There’s no specific ban on adding fees to an advertised price before checkout – also known as drip pricing. But the practice can fall foul of laws that prohibit misleading conduct.
Articles on drip pricing
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Hard on the heels of pledging a crackdown on excessive surcharges, the Albanese government has promised legislation to ban unfair trading practices.
Each of these tricks is old, but each has been supercharged by the use of information technology.
We are easy prey for drip pricing, the practice of incrementally disclosing unavoidable additional fees, squeezing our wallets and feeling unfair.
Those annoying fees at the end of your online booking? They should be disclosed early.
ACCC Chairman Rod Sims has put drip pricing in online markets on the regulator’s hit list for the year ahead, warning there would “shortly be enforcement in this area”. It’s a welcome and overdue move…
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Emeritus Professor, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Applied Ethics and CyberSecurity, Griffith University
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Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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Professor of Law (consumer protections and credit law), The University of Melbourne