ACCC calls out ‘misleading’ Black Friday advertising practices by Australian businesses
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has found that numerous in-store and online Australian businesses peddled Black Friday sales advertisements that may be considered “misleading” for customers.
In a statement issued on Tuesday morning, the consumer protection agency shared a list of practices it discovered in its audit.
These include inauthentic sitewide and store sales, which the ACCC found harboured exclusions; disclaimers and fine print terms that undervalue “headline claims about the [respective] sale[s]”, such as deals only available for members; “was/now pricing” schemes; recommended retail pricing (RRP) practices that make the recommended retail price the foundational price with which the advertising saving is based on – a potentially misleading move if the business has not used RRP for its products in the recent past or for a decent amount of time; “up to” advertisements – a practice which can be misleading if the “up to” phrase is not easily viewable, or if the relevant products are too few.
“An ACCC sweep of Black Friday sales advertisements has uncovered a range of concerning practices, from ‘site wide’ discounts that are not in fact site wide, potentially misleading ‘was/now’ pricing, as well as dubious claims about the value of discounts on offer,” shared Catriona Lowe, deputy chair of the ACCC.
Advertisement vaguely showing further discounts on items. (Credit: ACCC)
“We are further considering some of these examples for investigation and action, and the ACCC has already asked a number of retailers to justify their advertising claims.
“In the meantime, we are warning retailers ahead of post-Christmas sales that they must comply with Australian Consumer Law in all the claims they make.”
Lowe added: “We have also seen many instances of appropriate and accurate advertising during the Black Friday sales.
“These include prominent exclusions and accurate claims about the scope of sales. We will continue our internet sweep of advertising practices throughout late December sales as businesses doing the right thing should not lose sales to businesses that are potentially misleading consumers.”
According to the government organisation’s statement, consumers have expressed concerns about the above mentioned ‘was/now’ pricing schemes, especially since they’ve found that prices tend to go up before a significant sale.
A misleading ‘up to’ pricing practice. (Credit: ACCC)
In response to this, the ACCC is expected to conduct an investigation by gathering retail products’ prices throughout the sales period – before the sale, during it and afterwards. The agency will then analyse the data to determine whether or not businesses have been increasing the prices of their products to make the sales seem more valuable then they really are.
“We know that many consumers rely on sales to save money when shopping for products, especially during this time of cost of living pressure, and when people may be seeking to save up for holidays and festivities,” Lowe explained.
“Retailers must not seek to take advantage of this by misleading consumers.”
Despite the potentially fraudulent behaviour by retail companies, Australia proved to be a haven for Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers this year.
In early December, e-commerce platform Shopify shared the results of a weekend-long study it conducted over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday period, discovering that Australia was ranked number three amongst the top selling countries in the world, and that shoppers’ carts contained an average price of $199.12 AUD – a 23% jump from 2023’s average price of $162.
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Matthew is the editorial assistant at Mumbrella. He joined the company at the end of September 2023.
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this has been happening for ten years
maybe they should start enforceming the rules
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