Television sets and air fryers are the easy part of a Black Friday promotion. The hard part is the reference price printed next to the discount, and that is where the regulator has decided to look. As of November 15, 2026, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is running its third sweep of Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising, and the four things it says it will examine are specific. Questionable discount claims, misleading countdown timers, false scarcity messaging, and price comparisons built on reference prices that products were never, or had not recently, been sold at.
Four claims, one underlying test
Every one of the four items is a variation on the same question: was the comparison true when the customer saw it. A reference price only carries meaning if the product was actually sold at it, recently, in a channel the shopper could buy from. Research behind the weekend puts low prices as the leading motivation for 58 per cent of shoppers, up from 42 per cent a year earlier, which is exactly why the claim on the page is doing so much commercial work.
The regulator has already tested this ground in court. Federal Court proceedings have been brought against Coles and Woolworths over discount pricing claims attached to their Down Down and Prices Dropped campaigns. A sweep is a lighter instrument than litigation, but it produces the same artefact: a record of what the page said on a given day, next to what the price history actually was.
The audience is also checking differently. One in four shoppers plans to use an AI chatbot to research products and find deals this year, and 72 per cent of those say it will be their first time doing so for the event. An assistant that compares prices across pages will surface the contradictions a human skims past, which raises the cost of a reference price that cannot be explained.
Where reference prices fail
The window problem
Most disputes are not about whether a discount existed, but about which period the comparison refers to. A 90-day window, a 30-day window and a "previous price" that resets with each campaign produce three different numbers for the same product. None of them is automatically wrong, but a team that cannot say which one it used has no defence, because the customer is comparing against whatever the page showed last month.
The channel problem
Online makes the comparison harder to bound. The same item may be sold in store, on the retailer's own site, on a marketplace and through a delivery app, each with its own price and fee structure. A reference price drawn from one channel and applied to another is the most common self-inflicted error, and it is the one a sweep is most likely to surface, because the evidence sits on public pages.
| Claim type | What gets examined | What a defensible record holds |
|---|---|---|
| Was/now pricing | Whether the higher price was genuinely offered | Transaction dates, units sold, channel |
| Percentage off | Whether the base is the same product and pack size | SKU identifier and pack size history |
| Countdown timer | Whether the deadline resets or the price returns | Campaign schedule and post-event price |
| Scarcity claim | Whether stock levels support the wording | Inventory snapshot at publication |
The fourth row is the one teams underestimate. Scarcity wording feels like marketing rather than pricing, so it is rarely owned by the pricing team and almost never has a record behind it. When a claim of limited stock is examined, the only useful answer is an inventory snapshot taken at the time of publication, and that has to be captured before the campaign runs, not reconstructed afterwards.
Build the evidence before the ad runs
The practical difference between a defensible promotion and an exposed one is whether the evidence was assembled in advance. Pulling transaction history after a complaint arrives is slow, incomplete and usually contested. A short, repeatable routine that runs before each campaign is worth more than a sophisticated dashboard that nobody opens during peak.
That last column is the useful one, because it turns an audit into a list of work. A campaign where every claim is evidenced needs no further attention; a campaign with twelve exposed claims tells the team exactly where to spend the next week. Disclosure discipline also gets tested when a retailer changes status, as the David Jones receivership shows: promotional activity in store and online is being reviewed week by week, new gift cards have stopped, and returns are being honoured within 14 days of purchase.
The delivery fee is part of the price
Online grocery has made one part of the comparison much easier and another much harder. Shoppers can now check a price across retailers in seconds, but the number they see is rarely the number they pay. CHOICE comparisons found products bought through delivery apps cost between 7 and 13 per cent more than in-store equivalents before delivery fees, and in the worst Woolworths comparison the completed order came out 39 per cent above the in-store basket.
For anyone publishing a discount, that gap is a disclosure question rather than a pricing strategy question. If the claim is a percentage off a reference price, and the customer pays a service fee on top, the honest presentation shows both the claim and the fee before checkout. Getting that order right costs nothing; getting it wrong converts a legitimate promotion into a comparison the customer can prove was misleading.
FAQ
What makes a reference price defensible?
A recent sale at that price, on the same product, in a channel the customer could actually buy from. If the product was never sold at the reference price, or was sold at it so long ago that the comparison is meaningless, the claim is exposed regardless of how the page is worded.
Does the sweep apply to marketplace sellers or only to retailers?
Discount claims are made by whoever publishes them, which in a marketplace usually means the seller but also the platform that ranks and displays the offer. In practice both need a record, and the platform needs one that survives a seller leaving.
How should a team prepare when the sale is already running?
Fix the evidence for the next wave of ads rather than the current one. Pull the transaction history behind each reference price, store it against the creative, and keep the definition of the comparison window in writing so the same product cannot be measured two ways in one season.
Why do countdown timers matter to a pricing audit?
Because they create urgency around a price that may not be special. A timer that resets, or a claim of limited stock that is not limited, turns a pricing question into a conduct question, and that is the part of the sweep most likely to produce a finding.
