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After more than 10 years at CHOICE, there are a few issues that continue to stick in my craw. One of the biggest is extended warranties. Before I came to CHOICE, I found myself occasionally buying an extended warranty for a major purchase. Who wouldn’t? It sounds like such a good idea. But now I understand a lot more about the basic rights we all enjoy under the Australian Consumer Law. I find myself seething every time I’m offered one. The very term ‘extended warranty’ seems designed to mislead. For a start, it perpetuates the idea that manufacturers’ warranties determine your rights if a product breaks or doesn’t work as intended. That’s patently untrue. Our consumer guarantee laws are some of the best in the world. They say that a…
The government announced $7.2 million in the October 2022 Federal Budget for an interim scheme to assist people caught up in the collapse of funeral insurer Youpla, the predatory insurer that targeted First Nations families with poor-value insurance products. The insurer was criticised during the banking royal commission, with revelations that it signed up newborn babies to funeral insurance policies and misrepresented itself as First Nations-owned when it was not. The government’s interim scheme will assist a small percentage of affected First Nations peoples who meet certain criteria and had a family member die after 1 April 2020. The interim scheme will end in 12 months. Lynda Edwards, Wangkumara/Barkandji woman and financial capability coordinator at Financial Counselling Australia says, “We welcome the federal government’s funding of the interim scheme and…
In the wake of a May 2022 Federal Court decision that found holiday timeshare scheme provider Ultiqa violated financial advice laws, the business has now been slapped with a $900,000 penalty in a case brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). “Ultiqa prioritised sales over appropriate advice and ultimately consumers’ best interests,” says ASIC deputy chair Karen Chester. “The penalty against Ultiqa, the first against a timeshare provider, sends a further significant message to the timeshare industry. When sold alongside financial advice, it is both fundamental and legally required that the advice is in the consumers’ best interests.” CHOICE has lodged five official complaints with ASIC about timeshare schemes since 2016. In 2021, we lodged a ‘super complaint’ to ASIC about the industry as a whole, alleging at…
CHOICE consumer data advocate Kate Bower joined the judging panel for the Tech for Good: ADM+S Dark Ads Hackathon in September. The 2.5-day event brought together over 40 participants from social science, humanities, and computer science to hack new ideas and methods for better transparency in online advertising. The Hackathon was hosted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), in collaboration with government and consumer rights organisations, who recognised an urgent need for better transparency and accountability following recent examples of price discrimination, scam advertising and predatory targeting in online advertising spaces. The winning pitch, ‘Using postcodes to identify discriminatory patterns in online advertising data’, used the existing ADM+S Australian Ad Observatory database of half-a-million advertisements donated by close to 2000 participants, alongside statistical data…
The federal government is promising to crack down on companies who commit serious or repeated breaches of the Privacy Act, putting stronger privacy laws before parliament. Under the Privacy Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, the maximum penalty for companies found to seriously or repeatedly interfere with privacy will increase from $2.22 million to at least $50 million. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says the bigger fine will “incentivise” companies to be more careful with consumer data: “When Australians are asked to hand over their personal data they have a right to expect it will be protected,” he says. “It’s not enough for a penalty for a major data breach to be seen as the cost of doing business.” The legislation change comes in the wake of high-profile cyber attacks against telco Optus and…
There’s nothing quite as nasty as an unexpected charge on your credit or debit card. In our recent review of car rental companies (at choice.com.au/carhirereview), we found many of the major car hirers in Australia reserved the right in their fine print to charge your card long after the rental period. Hertz and Thrifty state that they may charge your card up to 60 days after the rental. Sixt says “in most cases a period of 60 days”. But the winner of the dodgiest credit card terms goes to Europcar, who states “charges may be made at any time during or after the end of the Rental Period”. Avis and Budget don’t specify a time limit. We were unable to find clear guidance from regulators on limits for the period…
