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This is in relations to Kogan raising prices for the eBay 20% off discount deal in August 2015.
http://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/kogan-pays-32400-penalt…
ACCC Fines Kogan $32,400 for Alleged Misleading and Deceptive Conduct
aggregate on 18/01/2016 - 10:04
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Liquidation…
Wait it is is already happening..
Karma works!
Wow nice work, I hope the other stores that pull off this sneaky practice also get punished. If it is purely an eBay promotion where eBay is taking the full brunt of the 20% discount I see no reason why stores like Dick Smith and Kogan jack up their prices apart from pure greed.
we are not privy to who is taking the discounted amount, so to the consumer anyone who does it is guilty and should be fined. but its the ACCC so they wont
Good, i hope this sends a message to all the other price-jackers out there who think they are smart and can do this without anybody noticing.
Yep, I hope that Kogan is just first in a long list of companies that ACCC are planning on taking action with. These eBay deals have just become free adversising for so many of the 'stores' involved. Minimal to no benefit for the buyers at the end of the day.
Yeap, those ebay sales are just a con, and pisses me off
when there website price is much lower and in some cases after applying the ebay discount the price is increased compare to their sale price prior
About time someone got snagged for this. Lets hope all the others take notice.
awesome news!
So the usual suspects will now just remove listings on big % off sales on ebay as that won't attract fines?
Wonder if the 32k fine goes anywhere close to the extra revenue brought in with the price jacking?
Agreed but this fine is better than nothing and it's a start.
If sellers keep removing their products in a sale then I hope ebay stops advertising them.
That's fine with me
as long as they don't jack up the prices of the other items on the ebay sale..
Also it just means they won't be selling as much ps4, xbox etc..
if they decide not to include it in the ebay sale
Great result.
No doubt this is in a large way due to people here tracking and reporting the issues. Next stop, all the data and examples I sent to the ACCC on The Good Guys sham ebay promotions.
also include the GG sham of the paypal transaction error when the item doesnt have enough margin
+1. :)
No surprise really. Not the first time either.
I keep saying in all my posts how dodgy Kogan are and you shouldn't buy from them. They raised prices before a sale so you don't get much
more dishonest than that. Consumers buy thinking they are getting a cheap deal and they are actually getting deceived.Article here http://www.itnews.com.au/news/kogan-slugged-with-32k-penalty…
Kogan in Court for Refusing Warranty https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/207477
Try getting warranty from them.
You only have to read Kogan's responses in the all the posts with negative comments to see how scarky and screw you their responses are.
If they tell you they'll fix it, they lie. They lie in advertising and they lie when you need warranty. It's a screw you to the honest consumer.
Still want to buy Kogan ?
i would have to say they tried this with me on a smart tv that was 16 months old.
then i quoted them my consumer rights and they posted me a new motherboard and power board for it
for free, had to install them myself only took 1 hr- That's bad a smart TV only lasted that long
- That's bad You had to install it yourself
- That's bad you have to force them like I had to
At least you got some kind of result
I agree Kogan are shonky.
But they sold me an ipad air for $370, an iphone 5s for $550 and a macbook air 13in for $750.
Each of these prices were dramatically below market rate at the time. I was the beneficiary of these cheap prices, not misled. Savings are worth the risk for me.I feel the same way about Kogan as you do. The savings have been worth the risk for me, too. I have an aging Galaxy S3 phone that I bought from Kogan at a great price, and it remains a very good phone. Yes, Kogan may be dodgy, but the champion of all time when it came to false discounts was Dick Smith Electronics. My other purchases from Kogan have been cheap cables and plugs etc.
Not just kogan
Dicksmith was the worst.
Also there were comments recently that Kogan were jacking the prices on items a couple of months ago. Has anyone got any proof of that because I'll go to the ACCC with it.
Never bought anything worthwhile from Kogan, bunch of cheap knockoff shite. Fine should be way higher and what about all the other retailers who pull this?
A lot of the stuff on Kogan is much cheaper on ebay or other chinese retailers sites
I think it'd be worth the ACCC also going into the levels of poor customer service and other deceptive behaviours from more online australian businesses. Kogan is just the cusp of what customers have to deal with regarding online shopping.
What a start to a Monday morning.
Thanks Op. I suggest the title omits 'alleged' because their conduct has been established and fined for.
Technically Kogan paid the fine so that ACCC will not pursue the matter any further.
The last paragraph of the press release actually says 'the payment of a penalty specified in an infringement notice is not an admission of a contravention of the Australia Consumer Law.'
To be honest, I don't get this whole X% off thing. Why is everybody so obsessed with 20% off, 30% off, 50% off,…etc. when what matters should be the final price. If the final price is $200 and that's a good price, does it matter if it's only 2% off? Again, if the final price is $500 and that's a bad price, does it matter it's 99% off?
How do you know it's a good price if you don't know what to compare it to?
$200 is a good price, if it was $500, but $200 is not a good price if it was $205.Problem here is that they are using the % off but giving misleading information about how much to compare it to. So an unaware buyer, may think they are getting $300 off (great!) but is really getting $30 off (boo!).
You would do research and compare. I don't know anyone who compares a sale price to RRP, you'd shop around and look at what competitors are offering. It's great they've been fined, but how much taxpayer money are we wasting on stuff like this? One of the first thing I ever learned as a kid was never trust RRP and sale prices and never trust salesmen, do we really need to protect people from themselves?
Fines like these mean that Kogan will recoup the costs elsewhere to bring up their bottom line. Intelligent shoppers lose, as they always do when you need to protect the stupid ones.
Because it is con/scam that is why..
When they say they are discount 20% but then jack the prices up
the actual discount not 20%So it is misleading
Kogan are awfully quiet.
Normally they've got a lot to say.
Maybe they're thinking up another way to screw customers and trying not to get caught.
They're already jacking prices before sales and not providing warranty. Mmmmmmmm what next I wonder ?Maybe their sarcastic & disdainful comments to their customers feedback take a long time to carefully craft?
I preferred the Jamaican version..
Add to that Kogan redirecting sales off shore, this avoids Australian's consumer laws and potentially tax dollars too.
They also have sales practices that are similar to "bait advertising", where they advertise an item very cheap, it drives lots of users to their site, they on sell other items and then say the original heavily discounted item is out of stock or they cant get stock. Say the item is $500 and 1,000 people got sucked in, for that one item they never had an intention of selling that's half a million dollars sitting in their accounts for a few weeks earning interest plus the revenue from any additional items the buyers purchased. Some might say "fair go, it's not their fault the couldn't get the items from their supplier", if they were honest they wouldn't sell items that were not in stock AND if you ask for them to keep your payment and send the item once it is back in stock they refuse.
It's a pity Australian consumer protection is so limp wrist-ed.
If that is the case with Kogan, I wonder what should be the fine for Dick Smith.