ACCC’s Gina Cass-Gottlieb urges consumers to report suppliers who fob off product complaints

The new boss of the ACCC knows what it’s like to get the run-around over a faulty item. In her first interview, she’s calling on everyone to report suppliers who won’t take responsibility.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s new boss has urged shoppers to dob in retailers that fob off product problems to the manufacturer.

In her first interview since taking the helm of the ACCC on Monday, Sydney-based Gina Cass-Gottlieb said she understood how difficult it could be to get a dodgy item refunded, replaced or even repaired.

Ms Cass-Gottlieb – who is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading legal minds – said she’d personally had trouble getting the seller of a faulty kitchen appliance to take responsibility for fixing it.

Resolving the issue took six months, she said.

ACCC chairwoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb pictured at her offices in Sydney. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“It was both a difficult experience to understand what process was to be followed and once it was understood, to then get the response,” the ACCC chairwoman told The Saturday Telegraph.

She said she wanted to send a message to consumers that they should reject any attempt by a supplier to send them to the manufacturer.

The legal responsibility lay with the supplier who sold the product, she said.

“That is the way the act is drafted. The obligation in terms of consumer guarantees is upon the supplier.

“The supplier can go back, if the fault sits with the manufacturer, and obtain a remedy against the manufacturer, but the consumer’s right is against the supplier who the consumer paid,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.

“And if the supplier/seller says otherwise, the consumer should tell the ACCC.

“I am aware of investigations the ACCC has done to hold suppliers to account in those circumstances.”

She said she encouraged shoppers to “assert” the consumer rights the law gives them.

Ms Cass-Gottlieb said one of the “gaps” in consumer law that she would seek to close was the absence of fines for denying people a refund, replacement or repair.

“We can currently take action to have misleading representations cease, corrective advertising (published), to get damages for people who’ve suffered loss and we can get penalties there but we can’t get (that) in relation to … where there’s a failure to comply with consumer guarantees,” she said.

“We can require it to be returned or replaced, but we can’t get a penalty for it.”

The ACCC has been advocating in Canberra for law reform that would grant it the power to seek penalties for failing to comply with consumer guarantees.

Ms Cass-Gottlieb said that is such a change was made to the law, she would expect it to lead to a “more rapid response when issues were raised” with suppliers.

Pecuniary penalties do “provide a very keen area of focus for businesses,” she said.