Consumers urged to watch out for Black Friday scams and bad deals – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• The Filter: The best Black Friday 2025 deals in the UK on the products we love

• ‘Black Fraud Day’: shoppers warned over Black Friday scams

Credit rating agency Moody’s has warned that the UK government faces high “execution risks” when trying to implement this week’s budget.

Moody’s has welcomed the government’s willingness to bring public finances back in line with its targets, but warns that slower growth or higher interest rates could worsen the debt burden.

In recent years, government expenditure has consistently exceeded initial forecasts, resulting in higher deficits and debt. This is partly because of unforeseen shocks such as the covid pandemic in 2020 and the energy price increase in 2022, but also because of unrealistically tight spending assumptions in the outer years of the fiscal forecasts.

The government legislated the departmental spending envelopes up to 2028-29 in the June Spending Review, giving some confidence that the risk of significant deviations will be more limited during these years. But the government now assumes that it can freeze departmental spending in real terms in 2029-30, something which will probably be difficult to implement in an election year.

Consumers who mistake fake AI-generated content for real are nearly 9x more likely to be tricked by scammers than those who don’t (70% vs. 8%).

Visa reveals average online scam costs victims £124.50 and collectively costs UK economy an estimated £356.2m annually

Victims spend an average of 6.5 days resolving online scams, and 35% of those targeted saying they now avoid shopping with smaller or unfamiliar brands.