Consumers buy from websites they trust, and much of that trust is a legal requirement rather than a marketing choice. If you sell goods or services to consumers online, the Australian Consumer Law (the ACL) imposes transparency obligations on how you present your products, price them, handle refunds and draft your website terms. The ACL is Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (the CCA), and it is enforced across Australia by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the ACCC) and by state and territory fair trading agencies.
Meeting these obligations does two things at once. It reduces your exposure to penalties and enforcement action, and it gives consumers a genuine reason to trust you, which is the point of this exercise. Three duties matter most for an online store: present your products and prices accurately, make your refunds and returns arrangements honour the consumer guarantees, and keep your website terms fair, clear and prominent. This article sets out who the obligations apply to, what each duty requires in practice, and what happens if you get it wrong.
Who these obligations apply to
Most of the ACL's consumer protections apply to any person or business acting in trade or commerce that supplies goods or services to a consumer. There is no turnover threshold and no minimum size. A sole trader running a single online store faces the same misleading conduct and consumer guarantee obligations as a national retailer.
The main scoping points to check are:
- Consumer: The consumer guarantees and the single price rule apply to supplies to a consumer. Under s 3 of the ACL, a person is a consumer if the goods or services cost $100,000 or less, are of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, or are a vehicle or trailer acquired for transporting goods on public roads. A person who acquires goods for re-supply, or to use up or transform in production or manufacture, is not a consumer. If a dispute reaches court, the person is presumed to be a consumer unless the business proves otherwise (s 3(10)).
- Trade or commerce: The misleading conduct provisions apply only to conduct in trade or commerce, which comfortably covers advertising, product pages, checkout processes and customer communications (s 18).
- Single price rule: Section 48 applies when you make a representation about price for goods or services of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, which is most consumer retail.
- Unfair contract terms: The unfair contract terms regime applies to standard form consumer contracts and small business contracts. A consumer contract is one for the supply of goods or services to an individual wholly or predominantly for personal, domestic or household use (s 23(3)). A small business contract is one under which at least one party employs fewer than 100 people or has an annual turnover under $10 million (s 23(4)).
- Privacy: If you collect personal information, the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) may also apply. Most businesses with an annual turnover above $3 million are covered, and some smaller businesses are too, including health service providers and businesses that trade in personal information.
Present your products and prices accurately
The first duty is the core transparency obligation. Section 18 of the ACL prohibits engaging in conduct, in trade or commerce, that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive. It applies to everything a customer sees: product descriptions, images, star ratings, marketing emails and the claims in your FAQs. Section 29 goes further and prohibits specific false or misleading representations about goods and services, including representations about standard, quality or value (s 29(1)(a)), price (s 29(1)(i)), testimonials (s 29(1)(e) and (f)) and the existence, exclusion or effect of any condition, warranty, guarantee, right or remedy (s 29(1)(m)).
Substantiate what you say. If you describe a product as waterproof or Australian made, you need a basis for it. A representation that purports to be a testimonial is taken to be misleading unless you can adduce evidence to the contrary (s 29(2)), which is why fake or planted reviews are so dangerous.
State the single price
Pricing deserves its own sub-duty. Under s 48, when you advertise a price for consumer goods or services, you must also state, in a prominent way and as a single figure, the single price for those goods or services. The single price is the minimum quantifiable consideration at the time of the representation, and it includes GST and any other charges that apply (s 48(7)). It must be at least as prominent as the most prominent component price you advertise (s 48(5)). If you do not include a delivery charge in the single price and you know the minimum amount of that charge, you must state that minimum amount as well (s 48(2) and (3)).
In practice, this makes drip pricing a contravention: advertising a headline price and then adding booking, processing or delivery fees at checkout is exactly what the section is aimed at. A price that quietly excludes GST is equally risky. Separate from the ACL, the excessive surcharging ban that has applied to all businesses since 1 September 2017 means card surcharges must be disclosed and cannot exceed your reasonable cost of accepting the card.
Do not manipulate reviews
Customer reviews are a powerful trust signal, which is why regulators treat their manipulation as misleading conduct. In ACCC v Meriton Property Services Pty Ltd (No 2) [2018] FCA 1125, the Federal Court found that Meriton contravened the ACL through its handling of TripAdvisor reviews. Meriton filtered out guests who had complained or were likely to have had a negative experience, by making their email addresses invalid so that TripAdvisor did not invite them to review, and withheld the email addresses of all guests who stayed at properties during major service disruptions. The effect was to reduce the number of negative reviews and improve the relative balance of favourable reviews. Meriton was ordered to pay a pecuniary penalty of $3 million. The case is a reminder that review manipulation, whether by filtering, planting or paying for reviews, is treated as misleading conduct. Disclose any incentive you offer customers for leaving a review.
Make your refunds and returns honour the consumer guarantees
The consumer guarantees in Part 3-2 of the ACL apply automatically to every supply to a consumer. You do not opt into them, and a customer does not need a warranty card to rely on them. Under s 54, goods must be of acceptable quality: fit for the purposes for which goods of that kind are commonly supplied, acceptable in appearance and finish, free from defects, safe and durable, taking into account the nature of the goods, their price and what you said about them.
You cannot contract out of the guarantees
Section 64 makes any term that purports to exclude, restrict or modify the guarantees, or a liability for failing to comply with them, void. A clause in your terms that says no refunds under any circumstances is void to the extent it conflicts with the guarantees, and it is also a false representation about the consumer's rights under s 29(1)(m). For the same reasons, no refund signs and policies are against the law, including no refunds on sale items and no refunds after seven days. Consumer affairs agencies in every state treat these signs as unlawful, and a business cannot take away the right to a refund by displaying a no refund sign. Sale items are still covered by the guarantees.
The remedies customers can demand
If goods fail to meet a guarantee, s 259 sets out what the customer can require. If the failure can be remedied and is not a major failure, the customer can require you to remedy it within a reasonable time. If you refuse, or take too long, the customer can have the failure remedied elsewhere and recover the reasonable costs from you, or reject the goods for a refund or replacement. If the failure is a major failure, or cannot be remedied, the customer can reject the goods outright and receive a refund or replacement, or recover compensation for the reduction in value. Your refund policy should describe these rights accurately. A policy that says we do not offer refunds, only store credit, is a misrepresentation of the consumer's rights.
This area is firmly on the regulators' radar. In February 2025 the ACCC reported on a sweep of more than two thousand Australian retail websites and said it had found return policies and website terms that may contravene the ACL.
Keep your website terms fair, clear and prominent
Your website terms govern the relationship with your customer, so they need to be readable and fair as well as present. The unfair contract terms regime in Part 2-3 of the ACL applies to standard form consumer contracts and small business contracts, which covers the click-through terms most online stores use.
Under s 23, a term of a standard form consumer or small business contract is void if it is unfair. Under s 24, a term is unfair if it would cause a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations, it is not reasonably necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the party advantaged by it, and it would cause detriment to the other party if it were applied or relied on. A term that advantages you is presumed not to be reasonably necessary unless you prove otherwise (s 24(4)).
Transparency is built into the test. In deciding whether a term is unfair, a court must take into account the extent to which the term is transparent (s 24(2)). A term is transparent if it is expressed in reasonably plain language, is legible, is presented clearly and is readily available to the party affected (s 24(3)). This is the legal basis for the practical rule that your terms should be easy to find, easy to read and not buried in fine print.
The regime has real teeth. Following the Treasury Laws Amendment (More Competition, Better Prices) Act 2022, it is itself a contravention to propose an unfair term in a standard form consumer or small business contract, with a separate contravention for each unfair term, and it is also a contravention to apply or rely on an unfair term (s 23(2A) to (2C)). The main subject matter of the contract and the upfront price sit outside the unfairness test (s 26).
At minimum, your terms should cover what you supply, how customers order, delivery and charges, payment, refunds and returns, warranties, how you handle personal information, and how disputes are resolved. For a marketplace, policies governing conduct between traders and buyers, and how disputes between them are resolved, matter as much as the terms between the platform and its users.
Consequences of getting it wrong
The penalty provisions are substantial. For contraventions of the misleading conduct and false representation provisions, the pricing rules and the unfair term prohibitions, a court can order a body corporate to pay the greater of $100 million, three times the benefit obtained from the conduct, or 30% of its adjusted turnover during the breach period, for each contravention (s 224). Individuals can be ordered to pay up to $2.5 million. In the Meriton case, a single course of review manipulation attracted a $3 million penalty.
Courts can also grant injunctions, award damages to consumers and make other orders to remedy the conduct, and the regulators can accept court-enforceable undertakings. Enforcement is active. The ACCC and state agencies regularly take action over pricing, reviews and refunds, and the February 2025 sweep shows they are proactively reviewing exactly the documents this article covers.
A compliance checklist for your online store
Work through these checks before you publish or update anything on your store:
- Run a test order through your own checkout. Check that the single price appears prominently as one figure, includes GST and any charges you know about, and that any excluded delivery charge is stated before the customer pays.
- Check your card surcharges. They must be disclosed and must not exceed your reasonable cost of acceptance.
- Audit your product pages. Descriptions, images, specifications and claims must be accurate and substantiated.
- Review how you handle reviews. Do not filter, plant or pay for reviews, and disclose any incentive you offer.
- Rewrite any refund statements. Remove no refunds, no refunds on sale items and no refunds after seven days, and describe the consumer guarantees accurately.
- Read your terms for fairness and transparency. They should be in plain language, legible, clearly presented and readily available, and should not contain terms that create a significant imbalance or try to exclude the guarantees.
- Keep records of what you represent to customers.
- Train the people who answer refund and complaint enquiries.
When to involve a lawyer
A lawyer is most useful at two points: before you launch or update your store, and when a regulator or a customer raises an issue. A practitioner can review your website terms against the unfair contract terms regime and the consumer guarantees, check your checkout and pricing against the single price rule, and redraft your refund policy so it states the consumer's rights correctly rather than trying to limit them. If the ACCC or a state agency contacts you, whether with an inquiry, a substantiation notice or proposed infringement action, advice before you respond matters, because what you say in response can itself become evidence.
Start with your checkout and your refund policy
If you take one piece of action this week, place a test order through your own website and read your own refund policy. The two most common failures are a headline price that grows at checkout, and a refund policy that promises less than the consumer guarantees. Regulators weigh the prominence of the single price under s 48(5), and whether your terms are in plain language and readily available under s 24(3). If your test order reveals a fee that appears only at the last step, or your refund policy contains a sentence suggesting the guarantees do not apply, fix those two things first. They are the transparency duties most likely to be tested, and the easiest to get right with advice.