Discount pricing and promotions are a great tool for attracting new customers and boosting sales – but they’re a double-edged sword. If you get them wrong, you could face serious legal consequences, including fines. The ACCC has made misleading pricing practices in the supermarket and retail sector one of its top compliance and enforcement priorities for 2025-26.
Here’s why you need to make compliance with the Australian Consumer Law your top priority when it comes to discount pricing and promotions.
The ACCC is cracking down on Misleading Pricing in 2025
The ACCC has an impressive track record for enforcing breaches of the prohibition against making false or misleading claims under the Australian Consumer Law – and pricing claims are no exception.
Recent examples of ACCC activity include:
- $9 million fine for Webjet: In July 2025, Webjet, an online travel agency, was ordered by the Federal Court to pay $9 million in penalties for breaching the Australian Consumer Law by making false or misleading claims about its advertised airfares. For instance, Webjet failed to disclose compulsory fees in its advertised airfares. ACCC Chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, stated “Seeking to lure in customers with prices that don’t tell the whole story is a serious breach of the Australian Consumer Law.”
- Penalties pending for Emma Sleep: In June 2025, Emma Sleep, an online mattress supplier, admitted it had made false or misleading claims about its sale prices. This included using strikethrough prices to advertise discounts despite the fact that many of the advertised products had never been offered at those strikethrough prices. Emma Sleep also admitted that it had used countdown timers to represent that sale prices would only be available for a limited period, when this was not in fact the case. The ACCC is seeking penalties, injunctions, and other orders. The next hearing is scheduled for March 2026.
- Almost $60k worth of infringement notices issued in June 2025: In June 2025, the ACCC issued infringement notices totalling $59,400 to Michael Hill, MyHouse, and Hairhouse Online for allegedly making false or misleading claims about their Black Friday sales. This followed a broad sweep by the ACCC in late 2024 of Black Friday sales advertising – in-store and online. During this sweep, the ACCC identified problematic claims across multiple businesses including “‘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.”
What does this mean for you?
- Keep sales records – they are your first line of defence: The number one rule is to maintain clear and detailed sales records. These should track your current and historical prices, the time periods over which you have maintained those prices, and the quantities of products sold. These records will be the first thing the ACCC asks to see if they decide to investigate any of your pricing claims.
- No fake sales – don’t inflate prices just to slash them: You must not increase your list prices before a promotional period in order to claim that you are giving consumers a bigger discount. In December 2020, the Federal Court ordered a major online retailer, Kogan, to pay penalties of $350,000 for making false or misleading claims about its tax time sales promotion in breach of the Australian Consumer Law. Kogan told consumers that they could use the code “TAXTIME” to reduce prices by 10% at the checkout – in fact, however, Kogan had increased the prices of many of its products just before the promotion, by more than 10% in some cases.
- Sitewide sales – make sure your discounts cover the whole store: If you advertise your sale as a sitewide sale, then you must include all listed products in the sale offer. It is not enough just to apply the discount to a majority of products. For instance, Hairhouse Online used the claim “SAVE 20% TO 50% SITEWIDE”. In fact, less than three quarters of the products on the Hairhouse Online website had the advertised discount applied. The ACCC considered this a breach of the Australian Consumer Law and fined Hairhouse Online $19,800.
- Was / now pricing – only refer to strikethrough prices you’ve actually used for a reasonable time: When using a strikethrough price, you need to be able to show that you offered the product at that strikethrough price for a reasonable period prior to the start of the promotional period and that you in fact sold reasonable quantities of the product at that strikethrough price. But take care – the devil is in the details. What constitutes reasonable in terms of the timing of the promotional period and the quantities sold will vary on a case-by-case basis.
- RRP discounting – verify your supplier’s suggested price against market reality: When using RRP discounting, you need to be able to produce two key pieces of evidence. First, you need an RRP from your supplier; and secondly, you need to be able to show that the product has in fact been offered for sale and sold at that RRP by another retailer. Otherwise, any advertised discount against that RRP will be just an illusion.
- Fine print won’t save the day: If there are any material exclusions from your sale offer, you need to call them out clearly upfront as part of your headline claim. It is not enough to use a generic statement such as “T&Cs apply”. Both MyHouse and Hairhouse Online used statements to the effect of “T&Cs apply” in fine print after their discount claims and were still issued with fines of $19,800 each by the ACCC.
Planning a Black Friday or End of Year sale? Don’t leave it to the wheel of fortune. Get expert advice from the Addisons Competition/Antitrust & Consumer team.