Ray White Point Cook, Barry Plant Werribee, White Lotus and YouSales charged with not listing fixed rental prices online

A magistrate has slammed Consumer Affairs for not using “common sense” when prosecuting four real estate agents for software errors that resulted in rental prices not being listed online.

Several real estate agents appeared before the court on Wednesday charged with not listing fixed rental prices online

Victoria’s consumer watchdog has been accused of “wasting the court’s time” by a magistrate after charges against several Melbourne real estate agents — accused of not listing rental prices — lacked “common sense”.

It comes as agencies Ray White Point Cook, Barry Plant Werribee, White Lotus Property Group and YouSales appeared at Melbourne Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday charged with failing to list fixed rental prices on external websites such as Domain and realestate.com.

Consumer Affairs Victoria issued infringement notices to the agents, accusing them of using a price range or phrases such as “Contact agent” in rental advertisements instead of a fixed price.

But the agencies came armed with solid defences, blaming software errors which resulted in prices being shown on their respective homepages but not on external websites.

Brendon James defending Barry Plant Werribee told the court the company had adopted new software and an “error” — of not entering the price in a mandatory field that would allow it to show up on other sites — was at fault.

“In essence that’s where there’s been an error. What the employee understood was that it was advertised for $420. The difficulty is when it goes to other sites from this internal program, unless you complete that mandatory field the price won’t pop up,” he said.

The court heard the price of $420 showed up on the Barry Plant Werribee website.

Moreover the court heard the company had a clean record without any convictions or “blemishes” in 23 years of business.

The four companies lodged their cases in front of Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday Picture: David Crosling

Magistrate Angela Rankin said “she failed to see” why these matters were brought to court and should have been settled elsewhere “for the benefit of everyone”.

“It is of somewhat surprise that we are here,” she said.

“What is the utility in fining someone who has a company that has no prior matters, been in business 23 years, does not have history of breaching and misrepresenting rental properties to the public?

“This is not, in my view, a corporate accused that has flagrantly committed breaches year after year and misrepresented the public.”

Consumer Affairs said it was not seeking “malicious intent”, but the infringement and matter before the court was a matter of “deterrence”.

Barry Plant pleaded guilty and received a $1500 fine without conviction.

Likewise Ray White Point Cook defence lawyer Senad Dizdarevic cited a similar software error.

He said the staffer ticked the box to ensure the fixed rental prices would show up but “left out a dollar sign” in a particular section which “overrode the ticking of the box” — which meant no price would show.

“It’s a typographical error within the system,” he said.

Mr Dizdarevic told the court members of the team realised the error after four days and notified CAV before any inspections took place.

Moreover he said the matter before the court was a “waste of court resources”.

Ray White ultimately also pleaded guilty the single charge and was also fined $1500 without conviction.

Similarly, White Lotus property group Director Raj Kocchar told the court this too was a result of “software error” after his company had changed to a “new and challenging” backend platform.

Raj Kochhar of White Lotus Property group defended himself against a charge of failing to list the fixed rental price of a home online. Picture: Supplied

He said the property in question had already been leased when the system error occurred and accidentally relisted it.

“And Consumer Affairs is still intending to proceed?” Ms Rankin asked.

“What’s the public interest in continuing with these circumstances? It’s clearly a systems error.

“I’m struggling to understand the reason behind a prosecution given the circumstances described ... there needs to be a commonsense approach by prosecuting agencies.”

Mr Kochhar said he was first notified of the error when he received the infringement notice and was given no prior warning.

White Lotus was given a 12 month undertaking to be of good behaviour without conviction.

Rounding off the agents that cited a software malfunction on Wednesday was Docklands company YouSales.

YouSales partner and asset manager Jenny Chin pleaded guilty on behalf of the company to the charge, relating to the advertisement of a unit in the CBD with no fixed price.

Ms Chin said the company applied for an internal review as soon as the company received the infringement to resolve the “administrative error”.

“We accept full responsibility,” Ms Chin said.

Ms Rankin implored Consumer Affairs to use “common sense” when prosecuting companies.

“You’re going to get sick of me saying this ... but mistakes happen. We’re dealing with a business that has been operating for 14 years without any prior offending,” she said.

“I’m not sure this has any benefit being in the public interest to be honest.”

YouSales was fined $1000 without conviction.