• CMA secures commitments from discount shopping website Groupon to improve customer service and ensure accuracy of descriptions on its website

• Groupon will offer refunds to certain customers who were previously not offered refunds

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an enforcement investigation into Groupon UK, an online marketplace that offers discounts and deals for a range of products and services, in April 2021. On 9 August, the CMA wrote to Groupon outlining its specific concerns about Groupon’s compliance with consumer protection law and warning that if Groupon did not change its conduct it could face court action.

The CMA was concerned that Groupon was not responding satisfactorily to customer complaints and was not always providing customers with the refunds and other forms of redress, such as replacement items, to which the CMA considers they were legally entitled. For example, in cases where customers had not been provided with the goods or services that they had paid for, they were sometimes only offered Groupon credits instead of refunds.

The CMA also had concerns that the company was failing to ensure the accuracy of product descriptions, that products offered for sale were in stock and delivered within advertised timeframes, and that items were of a satisfactory quality.

Groupon has now signed formal commitments to the CMA that it will ensure that:

Andrea Coscelli, Chief Executive of the CMA, said:

“So much of business relies on trust. It’s essential that people shopping online receive what they ordered and are supported if things go wrong, quickly receiving any refund they are due.

“We welcome that Groupon has now committed to address concerns about customer service issues and ensure it is abiding by the law, so that people can feel more confident shopping online in the future.”

As well as potentially breaking consumer protection law, Groupon UK was potentially in breach of the previous undertakings that it gave to the CMA’s predecessor, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), in 2012. As part of these, Groupon UK pledged to ensure information on its website is not misleading and to comply with customers’ legal cancellation and refund rights.

In order to ensure that Groupon abides by its latest commitments, the company will appoint a compliance officer – who will be responsible for ensuring Groupon adheres to the new undertakings – and will need to regularly report to the CMA on its progress. For more information, visit the Groupon investigation web page.

Notes to editors

1. Groupon UK is registered in the UK as MyCityDeal Limited.

2. In addition to MyCityDeal Limited, the CMA wrote to and accepted formal commitments from other relevant entities within the Groupon corporate group that we consider have engaged in conduct that may be contrary to consumer law: Groupon Goods Global GmbH (registered in Switzerland) and Groupon, Inc (registered in USA). Together these are referred to as “Groupon”.

3. Groupon is an online shopping platform that sells goods and services to consumers. It also partners with business to provide digital vouchers designed to help customers save money when shopping in-store and online. Customers purchase vouchers from Groupon’s website and app and use them to activate discounts at a range of businesses.

4. The main provisions of consumer protection legislation relevant to the CMA’s concerns are the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs), the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (CCRs) and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA).

5. Groupon is offering refunds to certain customers who experienced problems with their purchase based on its customer service codes. The customer categories are contained in Schedule 2 of the undertakings.

6. For media enquiries, contact the CMA press office on 020 3738 6460 or press@cma.gov.uk

Overview

• SMILE will use a new scientific technique to provide a fuller understanding of the Sun-Earth connection. It will deliver global 3D imaging of the Earth’s magnetosphere for the first time and investigate its dynamic response to the impact of solar wind
• UK is providing the core scientific instrument, the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI), and co-leads the mission’s scientific consortium
• The mission is the first full scale collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

The Earth’s magnetosphere is the strongest of all the rocky planets in our Solar System and is thought to have played an important role in the Earth’s habitability. Scientists believe that a key reason Mars lost most of its atmosphere and surface water was because it lost its magnetosphere.

SMILE is expected to answer three questions:

1. What are the fundamental modes of the dayside solar wind/magnetosphere interaction?
2. What defines the substorm cycle?
3. How do Coronal Mass Ejections-driven storms arise, and what is their relationship to substorms?

In order to answer these questions, SMILE will provide scientists with data and information on the location and shape of the outer magnetospheric boundaries (i.e., the magnetopause, the bow shock, and the magnetospheric cusps) and of the auroras, and how solar wind behaves next to these.

UK involvement

Leadership of the overall mission science and the SXI instrument enables the UK teams to shape its scientific data in line with their requirements and areas of expertise. In-depth instrument knowledge will mean that the UK research base is well placed to understand and exploit the data in the post-launch research and discovery phase.

Areas in which the UK is world leading – planetary science (Earth and beyond), solar physics, space plasma and astrophysics – are all served by the science explored by SMILE.

SMILE data will also provide real-world benefits by helping to improve scientific models used to forecast space weather.

Extreme space weather could disrupt modern technology by causing geomagnetic storms affecting satellite navigation, shortwave communications, and power grids. A recent ESA study estimated the potential socio-economic impact in Europe from a single, extreme space weather event could reach €15 billion. Much of this disruption could be avoided through accurate forecasting.

The UK SMILE team has already carried out preliminary work with the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre in view of supporting their work with SMILE data.

Teledyne e2v, based in Chelmsford, are supplying the SXI CCD detector devices under an approx. £1.5M contract to ESA. Joint academic-industry knowledge exchange with Open University on the CCD development programme will improve space radiation hardiness of the devices, maintaining this key UK technology for commercial sales and export opportunities.

UK company Photex Ltd has also been contracted to assemble the camera for the UVI instrument.

Further socioeconomic impact will be realised through:

• Technology development in X-ray detection instrumentation; the SXI detectors devices are the largest ever flown for X-ray detection
• Skills development in the academic institutes and the industrial supply chain
• Maintaining UK reputation and world leading status in SMILE science, leading to follow on projects, further funding
• New and strengthened international partnerships with China, Canada, and European consortium UK funding and roles

UK Space Agency funding of up to £10.5 million is agreed to support the UK roles below up to mission launch in 2023, with post launch support subject to further review.

Overall mission Co-Principal Investigator: Prof Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, UCL-MSSL. Leads mission level science development alongside Chinese counterpart Prof Chi Wang (Director of National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences).

SXI instrument Principal Investigator: Dr Steven Sembay (University of Leicester). Leads European consortium building SXI instrument, with hardware and design contributions from international partners including Spain, Norway, Switzerland, US. Leicester led the overall telescope optics using innovative ‘lobster-eye’ micropore technology.

UCL-MSSL also provide SXI front end electronics (FEE), and Co-Investigator support role on Chinese led Light Ion Analyser instrument.

SXI Co-Investigator: Prof Andrew Holland (Open University). Testing and characterising performance of SXI instrument’s CCD (Charged Couple Device) detectors.

SXI CCD detectors provided by Teledyne e2v (Chelmsford, UK) under separate contract to ESA.

Current status & next steps

• UK-China joint proposal selected by ESA and CAS in 2015
• Phase B1 study, and all instrument and mission level System Requirements Reviews, completed in 2018
• ESA Member States voted to formally adopt SMILE in March 2019
• SXI Preliminary Design Review complete in 2020
• SXI flight instrument delivery scheduled for mid-2023
• Launch date end of 2024