The AA Was Fined £4.2 Million for Hiding a Booking Fee From 80,000 Learners

The AA has been fined £4.2 million and ordered to refund more than 80,000 learner drivers after the Competition and Markets Authority found that AA Driving School and BSM, both owned by the AA, hid a mandatory booking fee from customers until checkout. The CMA calls the practice drip pricing, and it is illegal under UK consumer law.

Between April and December 2025, anyone booking driving lessons through the AA or BSM websites saw a headline price that left out a compulsory £3 booking fee. New customers only discovered the true cost at checkout, after choosing lesson times and entering personal details. Returning customers saw the fee listed separately from the initial price, with the two only combined into a final total on the following page.

What the Investigation Found

The investigation began in November 2025, when the CMA opened cases against eight businesses as part of a wider crackdown on online pricing practices. AA Driving School and BSM were two of the eight. The CMA’s finding was simple: businesses must show the full, unavoidable price of a service from the outset, and a fee that every customer has to pay is not optional, no matter when it appears on the page.

More than 80,000 customers were affected. The AA must refund over £760,000 to those customers directly, the first time the CMA has used its newer consumer powers to force money back into people’s accounts rather than simply fining a company. The average individual refund works out at around £9, reflecting how many lesson packages each customer bought, but the CMA has been clear that the sum is smaller than the principle at stake: the law requires the true price upfront, and the AA did not provide it for eight months.

On top of the refunds, the AA was fined £7 million before a 40 percent reduction for admitting the breach and settling early, bringing the final penalty to £4.2 million. Combined with the refunds, the total cost to the AA comes to almost £5 million.

Why It Landed on Learner Drivers Specifically

Learning to drive is already one of the more expensive rites of passage for a young adult in Britain. Government survey data shows the average price of a one-hour driving lesson has risen to between £36 and £40, up from £31 to £35 in 2023, at a time when instructor numbers are under pressure and demand for lesson slots is high. A learner booking a package of ten or twenty lessons is already committing hundreds of pounds before a single hour behind the wheel, which is exactly the kind of purchase where a hidden fee does the most damage to a household budget that has little room to absorb a surprise.

CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell put it directly: “If a fee is mandatory, the law is clear: it must be included in the price from the very start, not added at checkout, so consumers always know what they need to pay. At a time when people are watching every pound, dripped fees can tip the balance. And when it comes to something as important, and costly, as learning to drive, people deserve clarity.”

How Widespread Drip Pricing Really Is

The AA case is one piece of a bigger problem. Department for Business and Trade research from 2023 found that 46 percent of online businesses used at least one dripped fee, costing UK consumers an estimated £595 million to £3.5 billion extra every year, a figure that does not even include the cost of consumers selecting multiple optional add-ons. Service fees, such as booking or processing charges, were flagged as the worst offenders: almost all of the fees examined in that category were mandatory, and nearly three-quarters were revealed only late in the checkout process, exactly the pattern found at AA Driving School and BSM.

From the point the CMA’s stronger consumer powers came into force in April 2025, the regulator has opened investigations into 14 businesses in total. Alongside AA Driving School and BSM, the CMA is currently investigating Autotrader, Feefo, Dignity, Just Eat and Pasta Evangelists, the latter three over fake and misleading reviews rather than pricing. Those cases are ongoing and no findings have been made against them, but the direction of travel is clear: this was the first financial penalty imposed under the CMA’s new consumer enforcement powers, not the last.

What Affected Learners Need to Do

Nothing, according to the CMA. Affected customers do not need to submit a claim or contact anyone to secure their refund. AA Driving School and BSM are required to write to every affected customer directly, and the money will be returned automatically to the card used to pay for lessons. Where that is not possible, for example if the card has expired, the customer will be sent a cheque instead.

If you booked lessons with either brand between April and December 2025 and have not heard anything by now, it is worth contacting AA Driving School or BSM customer service directly to check the status of your refund rather than assuming you were not affected. For anyone currently shopping for driving lessons, the practical lesson is to look for the total price, including any booking or admin fee, before you enter your card details, and to treat any site that only reveals extra charges at the final screen as a warning sign, whether or not that business happens to be under CMA investigation.

Anyone who spots a mandatory fee added late in a checkout process, for driving lessons or anything else, can report it to the CMA directly, which continues to prioritise enforcement against drip pricing as part of its Clear Pricing campaign.

What Counts as a Fair Price Online

The CMA’s Clear Pricing guidance sets out a simple test for any business selling online: if a charge applies to every customer regardless of their choices, it belongs in the headline price shown at the very first step, not revealed once the customer has already invested time entering details. Optional extras, such as choosing an automatic instead of a manual car, or adding an extra hour to a lesson package, can legitimately be priced separately, as the customer is making a choice that changes the final cost. A booking fee that every single customer pays regardless of what they choose does not meet that bar, which is exactly why the AA’s £3 charge was found unlawful rather than simply unpopular.

This distinction reaches well beyond driving lessons. The same pattern, a low headline price followed by a mandatory add-on revealed at the last possible moment, shows up across ticketing sites, food delivery apps, car hire firms and hotel booking platforms, which is why the CMA chose to open eight cases at once in November 2025 rather than pursuing driving schools alone. The AA settlement is the first to conclude and the first to carry a financial penalty, giving a concrete sense of what businesses in the remaining cases might expect if their own investigations reach the same conclusion.

The Instructor Shortage Behind Rising Lesson Costs

The £3 fee at the centre of this case is small next to the broader cost pressure facing learner drivers. Driving instructor numbers have come under strain as experienced instructors retire and fewer new instructors qualify to replace them, tightening supply in exactly the areas where demand for lessons is highest. That imbalance is a large part of why average lesson prices have climbed to £36 to £40 an hour, and it means a learner shopping for the cheapest available course has less room than ever to absorb a hidden charge on top of an already rising headline rate.

Sources:

• https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-orders-the-aa-and-bsm-driving-schools-to-refund-learner-drivers-over-drip-pricing
• https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/automobile-association-developments-limited-consumer-protection-enforcement-case
• https://www.carwow.co.uk/news/10579/driving-lessons-hidden-booking-fees-refunds-cma