Focus: Australian Consumer Law requirements
relating to warranty documentation
Services:
Intellectual Property & Technology,
Commercial
If your business provides warranties with its products or services, then we would recommend that you make it a priority to ensure that you have checked the warranty documentation for compliance with the Australian Consumer Law ("ACL").
Since 1 January 2012, the ACL has prescribed strict requirements relating to the content and presentation of express warranties against product defects.
We wrote about those requirements in an article published on our website on 5 December 2011.
The ACCC has since recognised that certain businesses may have had practical difficulties in applying these requirements where products had been manufactured and packaged prior to 1 November 2011. The ACCC, therefore, announced a transitional period until 30 September 2012, during which it was unlikely to enforce the new requirements where a business had practical difficulties in updating its warranty documents and took reasonable steps to convey the required information in another manner.
As this transitional period is soon to end, businesses must check that the warranty documents provided to their customers comply with the requirements of the ACL. The penalty for non-compliance is a fine of up to $50,000. Given the time that the ACCC has allowed for businesses to address this issue, the ACCC is unlikely to show leniency towards those businesses that still do not comply after this date.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
