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Archive for April, 2008

Win champagne in our SME survey

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If you like champagne you could be in luck with our very short SME survey. You’ll be helping to create a snapshot of SME’s and how well they protect themselves legally, and you could win six bottles of beautiful bubbly.

Click here to take the survey – and good luck!

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April 29th, 2008 at 7:40 pm

Meeting Caprice and many more at the Business Start-Up Exhibition

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Giles Dixon and Sarah Dixon of ContractStore meeting Caprice Bouret at the Business StartUp ExhibitionContractStore

112 construction firms accused of bid rigging – but why should it be illegal to share bidding costs?

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112 construction firms have been accused of bid rigging by the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) in England. There are two main allegations. One is that they engaged in cover pricing – where one or more bidders collude with a competitor during a tender process to obtain a price or prices which are intended to be too high to win the contract. Cover pricing arrangements have previously been found by the OFT and the Competition Appeal Tribunal to be illegal and in breach of the Competition Act 1998 due to the restrictions on competition that arise.

In addition, a minority of the construction companies have been accused of entering into arrangements whereby it was agreed that the successful tenderer would pay an agreed sum of money to the unsuccessful tenderers (known as a

Written by Giles

April 17th, 2008 at 11:49 am

26.5 million problems suffered by consumers dealing with organisations last year in the UK.

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The OFT (Office of Fair Trading) has today published a report to measure the overall value of consumer detriment in the UK economy i.e. where a consumer suffers unfair treatment from its dealings with an organization. For every 1000 consumers interviewed, 542 problems were identified, and across the whole of the UK population this equates to an estimated 26.5 million problems over the last year.

The report was compiled using information from 10,000 consumers, and estimates the cost to consumers was around

Written by Giles

April 16th, 2008 at 5:48 pm

More of the Companies Act 2006 comes into effect next week

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On 6th April some more sections of The Companies Act 2006 come into effect. This is the longest statute ever passed by Parliament and its implementation by stages

Written by Giles

April 1st, 2008 at 5:51 pm