Sale ends today? The ACCC says some Black Friday deadlines were not what they seemed

The sale said it would end on 3 December 2025. It ran for another week. James Lane, a furniture, homewares and bedding retailer, had advertised that end date for its Black Friday discount. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the retailer also used messages such as “Sale ends today!” and had decided before the sale began that the discount would be extended. On 29 September 2026 the ACCC announced that James Lane had paid a penalty of A$19,800.

For households that keep Diwali, the season’s buying starts weeks before Black Friday. India’s central government holiday list puts Diwali on Sunday 8 November this year. On Dhanteras, the first of the festival’s five days, a central tradition is buying gold and silver, among other valuables, as Encyclopaedia Britannica describes it. Gold bought in India for the occasion may carry a hallmark, which can look like a seal on the whole purchase. It vouches for the metal. Black Friday follows on Friday 27 November and the Boxing Day sales on Saturday 26 December, all within seven weeks of Diwali, and the regulator has already said which sale tactics concern it.

A Black Friday clock that ran out and started again

The ACCC’s account of Vuly Play Group, which sells trampolines and other outdoor play equipment, centres on a countdown timer. During its Click Frenzy sale in early November 2025, Vuly’s website advertised up to 30 per cent off beside the clock. When the timer ran out, the offer became up to 45 per cent off as part of a new sale, and the clock reset to a new end date. Its Black Friday promotion then counted down to the official Black Friday date. Once that date passed, the discount continued and the timer reset again.

Vuly’s penalties, announced the same day as James Lane’s, totalled A$39,600 under two infringement notices; James Lane’s came under one. The ACCC can issue such a notice when it has reasonable grounds to believe a business has broken certain provisions of the Australian Consumer Law. Paying one is not an admission that it did.

Catriona Lowe, the ACCC’s Deputy Chair, said the regulator was concerned that retailers were “increasingly using tactics that create a false sense of urgency”, pressuring shoppers into rushed decisions for fear of missing out on a discount. Any time limit a business puts on a sale, she said, has to be genuine.

Around half of the retailers reviewed

Both cases came out of a sweep the ACCC announced on 10 November 2025, ahead of Black Friday. The targets it named in advance included “3 days only” wording and countdown timers that did not match a sale’s real length, store-wide sales that had exclusions, fine print that narrowed a headline offer, and “up to” discounts where the “up to” was hard to see or few products reached the top figure.

By 18 December 2025, with early results in, the ACCC had written to a number of major retailers before the Boxing Day sales, and Ms Lowe said it was concerned that “despite many warnings” some retailers were still using tactics to misrepresent the size or scope of discounts and how long sales would run.

The fuller picture came on 14 April 2026. Around half of the 50 retailers reviewed, drawn from sectors including bedding, homewares, sports and leisure, and clothing and accessories, had made concerning claims in their Black Friday advertising in November 2025. The ACCC had begun several investigations without naming the businesses involved. Many of the retailers it had investigated or contacted after its 2024 sweep had improved their advertising, though some had continued to make claims that raised concerns.

The ACCC’s compliance and enforcement priorities for 2026-27 include consumer and fair trading concerns in the supermarket and retail sectors, with a focus on misleading pricing practices. In September, with this year’s Black Friday sales “just around the corner”, Ms Lowe said all retailers should be reviewing their sales advertising to make sure their claims are accurate, clear and unlikely to mislead.

Sitewide, with exceptions

Jewellery is already part of this record. On 11 June 2025 the ACCC announced that Michael Hill Jeweller had paid A$19,800 under one infringement notice over its 2024 Black Friday advertising. Its online advertisement read “Member Event 25% off Sitewide”. Some products in the online store, the ACCC said, were not part of the sale and were not discounted. Two other retailers paid the same amount over similar sitewide claims.

The ACCC’s guidance on misleading claims covers whatever a business sells, a gold bangle as much as a mattress. Fine print, it says, “must not conflict with the overall message of the advertisement.” A “was” price can mislead if the item has never been sold at that price, or was sold at it in a limited amount immediately before the sale. In November 2025, and again in April, the ACCC suggested checking prices before a sale begins to judge whether a saving is genuine. With a misleading claim, it says, the first step is to contact the business; anyone can report to the regulator, though it does not resolve individual disputes.

Three marks on a bangle

For jewellery bought in India, hallmarking is run by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Since 1 July 2021 a hallmark on gold jewellery has consisted of three marks: the BIS logo, a purity mark such as 22K916, and a six-digit alphanumeric code called the Hallmark Unique Identification, or HUID, generated for each article after testing and laser-marked onto it.

Hallmarking became mandatory in 256 districts on 23 June 2021; after an eighth phase dated 3 August 2026, it covers 392. Since 24 December 2021 the BIS Care app has had a Verify HUID feature that lets a buyer check and authenticate a hallmarked piece by its code.

All three marks concern the piece itself. None of them says anything about the price on the tag, or about the clock counting down beside it.