The author argues that a Higher Education Bill will be lacking in the future, as promised in the 2011 White Paper on HE; and hence the regulatory framework for English HE will, for the immediate future at least, have to evolve within the law as it is rather than via new legal powers. The essential issue is how to extract the benefits of market competition (as now so clearly engendered by the new tuition fees regime and the related auctioning among higher education institutions of student places by grades and price) within a regulated market while also curtailing the potential adverse excesses of such competition in terms of protecting the student as a consumer of a Business to Consumer (B2C) service that must be delivered "with reasonable care and skill". In this article, the author discusses consumer protection in higher education. As HEIs stumble into the Brave New World of the empowered student-consumer through the complexities of compliance and complaints, and especially if they try to do so from a stance of complacency, the author contends that the emphasis may sadly have to be on dispute management, but with luck and management skill avoiding litigation by the wise use of mediation.