fee charged on every order is mandatory, and the rules are explicit that you cannot leave it out by claiming it is hard to calculate.

Unavoidable delivery charges. If a customer cannot collect for free and must pay to receive the product, the cheapest mandatory delivery cost counts as part of the total price.

Joining or set-up fees. A one-off fee every new customer must pay is mandatory and belongs in the advertised price.

If the answer is yes, the customer can genuinely choose whether to pay it, then it is optional, and it can sit outside the headline price, as long as it is not pre-selected for them.

Step 2: Show the full total at the very first price, not at checkout

This is the step the fines are about. The total price, with all mandatory charges included, has to appear at the first point you invite someone to buy, not revealed later as they go through checkout.

'The first invitation to purchase' is interpreted broadly. It includes your adverts, your search listings, your product pages, and your basket, not just the final payment screen. So a price shown in a Google ad or on a product page that excludes a mandatory fee is already a problem, even if the full total appears correctly at the end.

The practical test: does the price a customer sees first match the price they pay last? If a number goes up as they move toward payment, you have a drip.

Step 3: Do not just list the parts. Show the total

There is a related trap called partitioned pricing. This is where you show all the component costs (say '£50 product, plus £5 service fee') but never actually add them up into one total the customer can see. The rules treat this as non-compliant too. It is not enough to show the pieces and expect the customer to do the maths. Show the combined total.

Step 4: For orders with per-order fees, use a running total

If you sell multiple items in one order and charge a fee once per order (a single booking fee for several cinema tickets, for example), it is not always practical to bake that fee into each item's price. The CMA accepts a running total as a compliant solution: a basket or total that is always visible and updates as the customer adds items, and that includes the mandatory fees from the start.

A 'floating basket' that stays on screen with a live total is specifically endorsed as a way to comply. The key is that the running total is clearly visible throughout and includes the mandatory charges, not that it appears only at the end.

Step 5: For subscriptions, be clear about the full commitment

If you sell a subscription or a minimum-term contract, you have two compliant ways to present the price:

Show the total monthly price (inclusive of all mandatory charges) alongside a clear statement of how many months the customer is committed for.

Or show the total cumulative price across the whole minimum term, for example '£600 over 12 months'.

Any one-off fees, like a set-up or admin charge, must be included, not tucked away separately.

Step 6: Check the optional extras are genuinely optional

Finally, look at any add-ons: insurance, faster delivery, gift wrapping, donations. These can sit outside the headline price, but only if they are genuinely optional and not pre-ticked. A box that is already selected, so the customer pays unless they notice and untick it, is not allowed.

The quick version

Walk your own site as a customer and check:

The first price shown includes every unavoidable fee. Nothing mandatory appears later. The total is actually shown, not just the parts. Any per-order fees are in a visible running total. Subscriptions state the full commitment. No optional extra is pre-ticked.

If every one of those is true, you are in good shape. If any made you pause, that is where your risk is.

The fastest way to check

Going through all of this by hand, across every page and every step of your checkout, is exactly the kind of thing that is easy to get wrong or miss a corner of. That is what Total Price does automatically. You enter your website address and we check your public pricing journey against these rules, then give you a plain-English report with a score and the specific issues to fix, in about a minute.

Your first audit is free. Check your website now

This article is general information about UK price-transparency rules, not legal advice. It reflects the CMA's price transparency guidance (CMA209) published in November 2025. For advice on your specific situation, consult a qualified professional.