Supermarket firms Sainsbury's and Asda have admitted that they were part of a dairy price-fixing group that earned about £270m extra from shoppers.

The supermarkets, along with a number of dairy firms, have agreed to pay fines totalling some £116m after an Office of Fair Trading (OFT) probe.

Cases against Tesco and Morrisons will continue after no deal was struck.

The OFT said that in-store prices went up after the collusion, but the amount received by farmers did not increase.

However, the firms insist that the farm gate price paid for milk did rise and that they were not ripping off customers.

The OFT said the collusion saw customers being charged 3 pence extra for a pint of milk, 15p extra per quarter-pound of butter and 15p per half-pound of cheese, the watchdog said.

Is this not just normal business:

You purchase a product from a supplier,
you choose how much profit you want to make,
you mark up the item for Sale to acheive that profit,
you sell the item for the advertised price,
you do not force the customer to purchase the item,
you pay you overheads and reap the profits.

I dont see the problem.