Australia · ACCC enforcement direction
The ACCC is looking beyond the claim. Is your digital sales system ready?
A claim may look acceptable when read alone while the complete customer journey creates serious risk. The ACCC has signalled that investigations may increasingly examine the systems, incentives and decisions behind the outcome.
The enforcement signal
The regulator may look behind the screen.
In a speech on 4 September 2026, ACCC Commissioner Luke Woodward said consumer-protection investigations may increasingly seek to understand the systems, commercial incentives and governance arrangements that give rise to harmful conduct, rather than viewing one representation in isolation.
The speech specifically identified social proofing, upselling, nudge tools and other dark patterns deliberately integrated into digital business models as potentially manipulative. It also said that understanding how decisions were made, what information was available and how compliance risks were managed will remain important in many investigations.
If a customer experiences an unexpected charge, a pressured choice, a difficult cancellation or an obstructed remedy, can the business explain and evidence how every part of that outcome was designed, approved, monitored and corrected?
Keep the legal position clear
The speech does not change the law, but a major change has already been enacted.
Existing Australian Consumer Law requirements continue to apply now, including prohibitions on misleading or deceptive conduct and false representations, consumer guarantees, unfair contract term protections, pricing requirements and applicable product-safety obligations.
The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026 has passed Parliament and received Royal Assent. Its unfair trading, drip pricing and subscription reforms commence on 1 July 2027.
From commencement, the new general prohibition will apply where conduct in connection with supplying or offering goods or services to a consumer manipulates the consumer or unreasonably distorts their decision-making environment and causes, or is likely to cause, detriment. The legislation identifies obstructing legal rights, failing to disclose material information, presenting it ineffectively and using digital-interface design to apply unreasonable pressure or obstruction as examples that may fall within the prohibition.
This does not mean every nudge, upsell or design choice is automatically unlawful. The conduct and its likely effect must be assessed in context. Some problematic practices may already breach existing law before July 2027.
Read Watchdog's detailed update on unfair trading and subscription reforms →
What this means for retailers
The compliance unit is the customer journey, not the individual screen.
- Marketing and pricing: connect advertisements, comparison prices, discount claims, urgency messages and the final amount payable.
- Checkout and upselling: identify preselected options, added products, repeated prompts, default settings and charges disclosed late in the journey.
- Subscriptions: test what customers understand before sign-up, when reminders are issued and whether cancellation is genuinely easy to find and complete.
- Customer remedies: make sure scripts, portals, escalation rules and staff incentives do not deter customers from exercising consumer-guarantee rights.
- Product and marketplace controls: connect product onboarding, seller screening, listing approval, complaints, incident escalation, takedown and recall processes.
- Personalisation: review how customer data, segmentation and automated tools change the messages, offers or choices presented to different people.
A compliant policy will not resolve a system that rewards the wrong outcome, hides important information, makes the safer choice harder or allows changes to go live without review.
Governance and accountability
When the ACCC follows the decision trail, what will it find?
A retailer should be able to identify who owns each material customer journey, who approved it and what evidence supported the decision. That record should connect the live experience to the applicable legal requirements, complaints and performance data.
Relevant evidence may include:
- dated captures of advertisements, product pages, checkout, renewal, cancellation and remedy journeys;
- approval records showing the legal and operational issues considered before release;
- instructions and change controls for agencies, platforms, developers and other service providers;
- the objectives and safeguards attached to conversion, retention and sales incentives;
- complaint, refund, cancellation, chargeback and incident trends; and
- records of identified problems, escalation decisions, remediation and verification.
What to do now
Test the live system before the regulator or a customer does it for you.
- Choose the highest-risk journeys. Start with promotions, recurring payments, add-ons, cancellation, returns and any process generating repeated complaints.
- Capture what customers actually see. Test desktop and mobile experiences, logged-in and guest pathways, and material customer segments.
- Map the whole control chain. Connect each screen to the claim evidence, terms, pricing engine, CRM rules, scripts, incentives and approval owner behind it.
- Separate current and future obligations. Correct existing ACL problems now and maintain a specific implementation plan for the reforms commencing on 1 July 2027.
- Use outcome data. Treat complaints, abandoned cancellations, refunds, chargebacks and repeat contacts as compliance signals, not only operational metrics.
- Retest after change. Require review when price, creative, product, platform logic, supplier, script or customer pathway changes.
Practical support
Find the risks that are invisible when each team reviews only its own step.
Watchdog can review the live digital retail journey, identify current-law and 2027 readiness gaps, trace them to the responsible systems and teams, and turn the findings into a prioritised remediation plan.
A focused review can cover promotional claims, pricing, checkout, subscriptions, cancellations, consumer remedies, marketplace controls and the governance behind them.
Official sources
Read the ACCC's enforcement signal and the enacted reforms.
Important information
Apply the law to the particular journey and facts.
This update is general information, not legal advice. The ACCC speech describes an enforcement direction and does not itself create a new legal obligation. The unfair trading, drip pricing and subscription reforms commence on 1 July 2027. Existing Australian Consumer Law obligations continue to apply. Check current official material and obtain advice for your circumstances before acting.