Fine for building firms

[Dan]

BBC NEWS | Business | Building companies fined £129.5m

Cover Pricing


Some of the UK's leading building companies have been handed big fines by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for rigging bids for contracts. The OFT has fined a total of 103 firms £129.5m for colluding with competitors on building contracts.
It said the firms colluded among themselves during the bidding process, leading to customers, such as local authorities, having to pay too much.
The ruling comes at the end of a five-year investigation by the OFT.
Disclosing prices
The fines were largely for the practice known as "cover pricing".
This is where building firms submit quotes for jobs that are not actually priced to win the contract, so the client gets a misleading idea about the real extent of competition.

Very dodgy stuff. We should get into it (joke) lol

 

[doug boardley]

serves them right, fair pricing should be fair competition imo

 

[Dan]

Yeah, there is a representitive of 35 of the firms, that is saying it was harsh to fine them! How bad is that? They need this warning out there to discourage it from happening again and I don't see any of them saying they're going bump because of the fines so they must have the cash.

 

[Diamond Pool Finishers]

this is another bad side of capitalism its not all its made out to be

 

[White Room]

They were out for an easy buck and got caught, tough

 

[DHTiling]

I was surprised at the biggest name mentioned when i saw it on the news...but it's part of the game..the goverment screws them , so they try to screw back...simple as, but the only thing wrong, is the builders get fined and not the goverment..:mad2:

 

[Prem Tiler]

One firm were said to of paid another £60,000 to up there quote to make the client think it was a fair price.

These were in no way small fry but you can bet your self that Joe public will thing were all up to these tricks now!!

 

[diamondtiling]

This has gone on for decades and wont stop, the fine is small potatoes to the firms, they take it in turns to win new work, a mile of road costs about 2 million to construct, schools are held to ransom because of these firms and they buy up all land that becomes available and sit on it for years just so that no-one else can build near to their projects, the fine can be paid out of petty change

:mad2:rrr::incazzato: