Webjet fined $9 million for excluding fees from ads, falsely confirming bookings
In the Federal Court case, brought on by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Webjet admitted it made misleading statements in promotional emails and social media posts on airfare prices between 2018 and 2023.
Webjet further admitted it provided false or misleading booking confirmations to 118 customers for flights it had not actually confirmed between 2019 and 2024, then asked for payments of up to $2,120 from consumers to complete the booking.
Webjet has since refunded those customers.
The consumer watchdog began investigating Webjet after a customer complained that an airfare advertised as "from $18" ended up costing triple that amount once all the compulsory fees were added.
"We took this case because we considered that Webjet used misleading pricing by excluding or not adequately disclosing compulsory fees in its ads," ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
Compulsory fees, including "Webjet servicing fee" and "booking price guarantee" fee, ranged from $34.90 to $54.90 a booking, depending on the destination.
While fees were disclosed on the website, app and most emails, Webjet's social media posts did not disclose the additional fees.
"Retailers must ensure their advertised prices are accurate. They should clearly disclose additional fees and charges," Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.
Webjet's fees made up 36 per cent of its total revenue between November 1, 2018 and November 13, 2023.
Webjet cooperated with the ACCC, admitted liability and agreed to make joint submissions to the court about orders, including the penalty.
A statement published to the ASX by Webjet Group on Monday acknowledged the agreed penalties.
"In accordance with the Federal Court's orders, and consistent with the agreement reached between the parties, Webjet Marketing has agreed to:
In a February ASX statement, Webjet said it had "voluntarily and proactively implemented improvements to its fee disclosures".
"Webjet Group is confident that any customer concern with its offering, disclosure, service, or pricing was limited," it said.
"It has always prided itself on its high levels of trust with all customers and stakeholders and has fully cooperated and positively engaged with the ACCC to resolve this matter."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
SBS Australia
10 minutes ago
- SBS Australia
'It's a long game': International student cap increase welcomed, despite housing caveat
The addition of 25,000 student enrolments for next year has been welcomed by the university sector, despite questions about how to unlock the placements. On Monday, Education Minister Jason Clare announced a National Planning Level of 295,000 international student places for 2026 to manage growth in a "sustainable" way. The government will issue a new direction for the changes, replacing Ministerial Direction 111, which acted as a de facto cap and enabled it to reduce numbers by slowing visa processing and assigning quotas for international students to each university. Clare announced two caveats for universities to gain additional placements: student housing and a focus on Southeast Asian neighbours. Education Minister Jason Clare has increased international university numbers by 9 per cent for 2026. Source: AAP / Lukas Coch Phil Honeywood, CEO of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), welcomed the 9 per cent increase but highlighted that the levels were still lower than during the pandemic. "Any increase in the enrolment figures from the government is very welcome ... however, it's patchy," he told SBS News. "Our English language colleges are collapsing as we speak because of the combination of high student visa fees and just a concern that the future for Australian international education is not fantastic." Regional Universities Australia CEO Alec Webb reacted to the news with "positivity", praising the fact that "no university will go backwards in 2026". "It definitely signals that Australia is still open for business, and Australia should still be a destination that is being considered for prospective international students," Webb told SBS News. New housing critical to extra placements Universities will have to demonstrate stronger engagement with Southeast Asia and progress in providing secure student accommodation for both local and international students in order to apply for an increase in their allocation. While Honeywood encouraged the pivot to closer neighbours such as Thailand and Indonesia — "great student source markets" — he expressed concern about housing backlogs. "It's taking purpose-built student accommodation companies anything up to three years to get a project approved and commence construction. So it's a long game," he said. It's a concern also expressed by Webb, who hopes universities will get clarity around housing expectations soon, as well as more information about how the 25,000 placements will be split between metro and regional universities. "Obviously, that can't be a new site build, there is an incredible amount of delay and lag associated with not only obtaining the planning permissions, but also with the actual construction itself," he said. "So we're very keen to work with the department and the government to better understand what the expectation is in regards to securing the supply of housing." SBS News has contacted Clare for comment. The focus on housing reflects the intersection between education and migration, a point exacerbated during the federal election campaign. Australia 'the least worst' option The sector has repeatedly raised concerns that the ongoing debate about international student numbers is deterring prospective students from choosing Australia, delivering a blow to the $34 billion a year industry. However, Honeywood says Australia can capitalise on recent disruption to the global market caused by Donald Trump's presidency in the United States. "Australia's been very fortunate that other countries we compete against, particularly Canada, Donald Trump's USA now and the UK are also winding back on international student recruitment," he said. "And therefore when students are thinking which country to go and study at, they're obviously seeing that Australia is in many cases the least worst when it comes to their ability to access education." From tariffs to university education, experts argue that President Donald Trumphas created global uncertainty that Australia can capitalise off. Source: AP / Evan Vucci This week's announcement outlines capacity for 2026 ahead of new legislation, subject to passing, which will establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. The body will oversee student caps and university allocations, balancing which courses and skills are needed and hopes to provide stability to the sector from 2027.
ABC News
40 minutes ago
- ABC News
Australia's housing market would crash if these factors aligned
An Australian property market crash may be laughable, but it's conceivable. Housing is politically sensitive because access to it influences our lives enormously. The Albanese government is attempting to ramp-up housing supply, and is offering shared equity schemes to make housing more affordable. "That's part of the issue is politically it is very difficult to introduce [new] big bang policies that may actually have some sort of impact on house prices because a lot of people are going lose out," Ben Phillips, an associate professor from ANU's Centre for Social Policy Research, says. A property price crash, of course, would make many millions of homes more affordable. But is that realistic, or even possible? Australian property prices have faced three major speed bumps over the past four decades. The share market crashed in October 1987, leading to an economic downturn, which saw the unemployment rate rise to 10.8 per cent. It hurt asset prices including property. Australia's two largest cities saw the biggest falls, with house prices falling 10 per cent in Melbourne, and roughly 9 per cent in Sydney between 1989 and 1991. In the global financial crisis of 2008, Australia's median property price fell by around 8.5 per cent over an 11-month period, according to CoreLogic. The COVID-19 pandemic, decades later, saw the unemployment rate reach 7.4 per cent in July 2020. Phillips says that "didn't really have much impact". What would likely lead to a property market correction, and potentially a crash, analysts say, is a spike in Australia's unemployment rate. The latest official data from the US shows a shock slowdown in American bosses hiring new candidates. A spike in the unemployment rate here in Australian is not inconceivable. "I think you'd need to have some sort of an event — and I don't quite know what that would be — that would lead to a lot of people losing their jobs, who are professionals and who own houses," Phillips says. Independent economist Saul Eslake has a clearer picture of what that "event" would look like. "So if, for example, Australia were to be hit by some external shock emanating, for example, from the United States or China, that prompted unemployment to rise significantly," Eslake says. Cotality's head of research, Eliza Owen, agrees. "So the unemployment rate is probably the thing that's holding [the property market] together," Owen says. "If we saw a big blowout in the unemployment rate, that's when mortgage serviceability becomes less stable, less certain. "You might have more forced sales and that would add to supply and contribute to a blowout in falling home values." While not putting any numbers around what would cause an Australian property market crash she says: "It would have to be a combination of demand shock and a large increase in unemployment." "So that probably comes from a severe economic downturn." Eslake adds that a combination of interest rate hikes and a severe cut to the migration intake would be necessary for a "demand shock" to the property market. The bottom line is that any economic or financial event would need to be deep and long-lasting, economists say, to produce a property market correction or crash. But Phillips notes that many home owners are well ahead in their mortgage repayments and have managed their finances to help ride out a financial storm. "Most people in Australia are pretty wealthy and if you're a home owner, and those are most of the people who are buying and selling houses are actually home owners — they have large amounts of equity, they've got large redraw facilities to survive during any sort of challenging financial times," he says. Phillips says this, and a chronic shortage of housing, has made Australia's housing market virtually indestructible. "And I think particularly through an environment where you've got quite low interest rates and you've got effectively a fairly fixed level of housing supply and certainly in the short term, that's probably why it's then house prices stay as strong as they have or increase increased quite strongly." Eslake argues the government and the Reserve Bank stand at the ready to respond to any economic event which poses a threat to financial markets. "I think the Reserve Bank would cut interest rates significantly," he says. In addition, he argues, the big four banks, in the event of a big endogenous economic shock, would fall over themselves to help mortgage borrowers avoid foreclosure. "Most banks will, if a mortgage customer loses his or her job, comes forward quickly enough and the bank's persuaded that there's a reasonable prospect that that person will find a job in the next six months, [the bank will] go to considerable lengths to help those customers," Eslake says. "The banks certainly don't like to have mortgagee and possession signs going up in front of their customers houses." So, is a property market crash possible? Of course. Is a correction more realistic? Yes. But you would need some combination of a drastic cut to migration, interest rate hikes, and a significant and long-term jump in white-collar unemployment with little government support. It's a tall order.
News.com.au
40 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Breathing room in household budgets, spending up in June
Australian households are finding breathing room in their budgets, with the latest data showing an increase in household spending. Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Tuesday shows spending on furnishings and household equipment, clothing, footwear and food have driven a 0.5 per cent household spending rise for June. The data shows people are making more discretionary purchases and spending more often. The 0.5 per cent bump follows a 1 per cent rise in May and is 4.8 per cent higher than June last year. 'Goods spending rose 1.3 per cent, as households spent more on food, new vehicles, and electronics,' ABS executive Robert Ewing said. 'Meanwhile, spending on services fell by 0.5 per cent after two months of growth. 'People buying more goods drove the overall rise in household spending in June.' Looking at the three months to June, discretionary spending volumes (the actual dollar value spent) rose because of a 1.8 per cent increase in recreation and cultural activities, plus a 1.6 per cent rise in cafes and restaurants. The volume increase shows people are going out for dinner less often but spending more. This discretionary bump is part of an overall spending volume increase of 0.7 per cent for the June quarter. 'Household spending volumes rose for the third consecutive quarter, reflecting a steady improvement in consumer confidence as price pressures eased over the past year,' Mr Ewing said. Western Australia was the only state or territory where spending fell. The Northern Territory, NSW and then Tasmania had the largest spending increases over the past year. In the NT, the spending increases were driven by health, transport and recreation outlays. In NSW, clothes, shoes, furnishings and food were the largest drivers.
