news Online retailer Kogan.com has been fined for “false or misleading” claims in its Father’s Day advertisements last August.
The penalties, which came to $32,400, followed the issue of three infringement notices by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The ACCC found it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that Kogan had made false or misleading representations over the price of the monitors during a Fathers’ Day promotion on its eBay store. Those ads were in contravention of the Australian Consumer Law, the ACCC said in a statement.
Kogan told eBay consumers that they would receive a 20 percent discount on the two own-brand monitors and one Asus brand monitor, if they were purchased from 24th-29th August. However, before the promotion, Kogan had hiked the prices of the three products on its eBay store. Although consumers did receive the 20% discount off the newly increased prices, the net discount received was just 9 percent.
Shortly after the promotion ended, the advertised prices of the monitors returned to their pre-promotion lower prices.
“It is simply unacceptable for businesses to raise prices before applying a discount in order to give consumers the misleading impression that they are obtaining a larger percentage discount than is actually the case,” said Dr Michael Schaper, the ACCC’s Acting Chair.
“Truth in advertising and consumer issues in the online market place are both current enforcement priorities,” he said.
The payment of a penalty specified in an infringement notice is not an admission of a contravention of the Australia Consumer Law, the commission pointed out. The ACCC can issue an infringement notice where it has reasonable grounds to believe a person or business has contravened consumer protection laws.
A $32k fine is far less than the ads would have cost to produce and place and they wouldn’t make the ads unless they were profitable. It’s effectively a nonsense fine, like most of our business fines, where the punishment from the government if far lower than the profit from committing the offence.
Not even a slap on the wrist.
Bad Kogan
You were always up to no good
Bad Kogan
You were the outlaw
You stole my horse
You stole my darlin lover
of course
Bad Bad Kogan
Never come back to my saloon
You were too sharp at the table
Your pocket aces always popped up too soon
Card sharp Kogan
Leave the town!
We never want you around!
I’m not really surprised, Kogan has consistently given me the impression that it’s a less than ethical retailer.
eg comparing* their TV’s with much higher quality and priced name brands by making unwary consumers think they are getting a great quality TV. They use phrases like “uses an LG LCD Panel” to suggest quality when the electronics processing the pictures are what really counts and what differentiates the big names from the cheap chinese TV’s.
*not sure if they still do this or not
The thing is….. Most people don’t care.
I personally don’t watch enough TV to really care about whether my TV is producing the best colours, or is going to last 4 years instead of 10. At the prices Kogan/Cheap chinese makers charge for their 4K TVs, I could buy 4 of them for the price of a “brand name” TV from LG, Samsung or Sony.
You missed the point, I have no objection to anyone selling cheap TV’s, what I object to is the misleading of consumers by making apples to oranges comparisons in order to drive sales.
I just don’t see a problem listing a TV by saying it uses an “LG Panel”.
They used to do direct comparisons saying their TV’s used the same panel as the name brand while omitting that the video processing electronics etc were far from the same. That’s misleading to someone not aware of what makes a modern TV tick.
They probably stopped doing it as a result of it being a/ misleading under consumer law and b/ likely got threatened by a big name oem with legal action.
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/misleading-claims-advertising/false-or-misleading-claims
Practical article ! I was enlightened by the analysis ! Does someone know where my company would be able to get access to a fillable a form example to work with ?
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