{"id":128970,"date":"2025-09-09T00:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T00:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/128970\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T00:49:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T00:49:04","slug":"the-good-guys-ordered-to-pay-13-5m-in-penalties-for-misleading-store-credit-promotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/128970\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Guys ordered to pay $13.5m in penalties for misleading store credit promotions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The Good Guys has been ordered to pay $13.5 million in penalties for misleading promotions and for failing to provide store credit to more than 20,000 eligible customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The Federal Court ordered The Good Guys Discount Warehouses (Australia) Pty Ltd to pay the penalties for 116 promotions that ran between July 2019 and August 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;We took this court action because we were concerned that The Good Guys had failed to adequately disclose some really key conditions attached to these store credit promotions,&#8221; Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">In those promotions, The Good Guys offered customers store credit \u2014 also called StoreCash in some promotions \u2014 if they spent a minimum amount, purchased a specific brand or product, or used a particular payment method.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The amount of credit varied between $10 and $1,000, depending on the promotion.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"an advertisement for The Good Guys offering $100 store credit when you buy a new coffee machine\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1e77c08e4445f04b8a7e55106eaa2706\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">One of the store credit promotions. (ACCC)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The Good Guys admitted that its advertisements for the store credit promotions did not disclose, or adequately disclose, the expiry period of the store credit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">In some promotions that period was less than 10 days and in most cases customers could only get a store credit if they opted in to marketing communications from The Good Guys.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;The chance to earn store credit may have encouraged some consumers to make a purchase at The Good Guys they otherwise may not have made or to choose this retailer over others,&#8221; Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;We were concerned some of those consumers may not have done so had they been aware of all the conditions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">She added that businesses &#8220;must clearly disclose any key terms and conditions or limitations to avoid misleading consumers&#8221; when advertising promotional offers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The Good Guys also admitted that it did not provide store credit within the timeframe it specified to about 21,500 consumers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The Federal Court ordered The Good Guys to provide redress to customers who participated in the promotions by now providing them with store credit with a longer expiry period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">All eligible customers will be contacted by The Good Guys for redress, the ACCC said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Any customer who did not receive their store credit due to not being signed up to marketing material has been remediated, according to the ACCC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The ACCC said The Good Guys co-operated in the process of investigation, admitted liability, and agreed to make joint submissions, including in relation to penalties to the Federal Court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;The Good Guys takes its compliance with the law very seriously and has worked cooperatively with the ACCC to resolve the matter,&#8221; CEO Terry Smart said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;The Good Guys has always sought to provide value and benefits to its customers and has always prided itself on its high levels of trust with consumers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Good Guys has been ordered to pay $13.5 million in penalties for misleading promotions and for failing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11275,64,63,26399,99,89870,89871,89869],"class_list":["post-128970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-accc","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-competition-and-consumer-commission","tag-business","tag-gina-cass-gottlieb","tag-the-good-guys","tag-the-good-guys-discount-warehouses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}