Samsara Furniture and Homewares Pty Ltd - s.87B undertaking

Samsara Furniture and Homewares Pty Ltd (Samsara) advertised its products in newspapers, magazines and on its website, throughout 2005, by making price comparisons between previous prices or “was” prices for its products and current sale prices or “now” prices for these products.

The ACCC has concerns that Samsara engaged in comparison price advertising for products that had not been sold by it at the previous or “was” price recently enough to justify making the price comparisons to the public.

The ACCC therefore expressed its view that the claims made by Samsara in its advertisements may have been misleading or deceptive, or may have constituted false or misleading statements concerning prices, in contravention of sections 52 and 53(e) of the TPA.

Samsara has provided court-enforceable undertakings to the ACCC that:

• Samsara in future will only engage in comparison price advertising if the price compared to, for a product, is the price at which that product was available reasonably recently, and for a reasonable period, and where reasonable quantities of the product were sold to customers;
• Samsara will publish a notice on its website for a period of 8 weeks, explaining the ACCC’s concerns to customers and outlining the main obligations in the undertakings;
• Samsara will establish and implement a trade practices compliance program designed to minimise the risk of Samsara breaching the TPA in the future, including requirements to provide practical training and education for staff, and to develop an effective complaints handling process; and
• Samsara will refund the purchase price of products that have been purchased by customers who relied on the comparison price advertising, in exchange for the return of the product purchased.