ITWire

TPG has paid penalties totalling $13,200 after receiving two infringement notices from the ACCC claiming that consumers who subscribed to a broadband bundle plan would receive 500 free minutes of VoIP calls. According to the ACCC the full 500 minutes were available only in limited circumstances.

(The payment of infringement notice penalties is not an admission of guilt. The ACCC can issue an infringement notice where it has reasonable grounds to believe there has been a breach. The recipient can choose to pay, or contest the notice.)

ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, said: "The advertising practice of fine-print qualification is one the ACCC is tired of correcting. The ACCC has repeatedly put the telecommunications industry on notice that it will not tolerate misleading advertising, and is concerned that consumers are regularly still not offered transparent and clear information about the price, terms and conditions for their services...The ACCC will take an increasingly aggressive approach to send the message that this kind of misleading advertising will not be tolerated."

The new Competition and Consumer Act greatly strengthens the ACCC's powers to act against companies that are misleading consumers and in a speech in February to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Sims said the ACCC would not hesitate to use them.

"There have been profound changes in Australian Consumer laws recently that are not fully appreciated," he said. "These changes take Australia's consumer laws from a status of lagging the rest of the world to now providing among the strongest protections for consumers."

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