It’s been a good week for commonsense government approaches to tackling the cost of living crisis.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced their plan to ban surcharges on debit cards, and just one day later, they added a bonus announcement, promising to crack down on dodgy pricing practices.
As someone who loves a two-for-one deal, this speaks joy for my no-nonsense financial sensibilities.
Grouped within the catch-all term of “dodgy pricing” are practices like drip pricing (where businesses lure us in by a low price only to then tack on additional fees throughout the transaction), dynamic pricing (where prices yoyo based on who else wants exactly what you want), fake warnings of limited stock (hello, incessant ‘Only two items left!’ spam emails), being forced to set up an account to make a purchase, and confusing subscription cancellation processes.
Consumers have to deal with a host of dodgy pricing tricks every time they shop online. Credit: iStock
We can all agree (and swap war stories about our experiences) that these trading practices are at best annoying and at worst intentionally deceptive. While thankfully they’re not as commonplace in Australia as they were a few years ago, they still aren’t formally banned under Australian consumer law.
As it stands, these “industry hacks” aimed at getting more money from us sit outside this, despite this very same law covering things such as consumer rights, lay-bys, product safety and contracts. Under the new plan, though, these deeply infuriating practices will be banned.
According to Statista, Australians spend an........