Plumbworld Threaten Legal Action Against MHS Radiators For Price Fixing

Plumbworld the UK's largest independent online retailer of bathroom products has warned MHS radiators that they could face legal action in a dispute over the pricing of MHS designer radiators on the Plumbworld website.

James Hickman, Managing Director of Plumbworld explained:

"In July we received a fax from MHS radiators threatening that they would stop supplying us if we didn't increase our prices to the levels in their price guide. I was outraged that they felt it was acceptable to try and blackmail us into increasing our prices.

We pride ourselves on offering our customers the best value on the web and if we are prepared to accept lower margins than traditional retail outlets then surely that is just healthy competition ?

There is no way that we will be threatened into giving our customers poor value for money and we have reported MHS Radiators to the Office of Fair Trading, who are now investigating our complaint of price fixing."

The Office of Fair Trading has the power to impose fines up to 10% of an offending company's annual turnover if they find that the company has breached the provisions of the 1998 Competition Act.

"We are waiting to see if MHS Radiators actually carry out their threat to withhold supply to us. We have notified them that any interruption of supply will start a legal action for damages in addition to the complaint we have made to the OFT"