Burberry, Energy price cap, TSB, Dixons Carphone: your commercial news round-up
updated on 06 September 2018
Banana puns aside, this week has highlighted the importance of secure and functional IT systems with both TSB and Dixons Carphone facing the financial and administrative repercussions of failing to secure their customer's data, or provide working online services for their customers. There's more on this, plus Burberry's burning clothes ban, and the energy bill price cap, in this week's commercial news round-up:
- British designer brand Burberry has promised to stop their practice of burning unsold clothes, bags and perfumes in order to prevent them being stolen or sold cheaply. Last year Burberry destroyed £28.6 million of unsold goods and were severely criticised by environmental campaigners.
- Around 11 million households are expected to save £75 a year on average with regulator Ofgem’s proposed energy bill price cap, which is to be introduced at the end of 2018. The £1,1136 annual cap is aimed at forcing gas and electricity suppliers to stop excess charges for people on default deals.
- TSB chief executive Paul Pester stepped down this week following the major IT failure which took place in April earlier this year. Customers were unable to access online banking services for several weeks, with the bank failing to move data to a new computer system. Problems with TSB’s IT systems are ongoing.
- Dixons Carphone has reported flat revenue growth in its latest trading period after the cyber-attack which affected nearly 10 million customers earlier this year. Hackers were able to access 5.9 million customers’ cards, resulting in a 24% drop in profits for its full-year results released in June.
- Finally, some news to make you go bananas: Tesco Metro and Express stores have defended the price rise of individual bananas from 10p-15p to 25p, blaming the increase on “more expensive” leases. Needless to say, there have been a few unapeeling comments on social media (sorry).
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