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.