Watchdog warns retailers over fake Black Friday deals and false urgency

Retailers are being warned by Australia’s consumer watchdog not to mislead shoppers into thinking they’re getting more of a deal than they actually are during upcoming Black Friday sales.

With many businesses having already begun sales, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on Tuesday said it is ramping up its policing efforts against misleading behaviour to also include a sweep of advertising across websites, email promotions and social media posts.

Aggressive discounting tactics have seen Black Friday and Cyber Monday (a Thanksgiving-linked four-day shopping window at the end of November adopted locally from the US) blow out to an entire month of competitive promotions in recent years, with many Australians using it as an opportunity to organise Christmas gifts early. Last year, about 6 million Australians were estimated to have spent about $39 billion across the month.

Retailers spruiking “sitewide” or “storewide” claims, when they are actually excluding a large number of products from the sale, are a key focus for the ACCC this year, which said “a fine print disclaimer is not sufficient to qualify the headline message of the promotion”.

“A false sense of urgency” created by time-limited offers and countdown timers on websites when the offers will actually continue beyond the stated end date will also be scrutinised by the watchdog.

Promotional tactics to pressure shoppers to make purchases, including misleading testimonials and scarcity messaging, such as false claims that stock levels are low, as well as ads comparing sale prices to a misleading reference price, when those items were never, or not recently, sold at those reference prices, will also be under the regulator’s microscope.

“A ‘sale’ sign doesn’t always mean it’s a good deal,” ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said, encouraging shoppers to focus on the end price of a product.

“Consumers should be able to trust that the advertised savings and discount prices are genuine, but we know some businesses use tactics to mislead consumers into thinking they are getting a bargain even when they are not,” she said.

“Retailers risk ACCC enforcement action if they misrepresent the size, scope or duration of their sales. Retailers should not be relying on fine print disclaimers or exclusions to qualify the headline message of a promotion,” Lowe said.

The Australian Retail Council released research on Tuesday showing local shoppers were expected to spend a record $7.2 billion over the four-day Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend alone, a 5.5 per cent rise on last year.

The average shopper is expected to spend about $920 across the period, with almost one in three Australians planning to spend more than $1000. Men are expected to spend an average of $1028, compared to $822 for women. Technology items are most sought after by men during the window, while women reported planning purchases of clothing, footwear and accessories.

“With an unrelenting pressure on many household budgets, shoppers are looking to make their money go even further this year,” the Council’s chief industry engagement officer Fleur Brown said.

The watchdog’s warning follows it issuing a slew of fines to retailers over misleading Black Friday claims in recent years. Last year, this masthead reported one major national chain hiked a product’s price before lowering it so it could claim it as a Black Friday “top pick”.

In 2025, one-third of advertised Black Friday deals globally offered no real savings or were, in fact, more expensive than their lowest prices advertised throughout October and early November, according to an analysis of 2620 products conducted by Canada-based website monitoring firm Visualping.

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