Kleenheat charged $25,000 fine for false advertising
Wesfarmers-owned Kleenheat Gas has paid fines of $25,200 after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued two infringement notices for alleged false and misleading representations it made about its gas prices in its advertising.
The advertisements – which claimed new customers in Western Australia could “save 35% on gas charges” – ran on TV, radio, Spotify, billboards, bus panels and via email.
One of the ads which the ACCC alleged made false representations
The ACCC alleged that the 35% saving was false and misleading because the discount only applied to a customer’s usage charges, but not all the other additional costs such as gas supply charges and account fees.
The ACCC also alleged that the overall impression created by the advertisements was that the discount would apply as long as the consumer was with the company, when it fact it only applied for 12 months – after which, it dropped to 25%.
ACCC acting chair Roger Featherston said the representations in the advert were false, and may have caused some Western Australians to switch their gas suppliers.
“WA gas customers who saw the Kleenheat advertisements could easily have assumed the discount was permanent and applied to the entire bill. People who took up the plan saved about $40 less in the first year than they would have saved replying on Kleenheat’s claim of a 35% savings on gas charges,” he added.
The ad as it appeared on Facebook
Some of the adverts contained a reference that “Ts &Cs apply”, while others included references in fine print explaining the deal, however Featherston said this was not enough.
“Qualifications which explain the terms and conditions of a deal must be prominent and not only in fine print, so that consumers understand what the deal involves,” he said.
The ACCC noted the payment of a penalty specified in an infringement notice is not an admission of a contravention of the Australian Consumer Law, but rather the watchdog can issue a notice where it has reasonable grounds to believe a person or business has contravened certain consumer protection laws.
The Brand Agency is Kleenheat’s creative agency of record.
topics
ACCC
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
Australian Consumer Law
Kleenheat
misleading advertising
Roger Featherston
It’s about time someone copes a hit… not so clean after all.
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$25K fine for a large company? Oh, please whip them with a feather! … that’ll learn ’em all right! It is well past time that everyone understood that these are not “contracts” at all as the T&C’s always allow retailers to jack up the prices on both gas and gold-plated-electricity. Why call them contracts?? The “customer” cannot change the terms, but the retailer certainly can. A *very* one sided so-called “contract” if you ask me. Go to ALL the offers (gas & gold-plated-electricity) and look carefully at the T&C’s. Then do some googling on how they all jack up prices after the honeymoon period. You usually wind up worse off after 12 months. All of these “free market” lies are a big crock of sh*t foisted upon us because of incompetent (or worse) politicians! These same politicians who are hell bent on shipping jobs off overseas by ensuring that local industry cannot compete because of some of the worst gold-plated-electricity and gas prices in the world, coupled with increasing unreliability of supply. Why worry about industrial “cyber attacks/espionage” from certain nation states when the real damage is coming from within directly on manufacturing infrastructure.
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