Kogan hiked prices on 621 products, then advertised '10% off' — Federal Court: $350,000

In June 2018 the Australian online retailer Kogan ran a four-day 'TAXTIME' promotion promising 10% off at checkout. The problem was the sequence: immediately before the promotion, Kogan had raised the prices of 621 products — in most cases by at least 10%. It promoted the sale through emails to more than 10 million consumers and SMS to over 930,000, sharpened with countdown lines like '48 hours left!' and 'Ends midnight tonight!'.

Customers who used the code frequently paid the same as, or more than, the products cost before or after the promotion. Two days after the sale ended, Kogan discounted many of the same items by at least 10% again — many landing back at their pre-promotion prices. The affected goods included big-ticket products such as Apple MacBooks, cameras and Samsung Galaxy handsets. Kogan's defence — that buyers genuinely received 10% off the price displayed at the time — was rejected by the Federal Court, which found in July 2020 that the conduct was misleading or deceptive.

At the penalty hearing the ACCC pushed for $2 million, noting the company showed little contrition: two days after the ACCC filed suit in May 2019, Kogan advertised another tax-time promotion promising to 'reduce current website prices by 10% at checkout'. Justice Davies settled on $350,000 in December 2020 — rejecting both the regulator's figure and Kogan's suggestion of $150,000 — and warned that fake discounts erode confidence in legitimate sales.

The 2018 promotion was not an isolated slip. In 2016 Kogan had already paid $32,400 in penalties after three ACCC infringement notices over a Father's Day promotion advertising '20% off' monitors on its eBay store. The company's promotional engine treated discount framing as a growth lever first and a legal question later.

$350,000 Federal Court penalty plus the ACCC's costs; the discount claims on 621 products, many high-value, were ruled misleading

The 'was' price in every promo message referred to a mark-up that had existed for only days, so the promised saving did not exist in any meaningful sense.

The campaign's scale — 10 million emails, 930,000 texts, countdown urgency — shows discount framing was a deliberate core growth tactic, not a one-off error.

Two days after being sued, Kogan ran another tax-time promotion built the same way, indicating the business had not internalised the legal risk.

A 2016 infringement-notice penalty for a near-identical Father's Day discount had already put the company on notice.

A discount is defined by the price it replaces, not the percentage printed at checkout. If the reference price moved to make room for the promo, the promo misleads, however correct the arithmetic.

The size of the penalty drew criticism as too small to deter an ASX-listed retailer with over 1.4 million active customers. The conduct pattern did not stay a Kogan problem: in September 2024 the ACCC sued Coles and Woolworths, alleging they temporarily raised prices on at least 245 and 266 products respectively before promoting them as 'Down Down' or 'Prices Dropped' savings — in many cases planning the price spike first so the 'was' price would look higher. Kogan, by then, had paid a fine equal to a rounding error in its marketing budget.