Secret (Agent) Shopper - use this Agent to check your website

Regulators are using Agents to discover if your website infringes consumer law. Shouldn’t you be doing the same? Here's an Agent I created that can check your website for compliance.

The CMA are using Agents to discover if your website infringes consumer law. Shouldn’t you be doing the same?

The CMA has fined several online businesses recently using its direct enforcement powers. What is more striking about the announcement from the CMA however is its uses of Agents to discover those consumer law infringements. Agents can visit websites and act as “mystery shoppers”, recreating the customer journey and logging any consumer law failings as they do so.

Here StubHub (online ticket marketing business) was found to be using drip pricing (adding extra mandatory costs after the initial price) and Marks Electrical was found to be charging for additional services without customer consent.

These are points that are worth getting right, particularly given the ability of a regulator now to potentially visit thousands of sites multiple times a week and flag concerns using AI. Our consumer team can help with that.

But regulators aren’t the only ones who can build agents.

I created an agent that can review a site for infringements of consumer law and flag those infringements in a report that sets out what the issue is and why it’s a problem (and how to fix it).

The agent can check various pages of a site, but as configured, cannot recreate making a payment (assuming those pages cannot be accessed without making a payment so might not have picked up on the “drip pricing” issue above). You are welcome to alter the agent to do that if you like (but you’ll be using your own credit card rather than mine!)

Of course the agent itself just carries out the search. It is no substitute for legal advice, but could be a substitute for the dreary task of manually testing every option on a particular website.

If you’d like to see the agent in action or use it yourself please do set up a call with me and I’ll show you how to download it and use it.

Equally if you’d like to learn how to create agents like these, again please do set up a call or email me at Richard@skilldiligence.com and I’d love to show you how you can create these for yourself.

You can see the training that I offer here: https://skilldiligence.com/ai-training-offer-page