The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said on Tuesday that in June, July and October 2020, digiDirect conducted sales promotions that used the headline statement “X% off storewide” - with the promotions advertised on digiDirect’s website, posted on social media and sent via email to digiDirect subscribers.
The ACCC says that while the promotions stated the discount would apply to all products available for sale, hundreds of products, between five and seven per cent of all products, were excluded from the promotions - including a number of popular digital cameras, camera lenses and accessories.
The ACCC alleges that digiDirect contravened the ACL by falsely representing to consumers that all products were available at a discounted price, when this was not the case.
“A business that advertises a ‘storewide’ sale but excludes a significant number of items is, in our view, clearly misleading consumers, which is unacceptable,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.
“In this instance, the offer of storewide discounts will have attracted many consumers to the digiDirect sale. While those consumers may not have been misled about whether or not the discount ultimately applied to the product they wanted to purchase, it is still unacceptable for a business to entice customers to a sale on the promise of discounts that may not apply.”
The three infringement notices issued were in relation to the following promotions:
- The June 2020 ‘End of Financial Year’ promotion – this was advertised on the digiDirect website and included the headline statement “15% OFF STOREWIDE”;
- The July 2020 ‘Click Frenzy’ promotion – this was posted on the digiDirect Facebook page and included the headline statement “15% OFF STOREWIDE”; and
- The October 2020 ‘Clearance’ promotion – this was sent by digiDirect to its subscribers and included the headline statement “20% OFF* STOREWIDE”.
The ACCC says each of these promotions contained the words “terms and conditions apply” or “terms and exclusions apply” in a small font.
“The ACCC considers that the “storewide discount” representation was not capable of being qualified so that it was no longer misleading, even if the disclaimers had been more prominent.
“digiDirect stopped advertising these ‘storewide’ discounts promptly after the ACCC intervened,” the ACCC concluded.