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A new, standalone prohibition on unfair trading practices is coming to the Australian Consumer Law, commencing 1 July 2027. For online retailers in particular, it’s a significant shift — for the first time, conduct that manipulates or unfairly pressures consumers can be unlawful even if no individual representation made along the way was technically false or misleading. A year might sound like plenty of lead time, but auditing a website, checkout flow, and subscription terms properly takes longer than most businesses expect.

What Exactly Does the New Law Prohibit?

The prohibition targets conduct that manipulates consumers or unreasonably distorts the environment in which they make decisions, and causes them detriment. In practice, the reforms are aimed squarely at so-called dark patterns — design choices that nudge or trap consumers into decisions they wouldn’t otherwise make. That includes:

• Countdown timers and false scarcity messaging (“only 2 left!” that isn’t true, or reappears on every visit)
• Hidden or hard-to-find information, including cancellation options buried in menus
• Cancellation processes that are harder than sign-up — if customers can subscribe in two clicks, they need to be able to cancel with comparable ease
• Overwhelming or unclear disclosures designed to bury the terms that matter

What About Pricing?

The reforms also lock in stricter expectations around drip pricing — the practice of advertising a headline price and revealing mandatory fees only later in the transaction. Under the new regime, any fee that’s a genuine part of the transaction must be displayed wherever the base price is displayed, and it must be prominent, legible, and unambiguous. Certain charges are carved out of this disclosure duty, however – including optional charges, payment surcharges, and certain taxes, duties or levies – so not every additional charge needs to be shown alongside base price. A shipping or service fee that only appears at the final checkout step is exactly the kind of practice this law is designed to catch.

What About Subscriptions?

If your business runs any kind of subscription or recurring billing model — memberships, subscription boxes, add-ons for your retail platform — expect close scrutiny here. Renewal terms need to be disclosed clearly before sign-up, and cancellation needs to be at least as easy as joining. A subscription that can only be cancelled by phone during business hours, when sign-up happens instantly online, is a live risk area.

What Should You Do Before 1 July 2027?

• Audit your website and app for manipulative design elements — walk through your own checkout and subscription flows as a customer would, and flag anything that nudges rather than informs.
• Review every fee disclosed at checkout against what’s shown on your product pages and ads.
• Test your cancellation pathway end to end. If a customer can sign up online, they should be able to cancel online.
• Update your terms and conditions to reflect the new disclosure standards, rather than waiting until the commencement date.
• Brief your marketing and web team — a lot of these issues get baked in at the design stage, well before legal ever reviews a page.

A year out feels comfortable, but reworking checkout flows, subscription terms, and marketing copy across a website is rarely a quick job — starting the audit now means you’re not scrambling in the lead-up to commencement.

If you’d like your website, checkout process, and subscription terms reviewed against the new unfair trading practices standard, get in touch with Gladwin Legal — we can run through your customer journey with you and flag what needs to change.

This article is general information only and does not constitute legal advice.