Under the Fair Trading Act, the Commerce Commission has filed eight charges against 2degrees for creating misleading claims about their ‘free Aussie roaming’ for business mobile plans.
According to Vanessa Horne, the General Manager of Fair Trading, the 2degrees campaign from 2020 to 2023 led their customers to believe that they would be able to roam for a whole year in Australia without paying anything additional. However, this was not true.
“Businesses need to make sure that key information about claims they’re making is easy to find, and not buried in the fine print,” Ms Horne said.
Mrs Horne reiterated that when businesses describe something as “free,” it is likely a tactic to persuade customers into purchasing their offer. However, when businesses withhold information from their customers by not making the conditions of their offers clear, they risk breaching the Fair Trading Act.
“Consumers should be able to rely on the truth and accuracy of advertising headline claims as they are often central to the overall impression created by the advertising,” Mrs Horne continued.
The Commission has claimed that 2degrees’ marketing campaign for this offer was unclear and misleading. They used claims such as “Aussie business roaming at no extra cost” and “the other guys charge for Aussie business roaming, we don’t.” In reality, there was a cap for free roaming at 90 days each year. This means that if customers used more than 90 days of roaming, they would be charged for this additional roaming per day.
Since the Commerce Commission has filed these charges, 2degrees has revised their claims and provided compensation to those customers who were affected. One of the things they have done to amend the situation is remove the 90-day limit on free roaming in Australia, and provide refunds to any preexisting or previous customers who were charged for the business roaming after 90 days. They have also made updates to their marketing and advertising material.
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