{"id":399314,"date":"2025-11-23T14:50:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T14:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399314\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T14:50:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T14:50:20","slug":"federal-government-will-move-to-ban-consumer-trap-costing-australians-46-million-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399314\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal government will move to ban consumer ‘trap’ costing Australians $46 million a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The federal government will move to ban “subscription traps” and drip pricing \ufeffin Australia.<\/p>\n

Assistant Minister for Competition Andrew Leigh said Labor would bring legislation to parliament to ban the practices.<\/p>\n

Leigh said traps had plagued three out of four Australians with subscriptions.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe federal government will move to ban “subscription traps” and drip-pricing \ufeffin Australia. (Getty)<\/p>\n

“Many people have reported problems in cancelling a gym membership or in getting out of an online subscription,” he said today.<\/p>\n

“Some subscriptions can be signed up for online, but to cancel you’ve got to pick up the phone.<\/p>\n

“In other cases, we’ve heard about subscriptions that can be started immediately online, but then if you want to cancel, it takes 28 days.\ufeff”<\/p>\n

The Consumer Policy Research Centre estimates subscription traps are costing Australians $46 million a year.<\/p>\n

“There’s a place for subscriptions in a modern economy, but they should be as easy to get out of as they were to get into,” Leigh said<\/p>\n

“A simple rule for businesses: if you can’t cancel a subscription through the same process that you started the subscription, then perhaps there’s a subscription trap going on.\ufeff”<\/p>\n

\"TheThe government is also looking to ban drip pricing, which is a practice where additional costs are added during the purchasing process. (Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p>\n

The government is also looking to ban drip pricing, where additional costs are added during the purchasing process.<\/p>\n

“In one instance, a concert ticket that was advertised for $89 ended up costing $129 once additional surcharges were added in,” Leigh said.<\/p>\n

“We had the case of a home internet plan which was advertised for a low introductory price, until the person went through and discovered that there was a non-negotiable $79.99 fee that was going to be added through the process.<\/p>\n

“Right now, firms that don’t engage in drip pricing are finding themselves undercut by rivals who are offering a beginning price which isn’t actually the ending price.”<\/p>\n

Leigh said the government would confirm a timeline for the reforms soon.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government will move to ban “subscription traps” and drip pricing \ufeffin Australia. Assistant Minister for Competition…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":399315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-399314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115599575494446252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}