CHOICE November 2025

One of my favourite parts of working at CHOICE are the emails. Recently, one had our editorial team a bit excited. This CHOICE subscriber in question had purchased a pack of toilet paper that claimed to have 180 sheets per roll on the packaging. But then she opened the pack and started counting… The results: 145, 133, 147, 158 and 153. Uh-oh. If you told this story in the real world, I’d wager the response would be something along the lines of, “why are you counting toilet paper?” The response at CHOICE was the complete opposite. We wanted in. Subscriber-driven, nonprofit services like CHOICE are more important than ever Almost immediately, everyone who had that brand of toilet paper at home was carefully counting toilet paper. Not only were we…

This month will see a broad range of local and international retailers drop prices for the annual Black Friday sales. The event has continued to grow in popularity in Australia in recent years and now rivals the weeks leading up to Christmas as our biggest shopping occasion. For the past few years, national retail spending has been higher in November (when most Black Friday promotions occur) than in December, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The ABS has previously noted Australians are bringing forward their Christmas spending to take advantage of this emerging sale event. Black Friday occurs on the last Friday in November, but many retailers will start their sales earlier. Last year, some major brands dropped Black Friday discounts as early as three weeks before the…

The government has concluded consultation on strengthening the rules around unit pricing at the supermarket. CHOICE research has shown time and time again that consumers are more likely to select the best value product when unit pricing is shown, compared to when it is not. While more people are using unit pricing to save on groceries, less are finding it actually useful. Unfortunately, there has been an uptick in issues reported by consumers, from unit prices that are hard to read or are obscured, to those that use inconsistent units of measurement. (You can read more on page 32.) That’s why we’re calling on the government to expand the scope of the Unit Pricing Code to more stores, so more consumers can benefit from it, but also to tighten the…

Consumer advocates have welcomed recent court decisions paving the way for a big four bank and a major telco to be fined hundreds of millions of dollars. Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) says the record penalties will send a message to businesses to do right by their customers. In September, ANZ admitted it had failed to pay depositors promised savings interest rates and that it had charged fees to dead customers, among other acts of misconduct. The bank is expected to have to pay a record $240 million in penalties for these acts and others. ANZ admitted it had charged fees to dead customers, among other acts of misconduct The admission to the Federal Court was followed by a separate decision by the same body to fine Optus $100 million for…

The Federal Court has imposed a whopping $13.5 million in penalties against retailer The Good Guys for misleading conduct relating to store credit promotions and for failing toprovide credits to more than 20,000 eligible customers. The promotions offered store credit for minimum spends on certain products Between 2019 and 2023, The Good Guys ran 116 promotions offering customers store credit if they spent minimum amounts on certain brands or products. The company failed to properly disclose, however, that these credits could expire as soon as seven or 10 days from the date of issue, and that customers also had to subscribe to marketing communications to use them. “The chance to earn store credit may have encouraged some consumers to make a purchase at The Good Guys they otherwise may not…

Retail giant Kmart has been found to have breached the Privacy Act with its facial recognition program, three years after a CHOICE investigation revealed the invasive technology was in use across Australia. In 2022, CHOICE reported that Kmart, Bunnings and The Good Guys were capturing the biometric data, or unique facial features known as a ‘face print’, of customers entering their stores with facial recognition technology (FRT). Our investigation prompted the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to launch a probe into whether privacy laws had been breached. Kmart sought to justify its use of FRT in stores between June 2020 and July 2022 as a measure to prevent refund fraud. However, the Commissioner said Kmart did not seek customer consent and its collection was not proportional, as there…