Eight checks, in the order they usually go wrong.
Updated August 2026
The ACCC's guidance on was/now pricing lives on its consumer pages. Its business pricing hub covers card surcharges, price displays, setting prices and unit pricing — and does not address comparison pricing, sale periods, sitewide claims or countdown timers at all. A retailer approaching from the business side finds nothing on the topic most likely to cost them money.
of the 878 Australian Shopify stores we have scanned currently have at least one comparison-price problem in their live product feed — a "was" price below the selling price, or equal to it.
For a reasonable period immediately before the sale, and to more than a very small proportion of buyers. If you cannot produce an order at that price, the strikethrough is a claim you cannot support.
It sounds impossible and it is common. It happens when a price rises and the compare-at field is left behind. Most themes stop rendering the strikethrough, so nobody notices — but the data is still saying something untrue.
Harmless to shoppers, but it means the field is being maintained by nobody, and it is a reliable indicator that the rest of the pricing data has drifted too.
Count the share of products actually discounted before writing "sitewide". Then count it again in the second week of the sale.
Wherever the headline appears — announcement bar, ads, email, SMS — the qualification appears with it, not only on a terms page.
Something in the catalogue should actually be discounted by X, and enough things that the figure is representative rather than technically true of one clearance item.
Open the storefront in a private window. If the timer restarts for each new visitor, the deadline does not exist.
When a campaign ends, the comparison prices come off. A "was" price left standing for months stops being a sale and becomes the normal price with decoration attached — which is the ACCC's stated concern about extended sale periods.
None of these are set-and-forget. Catalogues change weekly, and every one of these problems is created by an ordinary edit made by someone who was not thinking about pricing law. The failure mode is drift, not intent.
The was/now guidance sits on the ACCC's consumer-facing price displays page. Its business pricing hub covers surcharges, price displays, setting prices and unit pricing, and does not currently address comparison pricing, sale duration, sitewide claims or countdown timers.
In our scans, comparison prices left behind after a campaign ends, and compare-at values that no longer sit above the selling price. Both are created by ordinary product edits rather than by any deliberate act.
Yes. Export your products with price and compare-at columns and sort by the difference. That finds the arithmetic problems. What an export cannot tell you is how long a comparison price has been standing, because Shopify does not keep price history.
The prohibition on misleading conduct applies to the representation wherever it is made, including advertising, email and social posts, not only the storefront.
No. This is general information about published ACCC guidance and public enforcement outcomes. It is not legal advice and it does not say any business has broken the law.
How long can a 'was' price stay up? · Can you say 'sitewide sale' in Australia? · Are countdown timers illegal in Australia? · ACCC Black Friday pricing rules · What must a furniture listing say about anchoring?
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. If any of it is
wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
ACCC — price displays guidance ·
ACCC — pricing for business ·
ACCC — sitewide claim penalties, June 2025 ·
ACCC — Black Friday sweep findings, April 2026 ·
ACCC — strikethrough pricing penalties, June 2026 ·
ACCC — 2026-27 enforcement priorities