A restaurant meal home delivery service will stop advertising prices that do not include the Goods and Services Tax and carry out corrective measures after an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Cuisine Courier Pty Limited operates a restaurant meal delivery service in the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas. It promotes its service by the delivery of menu booklets to more than one million households and delivers meals from a number of restaurants in various areas.
"The ACCC has made it clear for a long time that, under the New Tax System, GST-inclusive prices must be displayed in promotional and advertising material to ensure consumers are not misled", ACCC Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, said today.
Cuisine Courier has agreed to immediately stop distribution of all menu booklets that do not contain GST-inclusive prices and associated fees, and amend all menu prices and associated fees on its website so that they are GST-inclusive.
Other measures include corrective advertising in the national press; re-voicing telephone recordings and other operation procedures to alert customers to the applicability of GST (as an interim measure until all of its booklets contain GST-inclusive prices and associated fees); and an undertaking that future advertising and promotional material will contain GST-inclusive menu prices and associated fees. Cuisine Courier will also implement a trade practices compliance program approved by the ACCC.
In addition to the above measures, each of the restaurants that have their meals delivered by Cuisine Courier will receive a letter from the ACCC asking them to review their pricing display practices.
"The ACCC undertook an extensive education program in the 12 months leading up to the introduction of the GST. To avoid expensive remedial steps, the ACCC encouraged businesses to ensure that forthcoming promotions and advertising campaigns would comply with the provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
"This serves as a warning to those businesses, particularly restaurants and other areas of the hospitality sector, which continue to display prices that are not inclusive of GST. The option of court action, which may include large fines, may be taken up in future against businesses that refuse to comply with the guidelines on GST pricing displays".