Does the first price have to include every fee?

The single price

Section 48 of the Australian Consumer Law is the rule that holds a price flat. Its words, for goods or services of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption: a person must not, in trade or commerce, in connection with the supply or the promotion by any means of the supply of those goods or services, make a representation with respect to an amount that, if paid, would constitute a part of the consideration for the supply, unless the person also specifies, in a prominent way and as a single figure, the single price for the goods or services.

The section carries a note: a pecuniary penalty may be imposed for a contravention of this subsection. It does not apply if the representation is made exclusively to a body corporate.

The ACCC states the working rule for a store: businesses must display the total price of a product or service as a single figure, and that price must be the minimum total cost, the lowest amount a customer could pay, including any taxes, duties and unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees. Where a business also displays a price for just one part of a product or service, the total price must be at least as prominent as the partial price. A prominent single total price is one that is clear and stands out so that it is easily noticed by a consumer.

Drip pricing

The ACCC has a name for the failure: drip pricing is when a price is advertised at the beginning of an online purchase, but then extra fees and charges, such as booking and service fees, are gradually added during the purchase process, which can result in consumers paying more than they initially intended. Its rule for the business is to be upfront: businesses must clearly disclose to consumers at the start of a purchasing process the types of fees that will apply and when.

Extras chosen for the buyer

A pre-selected extra is already in the price. The ACCC's words: optional extras must be included in the total price if the business pre-selects these options for customers, and pre-selected means the business will include these options, and charge for them, unless the customer removes them. The ACCC's Advertising and selling guide puts the same rule in the single price: it must include any tax, duty, fee, levy or other additional charges, and should also include any optional fees or charges pre-selected for the consumer during the purchasing process unless and until they are de-selected by the consumer.

The Act carries its own example: an airline advertises a flight and persons have the option of paying for a carbon offset. If the carbon offset is preselected on the airline's online booking system, the single price for the flight must include the carbon offset charge, because the person has not deselected the charge. If the person deselects it later in the online booking process, the single price does not need to include it after the charge is deselected.

Delivery and extras the buyer adds

Delivery is the charge s 48 lets sit outside the single price. A person is not required to include, in the single price for goods, a charge that is payable in relation to sending the goods from the supplier to the other person. But there is a condition on the exemption: if the person does not include that sending charge in the single price, and the person knows, at the time of the representation, the minimum amount of the charge that must be paid by the other person, the person must not make the representation unless they also specify that minimum amount.

The buyer's own choices sit outside the single price too. The ACCC says the total price does not need to include optional charges that have not been pre-selected: an extra the buyer adds is the buyer's act, not the seller's.

One rule for a checkout

Read together, the section, the ACCC's price displays page and its drip-pricing rule give one rule for an online checkout. Whatever the buyer is shown first must already be the single, prominent, minimum total price ; anything the business pre-selects is quantifiable at that moment, so it belongs inside that figure ; a fee that appears only as the buyer moves through the purchase is the ACCC's drip pricing ; delivery may sit outside the figure, and where the seller knows the minimum delivery charge at that moment, it states that minimum with the price ; an extra the buyer adds later is the buyer's own choice ; and at the payment step there is no card surcharge on Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or American Express payments, because from 1 October 2026, the ACCC records, the card networks' no-surcharge rules apply to Visa, Mastercard and eftpos cards, and American Express also decided to remove surcharging .

Two more of the ACCC's rules sit around that line. If a business is displaying prices only to other businesses, it does not need to include GST in the total price. And if a business charges a fee that is not based on how the consumer pays, the ACL's price display rules still apply to it: the ACCC says the surcharging changes only apply to card payment surcharges, and that businesses may still charge other fees or surcharges that are not based on how the consumer pays.