By Dominic Maher, 10 April 2000 12:48
NEWS Dixons' practices in the UK home PC market have been labelled 'unfair' by leading retailers and will be the subject of an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), according to Labour MP Nick Palmer. The John Lewis Partnership and Comet have backed the call for an inquiry and claim that PC manufacturers, Compaq and Packard Bell, are restricting consumer choice by selling only through Dixons Group. Labour MP Palmer has tabled two Parliamentary Questions on the relationship between Compaq and Dixons and has queried why the UK retail outlet exclusively sells Compaq machines. In October 1999, the OFT concluded the PC market was competitive but never published the report of the findings. Research by John Lewis found that during 1999, PCs purchased from the high street accounted for 70 per cent of UK PC sales, of which 57 per cent were sold from Dixons-owned stores.
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