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Consumer Action Law Centre CEO, Stephanie Tonkin has welcomed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)’s report on its first designated complaint, that concludes changes to unsolicited selling laws are necessary to address ‘serious concerns of consumer harm’. However, she says the ACCC has missed a ‘golden opportunity’ to support a ban on unsolicited selling and remove a proven driver of harm to thousands of Australian consumers.

The ACCC’s review into unsolicited selling and lead generation was published today in response to Consumer Action’s designated complaint. The report is a blistering condemnation, revealing ’widespread’ non-compliance by businesses with existing protections in the Australian Consumer Law, and salespersons ‘routinely’ ignoring Do Not Knock stickers.

“The ACCC has called out the dodgy practices evidenced in our complaint and dozens of submissions to the review, including high-pressure sales tactics and salespeople failing basic legal obligations like providing a contract or advising of cooling-off periods,” says Ms Tonkin.

“It’s fantastic to have this level of scrutiny and evidence of harmful, illegal sales practices happening out of sight and in high volumes across Australia.”

“Today the ACCC has vindicated Consumer Action clients and consumers across the country. For decades, we have seen people experiencing vulnerability subjected to what the ACCC calls the ‘heightened risk’ of harm from high pressure selling.

“Yet the pages of compelling findings on consumer shame, financial and psychological harm and most consumers seeing ‘limited value of unsolicited selling’, are hard to reconcile with the lukewarm reforms proposed. The ACCC calls for higher penalties for breaches of agreements and an ‘opt in’ model that relies on salespeople – with a history of acting outside the law – to do the right thing. These reforms add complexity to laws that the ACCC points out aren’t working and will fail to stop the harms described throughout the report,” Ms Tonkin said.

“The designated complaint process has hand-delivered conclusive evidence for bolder, effective regulation of unsolicited selling and lead generation practices to the Assistant Minister for Consumer Affairs. We urge the Hon. Andrew Leigh MP to take up the evidence in this report and legislate a ban on unsolicited selling,” Ms Tonkin said.

In addition, Consumer Action strongly supports the ACCC’s findings on lead generation including:

• affirming Consumer Action’s recommendations for stronger consent and privacy requirements around personal information use and disclosure
• the need for certainty that unsolicited consumer agreements laws apply to sales negotiations resulting from lead generation
• incoming unfair trading practices laws will prohibit manipulative lead generation practices
• the need to extend the unfair trading practices prohibition to financial services and products, that are interconnected with sales of goods and services.

Background

In March 2025 Consumer Action submitted Australia’s first ever designated complaint. The complaint detailed the pervasive harms of unsolicited selling from clients and consumers across the country, that happens out of sight, particularly for consumers experiencing vulnerability, the harmful intersection of unsolicited selling with Buy Now Pay Later arrangements and government schemes and the poor practices of unsolicited salespeople. The complaint also highlighted how lead generation circumvents existing consumer protections.

In response to Consumer Action’s designated complaint, the ACCC determined to conduct a national review of unsolicited selling and lead generation practices. The report published today is the product of that review.

Consumer Action recently published its economy-wide policy thinking and recommendations on lead generation regulation: Manufactured Consent: stopping the harm from manipulative lead generation.

ENDS

Media contact:  Mark Pearce, mark@consumeraction.org.au  Tel: 0413 299 567