Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Webjet Marketing Pty Ltd

This proceeding was brought by the ACCC against Webjet Marketing Pty Ltd in the Federal Court. Webjet operated an online travel agency business. It allowed consumers to compare and book flights through its website and mobile application, and it also marketed travel deals through email and social media.

The Court's reasons show that Webjet admitted contraventions of the Australian Consumer Law. The parties then jointly proposed declarations, penalties and other orders. The Court accepted that proposed outcome.

The commercial story is straightforward. Webjet's customer-facing systems gave consumers two important messages. The first message was about price: flights were promoted at or from a stated amount. The second message was about booking status: some customers were told their booking was confirmed. The Court accepted that both messages were misleading in the circumstances admitted by Webjet.

This matters because both issues arose at common pressure points in digital commerce. One was headline pricing across multiple channels. The other was automated messaging in a workflow that depended on real-time third-party data. Those are not unusual features of modern online businesses.

The first category of conduct was the price representation. Webjet displayed airfare prices at or from a promoted amount and thereby represented that consumers could purchase the promoted flight by paying that amount only.

The Court set out the periods for each channel separately. On Webjet's website and mobile application, the promoted prices were displayed between 1 November 2018 and 13 November 2023. In promotional emails sent to consumers who had not previously booked a flight with Webjet, the conduct ran between 1 November 2018 and 31 October 2023. In social media, the conduct appeared in 144 Facebook and Instagram posts between 31 July 2019 and 30 October 2023.

That representation was false or misleading because the promoted price did not include Webjet's compulsory Webjet Servicing Fee and Booking Price Guarantee fee. Together, those fees ranged from $34.90 to $54.90 per booking during the relevant period. The Court recorded that the fees were charged as a matter of course on every booking, could not be avoided by the consumer, and were not affected by the number of airfares included in a booking, although the amount varied between domestic and international travel.

The Court also recorded how the disclosures worked in practice. On the website and app, the promoted prices mostly, but not always, had an asterisk. That asterisk did not directly refer to the Webjet fees. Instead, it referred to prices being subject to change without notice and being inclusive of taxes and airline surcharges. The fees were then mentioned in the next sentence, but it was not clear whether they were included in, or additional to, the promoted price.

In promotional emails, most but not all promoted prices had an asterisk, but the asterisk text referred to terms and conditions rather than the Webjet fees. The fee information appeared separately. In social media posts, the promoted prices almost always had an asterisk, but in most instances there was nothing explaining what the asterisk meant. Fourteen of the 144 posts linked the asterisk to text saying 'T&C's apply', but did not explain those terms.

In all cases where fee information was included, it was never explicitly stated that the fees were in addition to, and not included in, the promoted price.

The second category of conduct was the confirmed booking representation. Webjet relied on airline information that changed in real time. Sometimes, between a consumer selecting a fare and completing the booking, the fare became sold out or the price or availability changed. The Court called this a booking failure.

In that situation, Webjet's system was supposed to avoid sending a booking confirmation and instead issue a Customer Service Advice saying the booking had not been confirmed and was being manually checked.

Between 10 February 2019 and 1 April 2024, due to an error in Webjet's back-end systems, that did not always happen. On 118 occasions, Webjet displayed a confirmation page and or sent a confirmation email even though the booking had not been confirmed by the airline. By doing that, Webjet represented that the consumer had acquired the airfare at the price paid when that was not true.

The legal issue was whether Webjet's conduct amounted to misleading or deceptive conduct and false or misleading representations under the Australian Consumer Law. The Court recorded that Webjet admitted contraventions of section 18 and section 29(1)(i).

For the price conduct, the question was whether displaying flights at or from a stated amount conveyed that consumers could buy at that amount, when compulsory Webjet fees had to be paid on top. For the booking conduct, the question was whether displaying a confirmation page or sending a confirmation email conveyed that the booking had been confirmed at the price paid, when in fact it had not been confirmed by the airline.

The reasons are also useful because they separate the underlying commercial event from the customer-facing message. The Court noted that a booking failure may occur for reasons outside Webjet's control because airline availability and pricing change in real time. But what the customer is told is within Webjet's control. That is an important point for any business using automated systems, supplier feeds or dynamic inventory.

Procedurally, this was not a contested trial about whether the conduct occurred. Webjet admitted the contraventions. The parties filed agreed facts and jointly proposed declarations, penalties and other relief. The Court still had to decide whether those proposed orders were appropriate and within the proper range for civil penalties.

Button J was satisfied that the declarations and orders jointly proposed by the ACCC and Webjet were appropriate. The Court declared that Webjet contravened sections 18 and 29(1)(i) of the Australian Consumer Law in both categories of conduct.

For the pricing conduct, the Court declared that Webjet represented that it was possible for consumers to purchase flights for prices at or from the promoted amounts by displaying those prices on its website and mobile application, in promotional emails and in social media posts, when in fact flights could not be purchased for those promoted prices without paying additional compulsory service fees charged by Webjet on each booking.

For the booking conduct, the Court declared that between 10 February 2019 and 1 April 2024 Webjet displayed a booking confirmation and sent a confirmation email to 118 consumers, thereby representing that the booking had been confirmed at the price paid, when in fact it had not been confirmed.

The Court ordered Webjet to pay pecuniary penalties totalling $9 million. That was made up of $8.5 million for the pricing contravention and $500,000 for the confirmed booking contravention. The Court also ordered Webjet to publish a corrective notice on the homepage of the Webjet website and on the Webjet mobile application within 14 days. The notice had to be accessible through a prominent click-through icon, link to a full-page notice, be crawlable by search engines, and remain in place for 60 days.

In addition, the Court ordered Webjet to review its ACL compliance program, make any amendments required by the annexure to the orders within the specified time, and then maintain and continue implementing that compliance program for three years from the date those amendments were made. Webjet was also ordered to pay $100,000 as a contribution to the ACCC's costs. The proceeding was otherwise dismissed.

The reasons explain that the Court applied the usual principles for agreed civil penalties. The Court was not bound by the parties' agreement, but accepted the proposed outcome as appropriate in the circumstances.

This case should be read as a warning about customer journey design. The legal risk did not arise only because of one hidden fee or one technical bug. It arose because the customer-facing journey communicated something untrue at important decision points.

First, review every place your business states a price. The Court treated website and app listings, promotional emails and social media posts as separate channels in which the same core representation could be made. If a compulsory fee applies to every transaction, a low promoted figure may be misleading unless the overall presentation makes it clear that the fee is additional.

The judgment is especially uncomfortable for businesses that rely on asterisks, generic terms and conditions references, or fee disclosures that appear nearby but do not clearly say the fee is extra.

Second, review every place your business states that an order, booking or subscription is confirmed. If your system depends on supplier acceptance, stock allocation, payment clearance, fraud checks, fare availability or another external event, your wording should match the true state of the transaction. If the transaction is still pending, say that clearly. If a manual review is required, the message should say that rather than using confirmation language.

Third, do not separate legal compliance from operations. In many businesses, marketing controls ads, product controls checkout design, engineering controls system triggers, and customer service handles exceptions. This case shows why those functions need to be aligned. A compliant process is not just about one disclaimer on one page. It is about whether the whole system tells the truth at each stage.

Fourth, if you use third-party tools, white-label booking engines, plugins or marketplace integrations, do not assume the vendor has solved the problem. The Court's reasoning is a reminder that the representation made to your customer under your brand is what matters.

The reasons are particularly useful because they show how courts analyse different forms of digital communication. The same pricing issue appeared in three different formats, and the Court looked at each one.

On the Webjet platforms, the asterisk mostly referred to prices being subject to change without notice and inclusive of taxes and airline surcharges. That did not clearly tell consumers that Webjet's own compulsory fees were extra. In promotional emails, the asterisk usually pointed to terms and conditions, not to the fees. In social media posts, the asterisk often had no explanation at all, and the fees were not disclosed. The Court accepted that these disclosures did not displace the overall price representation.

For the booking conduct, the relevant documents and communications were the confirmation page and the confirmation email. The Court accepted that issuing those communications represented that the booking had been confirmed at the price paid. The intended alternative communication was a Customer Service Advice stating that Webjet had not been able to confirm the booking and was attempting to do so manually. That contrast is useful for businesses designing fallback messaging.

The wording used when something goes wrong is not a minor operational detail. It can determine whether the customer is misled.

The orders also show the Court's focus on corrective action. The corrective notice had to be prominent, accessible from the homepage and app, and remain available for 60 days. The compliance order required review, amendment where necessary, and ongoing implementation of an ACL compliance program for three years. Those orders underline that consumer law compliance is not only about paying a penalty after the event. It is also about changing systems and public messaging.

The judgment was delivered on 28 July 2025 and the reasons were published on 29 July 2025. The Court recorded that Webjet took prompt action to cease the pricing conduct after the ACCC raised concerns in October to November 2023. The Court also recorded that Webjet took steps to address the booking failure conduct in July 2024 and financially remediated the 118 affected consumers in October 2024 after the ACCC raised that issue on 25 June 2024.

For business readers, those dates matter because they show the difference between stopping conduct, remediating affected customers and still facing formal court orders. Remediation and cooperation may be relevant, but they do not erase the original contraventions.

Common questions from business owners are set out below in short form.

This explainer is based on the Federal Court decision in Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Webjet Marketing Pty Ltd [2025] FCA 867. The reasons record Webjet's admissions, the agreed facts, the declarations made, the penalties imposed and the corrective and compliance orders.

The Court referred to annexures for the exact wording of the corrective notice and the detailed requirements of the compliance program. This page explains the practical effect of those orders based on the reasons and orders themselves.