I occasionally wish the ACCC had some more teeth but this is a good result. As a citizen, on the whole, I'm as proud of Australia's strong consumer protection laws as I am of our gun protection laws.
The ACCC and strong consumer protection laws are something I didn't realise I took for granted until I moved to the US recently. I had a pair of pants develop a hole within a few weeks of purchase so I took them back to the store and it was difficult to convince them that pants should last longer than that and get a replacement. This is in contrast to my Fitbit, for example, which I had replaced about three times in two years without question in Australia because of a fault in the band.
It's interesting that capitalism comes into it somewhat, insofar as companies like Amazon and REI have consumer-friendly return policies as a sort of competitive advantage. I know I've bought things from REI despite a higher price just because I know I won't have any problems returning it for any reason within 12 months.
That is interesting. In my case, I have had the best consumer-friendly experience when it comes to returning or replacing items in the US. Returning electronics, clothes etc. to Wallmart, Target, BestBuy was totally hassle-free.
When compared to Germany, the overall experience in the US is much better. Although Germans have "stronger" customer rights protection, in reality, you get less customer satisfaction. For example, a few days ago I purchased a pair of sunglasses from TKMaxx in Germany. After wearing it a couple of times, I realized that there are tiny scratches on them. I then took it back for a replacement. I was denied the replacement, because "the item didn't have the original price sticker on it". It was such a ridiculous excuse. I tear the price sticker the moment I buy the stuff. How am I supposed to test it to see if I like it without using it at all?
There was another friend of mine who wanted to get a replacement for a malfunctioning smartphone he bought in MediaMarkt. He was also denied the replacement in the first place. After a long "negotiations" he was finally given a new smartphone, which, again, would not happen in the US at all.
All in all, I find shopping experience in the US to be way better than in Europe.
You'll find that replacements for change of mind in Australia (and perhaps other countries with strong consumer protections) are less friendly. I have definitely noticed there are more stores in the US (especially big box retailers that are competing with Amazon) that have flexible return policies in the short term for changing your mind, while my expectation for any store in Australia is that you are likely unable to return something for change of mind if it has been used.
The trade off for that is that you get very long periods of fitness for use, where you can comfortably buy something that is advertised for a purpose and know that you can return it after a reasonable time if it isn't actually fit for that purpose. A good example is smartphones and laptops, where Australian-sold iphones effectively have a two year warranty and macbooks have a three year one iirc because of these strong consumer protection laws.
It's these kinds of faulty goods returns to smaller retailers that I've had most trouble with in the US (and where I think consumer protection makes the most sense). In Australia the consumer would simply file a complaint online to the Department of Fair Trading (or whatever it is for their state) and these are usually resolved within a couple of weeks or less and usually in the consumer's favour. I'm not aware of any equivalent in the US, and if it does exist I'm sure it varies significantly state-to-state.
>> How am I supposed to test it to see if I like it without using it at all?
Test it in the store. Nobody in north america expects they can buy something, walk away with it, and then have a right to return it simply because they don't "like it". A store may take it back but only because they are kind, not because they are under any legal obligation.
Remember there is always a flip side to returns. Either the seller eats a loss, or they put the now used object back on the shelf as new. That is why safety-related products have a zero-returns policy. Rock climbing gear is generally non-returnable. I probably would not buy climbing gear from any store that did returns for fear of getting used gear with unseen problems.
> Nobody in north america expects they can buy something, walk away with it, and then have a right to return it simply because they don't "like it".
What are you talking about? Many refund agreements have exactly this in mind. It's a competitive advantage for the store to be lenient.
When I worked at Walmart and Target during summers as a teen, we were encouraged to get the customer to buy a few different options (curtains for example) and tell them to just return the ones they don't want. Especially clothes.
I encourage you to check out the terms of refund for the places you shop instead of assuming you're stuck with a product you don't want.
>> Many refund agreements have exactly this in mind.
Agreements, contracts between willing parties, not legal rights coming from law. I expect that I can return something, I don't pretend that I have a legal expectation that I can do so at any and all stores.
Well, the fact is Germany has neither. At least in the US customers do get higher quality customer service and that is what matters. I would rather have a satisfied consumer experience than a useless set of laws and regulations that does no good to anyone.
As @always_good pointed out already, a flexible return policy is actually a competitive advantage for the company if they know how to conduct a retail business properly. I, for example, would always prefer Amazon to any other German online store simply because the confidence Amazon gives me when shopping. I can easily go on a shopping spree on Amazon knowing that if I don't like something I can easily send it back, although, during the last 3 years, I haven't sent a single item back to Amazon.
Thanks, but I will pass. I would rather test my stuff at home, taking my time. In general, it will lead to higher customer satisfaction and confidence. People would be willing to buy more often knowing that in case they are not satisfied, they can simply return the product hassle-free. (A concise and clear return policy gives consumers a feeling of security; that what they are buying is guaranteed to be what it is represented to be. If a retailer doesn't give this guarantee, then consumers often become suspicious and avoid buying the product.)
> Nobody in north america expects they can buy something, walk away with it, and then have a right to return it simply because they don't "like it".
Have you ever been to the Customer service section of a WallMart store? :)
Of course, there should be a code of honor by the customers as well. If you buy something with the intention of returning it after using, then you are just a bad person. But that shouldn't mean If I have legitimate reasons to return some item, I shouldn't. That is how stores maintain customer satisfaction, thus a competitive advantage.
You want the receipt to return stuff at the market, though generally if it's not a warranty case then you're at the sellers good will if they accept it.
Online shops are a bit better and you can return within 14 days no questions asked.
Most of german consumer protection happens at the backend and between shops, not directly with the consumer.
of course, I had the receipt. Otherwise, they wouldn't even consider replacing them.
> though generally if it's not a warranty case then you're at the sellers good will if they accept it.
well, that is the problem. A good set of consumer protection laws shouldn't leave the consumer to the seller's good will, don't you think?
> Most of german consumer protection happens at the backend and between shops, not directly with the consumer.
Whatever that means... Why would I care what happens behind the doors If I, as a consumer, don't see the real-life benefits of it?
The thing is, German customer protection laws are just laws with no real implications. As with almost everything else in Germany, there are more exceptions to the laws than the laws themselves, which makes it possible for the stronger side (sellers, renter, contractors etc. ) to find a loophole and exploit it for their benefit.
I am not even talking about scammy contracts with internet and mobile companies that would not be possible in any other developed country. A very relevant link: https://twitter.com/FRYTG/status/1023927351514734593
>A good set of consumer protection laws shouldn't leave the consumer to the seller's good will, don't you think?
When you buy in store, the old saying "bought as seen" applies. If I buy some food and find out on the way home that it's spoiled and past date, I can bring it back and likely it'll get replaced but they don't have to. I should have checked. When you buy glasses, check for scratches.
For warranty claims you'd need some kind of bigger problem than something that can be considered wear and tear or that was present when bought.
The consumer laws are concerned with malicious activity where someone is trying to actively trick a customer (which is where you get silly rulings like vegan sausages not being able to be called sausages as such would imply it contains meat).
And don't worry about implications or consequences, when the responsible government offices get riled up they really hit hard.
In regards to mobile/internet contracts, it helps to read the fineprint. Additionally if they do make trouble, contacting your local customer rights organization, the contract will get dropped very fast with little complaints.
> If I buy some food and find out on the way home that it's spoiled and past date, I can bring it back and likely it'll get replaced but they don't have to. I should have checked. When you buy glasses, check for scratches.
Under Australian consumer law, the product is considered faulty and you are entitled to a refund or replacement.
In fact if the product is as sold or unconsumed, you are entitled to a refund within 30 days of sale.
> In regards to mobile/internet contracts, it helps to read the fineprint.
The same old argument... The problem originates from the fact that the internet/phone providers can actually put those fine prints on the contract. So saying that you should read the fineprints doesn't mean anything. Why don't I have the same type of scammy contract elsewhere? Why is it only in Germany (at least among the many countries I have lived in)? Why does someone who already moved to the Netherlands have to wait for 6 months to cancel the contract they had with a phone company? Shouldn't it be immediate? I leave the country, which means I should be able to cancel any contracts that I have with any company. That should be a basic customer right, or even better, that should be the default treatment of customers by the companies without even needing all these regulations. The copmanies should have this customer-centric mindset, which is lacking in Germany in almost every field (aka Serviewüste Deutschland)
> If I buy some food and find out on the way home that it's spoiled and past date, I can bring it back and likely it'll get replaced but they don't have to.
The sell by date is set by the merchant, so you’re right there. But spoilt? I doubt it’s ok to sell rotten food in any western country.
> Article 14 states that food shall not be placed on the market if it is unsafe. Food is deemed to be unsafe if it is:
> - injurious to health
> - unfit for human consumption
I’m not sure you can make the claim that as long as you didn’t know, it was ok. Sure, actual mistakes can mean it’s not a punishable offence, but that doesn’t change your responsibilities: you sell something, it has to be reasonably fit for purpose. Consumer laws don’t care whether the merchant didnt try to mislead you when it comes to their responsibilities for the products they sell.
Those scratches were only visible under direct sunlight and after a close examination. Besides, you assume that it is always possible to see defects when buying an item, which is, I am sorry, really ridiculous.
The point is, if I bought the same pair of glasses in the US, there would be zero problems returning them. Absolutely zero. In most cases, they would even apologize for selling you a defective item and wasting your time. Not the case for Germany, and this is the problem. Does Germany have better customer protection laws than most of the developing world? Definitely. Does Germany have better customer protection laws and better customer satisfaction than the US and most other developed countries? Definitely not. And that was my point.
American businesses love to bend over backwards for the customer but hate to admit that they owe you anything. If you ask for a replacement almost as if it's a favor, they find it flattering. If you say anything that implies you think they're obligated, they find it threatening, and it will take you much longer to walk out with a replacement (and a much less friendly send-off.)
Meriton is run by Harry Triguboff who is one of a generation of migrant financiers, industrialists and corporate heads who defined postwar Australia. He has a pretty strong involvement in the Australian housing bubble and some people have said online he's propping up the price boom, as Chinese investors duck out of the market.
I've also read that he retains substantive control of the apartment complex body corporate, to milk it for post-construction fee income, which can be a long, long tail of money. And, he can stop the BC voting to reduce management fees, or stop it forcing the developer to fix post-construction minor slipups.
As someone who has a few contacts in the high density housing market in Australia, I can say that I've heard similar rumours regarding Meriton. I've also heard horror stories about their actual construction quality and the expected life span of their apartments etc. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be doing anything illegal, so it's really up to the Australian public to push for stronger regulations regarding these practices, or just not buy into high density housing in most of Australia as it seems there has been a race to the bottom amongst Meriton and it's competitors.
By unfortunate, I mean that what they are doing should be illegal, but isn't. Not really comparable to murder, which has, at least in theory, been illegal since Hammurabi.
The precedent this sets is interesting. From my interpretation, a business must request reviews from all customers, via all methods, for each platform, in order to not be considered ‘manipulating consumers’.
This will have impacts for all the saas review management products, as their key selling point is usually: get more reviews from your happy customers, or stop your unhappy customers posting reviews. Which is usually done by targeting or omitting either group.
Any Australian business using such product would now be on the hook.
As other commenters have pointed out below, the issue the ACCC took was not that they didn't request reviews from all customers, but rather that they specifically and actively excluded people who they suspected might have had bad experiences from a program where otherwise all other customers were included.
From the ruling [0]:
On a weekly basis, Meriton provided TripAdvisor with the email addresses of guests who had stayed at its properties and TripAdvisor sent email invitations to these guests to post a review. However, rather than sending TripAdvisor the email addresses of all guests who had stayed at its properties (other than those who had requested that their details not be provided), Meriton adopted the following two practices:
(a) The first practice was to add the letters “MSA” (which stand for Meriton Serviced Apartments) to the front of the email addresses of certain guests. This rendered the email address invalid. This practice was applied to guests who had made a complaint or were otherwise considered likely to have had a negative experience at a Meriton property. I will refer to this practice as the MSA-masking practice.
(b) The second practice was to withhold from TripAdvisor the email addresses of all the guests who had stayed at a property during a period of time when there had been a major service disruption (such as the lifts not working, no hot water, etc). I will refer to this practice as the bulk withholding practice.
> From my interpretation, a business must request reviews from all customers, via all methods, for each platform, in order to not be considered ‘manipulating consumers’
There is definitely room for broader enforcement of this judgement, but I don't think your interpretation is correct, especially the "via all methods, for each platform" part.
Yeah, I'm hoping there was just some info missing from the article, but this decision seems all sorts of fucked up.
All Trip Advisor Review Express really does automate the process of requesting reviews on Trip Advisor. It's not much harder to just email out requests to guests yourself. So is this decision saying if you only emailed requests to people who thought would give you a good review, but not a bad review, that you are guilty of something?
If so, literally 99% of businesses would be guilty of this. When someone calls to complain, every business tries to handle it in house. It's not like they say "Oh, I'm sorry you had a bad experience, let me get you the contact info for BBB so you can complain to them, and be sure to post a bad review on our Facebook page!"
What about all those apps that pop up a dialog that says "Do you love our app?" and if you say yes it takes you to the app store, and if you say no it shows an internal complaint dialog?
I don’t see what’s so bad about this. Just because 99% of businesses do it doesn’t make it ok. Encouraging happy people to leave reviews and discouraging upset people means the reviews aren’t accurate, and you turn them from a useful tool for getting outside opinions into a marketing tool that just benefits businesses at the expense of their customers.
I don’t see this as being any different from, say, getting a passing inspection from the health department by manipulating them away from the room where you keep all the cockroaches and rat feces.
> So is this decision saying if you only emailed requests to people who thought would give you a good review, but not a bad review, that you are guilty of something?
Yes, given that reviews are assumed-default to be unbiased by consumers, the above procedure leads to biased reviews. We'd all be better off if the above requirement were the default everywhere, to avoid this kind of review-hacking.
I think you're right: Product Review is doing a nice line in politely blackmailing companies to pay for their product to avoid negative reviews on PR's site: "Resolve customer complaints before they are published. When your customers write a negative review, they will be presented with two options: to post it publicly or to resolve it privately."[1]
Exactly. I don’t see how that could not be considered manipulative.
Most other review product don’t have their own review website, but effectively do the same thing prior to posting to a public review platform (google business, trip advisor, etc). “Rate our product out of 10” where a result of 5 - 10 requests a review and below 5 leads to a “provide us some feedback”.
Either action independently is not manipulative (requesting feedback or requesting review) but the combination certainly seems to be.
Yeah, product review are funny. I published a bad review, and was offered money to take it down by the company (and I saw other reviews mention that it had happened to them for the same company). I mentioned it to Product Review and suggested that they look at reviews for that company to see if they'd had a disproportionate number of bad reviews removed and they said it all seemed fine to them...
This is so interesting! There are so many apps that request reviews, I'm sure a lot only do it when the user seems happy to be using the app. Could they be fined?
I mean - it's good that they have been fined, but I'm concerned about the precedent it sets!
Another thought - how did ACCC find out about this? Someone internal reported it to them?
"Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law provides that a person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive."
From skimming the judgement looks like a whistleblower reported them to ABC (television station)
"In October 2015, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation program went to air that raised issues about Meriton’s practices in relation to TripAdvisor."
This is probably what led to the ACCC investigation
In the court judgement there are internal emails submitted as evidence between executives where they discuss "masking" practice etc.
The email evidence is what got them convicted I think it reads to me anyway as pretty irrefutable evidence - they discuss in detail what they were doing and how they were knowingly violating ToS of Trip Advisor.
The judgement indicates that the issue here was that Meriton was actively preventing people from being asked for reviews in certain circumstances. Very different from someone being asked for a review and choosing not to give one.
What I am talking about is when an App will sometimes have a popup saying "Love this app? leave a review" with a link. Does this fall under the same issue if the app selectively chooses who to display this pop up to?
My gut feel on this, is that if you use a metric to infer if you will get a positive review and only show the popup in those cases, you might be in conflict of this ruling
If you have enough annoyed off customers that you're running analytics to determine whether they're likely to leave a negative review, and interfering with their ability to leave that review on a third party site - then perhaps you should focus more on fixing your business instead.
If you're asking a customer if they're satisfied with the service/product, and then following that up to try and resolve it - that's not misleading or deceptive, that's normal customer service.
I used to work for Cogent Communications, this was common practice in customer service. Comstat scores are 100% gamed.
The Global Director of customer service has his managers change ticket parameters for two weeks around ticket closure so that only 'happy' customers get review emails.
2014 was a record year for the apartment developer, with the company’s annual turnover rising more than 50 per cent to $2 billion, bringing it to 11th place in IBISWorld's 2014 Top 500 Companies, up from 29th spot the previous year. The HIA-Colorbond steel Housing 100 named Meriton as Australia’s largest residential home builder, up more than 5000 housing starts, from 2573 in FY2013-14 to 7929. Based on this figure, new homes by Meriton accounted for around 10 per cent of all multi-unit dwellings commenced in Australia, and 29.5 per cent of all multi-unit dwellings commenced in New South Wales. Meriton projects equated to approximately 0.05 per cent of Australia’s GDP.
> Meriton is Australia's largest apartment developer and also the country's biggest residential home builder founded by Harry Triguboff AO, its managing director, in 1963. Meriton sells apartments and also operates serviced apartments accommodation under its Meriton Suites brand in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
> In 2007, it was estimated the company was building about 1,200 apartments each year. By 2010 this figure had increased to 2,000 units. It is estimated that over the past 50 years, Meriton has built more than 65,000 residential apartments on the east coast of Australia. It also offers serviced accommodation in 17 locations.
> 2014 was a record year for the apartment developer, with the company’s annual turnover rising more than 50 per cent to $2 billion
Just an idea. Why not penalize by percentage? If the goal of penalties is to prevent companies from breaking laws that are equally valid for everyone. Otherwise, companies holding most capital will be practically above the law.
You'll see that most of these amounts are pretty close to the amount the companies made from the activities and scale with the size of their operations
Right. Given their size, I'm not sure how painful this amount would be to the offender. Too low, and it's just a cost of doing business. A percentage penalty (of nationwide if not worldwide revenue) might prove much more concerning to them, much as we're seeing with general alarm caused by the fear of the GDPR's percentage penalty.
I'm guessing that is the case, especially considering it was a precedent, seems to be more about shooting across the bow of large companies engaging in this behaviour and putting them on notice rather than actual punishment.
