Bupa South Hobart residents refunded for non-existent services

Residents at a Hobart aged care home are among hundreds across the country to be repaid for extra “hotel-type” services they were charged for but never received.

SOUTH Hobart residents at the Bupa aged care home are among more than 600 elderly people across Australia being repaid for additional “hotel-type” services they never received.

The nursing home giant is repaying $18.3 million to residents nationally, and was penalised an extra $6 million last week by the Federal Court for making misleading representations and wrongly accepting payments for extra services not provided or only partly provided.

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Tasmanian residents, according to the judgment handed down by Justice Debbie Mortimer, paid for a speaker’s corner that wasn’t provided, and escorted visits to external libraries that didn’t occur every fortnight as promised.

The packages of extra services often amounted to thousands of dollars annually.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission began pursuing Bupa after it self-reported the conduct between 2013 and 2018.

ACCC Chair Rod Sims said in a statement the consumer watchdog took the matter to court because the “conduct impacted substantial numbers of elderly and vulnerable consumers for a significant period of time”.

Bupa began repaying its residents in 2018 and said it apologised “unreservedly” and was committed to “put things right”.