Contact Energy fined $245,000 for 'no tricks' fuel promotion
Wednesday, 4 March 2020
Contact Energy has been fined $245,000 after it pleaded guilty to charges brought by the Commerce Commission under the Fair Trading Act over a fuel discount promotion.
The power company advertised a fuel discount of 10 or 30 cents 'every month' in a promotion in 2017 to new and existing customers who signed up or stayed on its electricity plans.
But the commission said the adverts failed to adequately disclose key information, including that the discount could be redeemed on only one fuel purchase per month and only up to a maximum of 50 litres.
**READ MORE:
* How the rise of petrol discount schemes left motorists paying more for fuel
* Commerce Commission says Contact's promotion less generous than it appeared**
'It was not clear that the offer did not provide a discount for every litre of fuel purchased in a month,' the watchdog said.
Wellington District Court judge Ian Mill said when setting the fine that information should have been made clear in the promotion and it would have been a simple matter for Contact to have done that.
The commission said the fuel discount promotions were accompanied by slogans such as 'no tricks, no waiting, no surprises' and 'no ifs, no buts, no surprises, no rubbish, no word of a lie'.
Commission chair Anna Rawlings said that was likely to have led to consumers to assume there was no other fine-print or information that needed to be understood before deciding whether to accept one of the offers.