Greater Union stops burying its $1 per ticket ‘booking fee’ in the fine print after recent changes to the Trade Practices Act.

Recently, I was checking session times on the Greater Union website and I noticed that their advertising had changed. Previously, Greater Union enticed its visitors to join its CINE BUZZ club with low ticket prices for certain movies:

This type of advertising always annoyed me. ‘How much for that eight-dollar ticket?’ ‘Nine dollars, thank you.’

The Commonwealth Parliament apparently agreed. Late last year, the Parliament passed the Trade Practices Amendment (Clarity in Pricing) Act 2008 (Cth). It commenced operation on 25 May 2009.

The Act amended the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), replacing section 53C with an updated version designed to deal with these kinds of representations.

The section now provides—

• (1) A corporation must not, in trade or commerce, in connection with:
  • (a) the supply or possible supply of goods or services to a person (the relevant person); or
  • (b) the promotion by any means of the supply of goods or services to a person (the relevant person) or of the use of goods or services by a person (the relevant person);
  make a representation with respect to an amount that, if paid, would constitute a part of the consideration for the supply of the goods or services unless the corporation also:
  • (c) specifies, in a prominent way and as a single figure, the single price for the goods or services; and
  • (d) if, in relation to goods:
    • (i) the corporation does not include in the single price a charge that is payable in relation to sending the goods from the supplier to the relevant person; and
    • (ii) the corporation knows, at the time of the representation, the minimum amount of a charge in relation to sending the goods from the supplier to the relevant person that must be paid by the relevant person;
    specifies that minimum amount.

Subsection (7) provides that ‘single price’ means ‘the minimum quantifiable consideration for the supply concerned at the time of the representation concerned’, and subsection (4) provides that the single price must be specified in at least as prominent a way as the most prominent component of the price.

So section 53C prevents corporations from advertising, say, movie tickets as $8 with the unavoidable $1 per ticket ‘booking fee’ buried in the fine print. It’s about time.

You can find a useful ACCC summary of the new section here.

Update: Recently, Greater Union posted a similar promotion, for $7 movie tickets for students.

This time, the $7 includes the booking fee. Nice.