Unsafe giveaways & gifts with purchase

Suppliers sometimes use giveaways or gifts with purchase to help sell their goods.  They can attract attention by offering customers something extra that they weren’t expecting.

Suppliers can offer giveaways under certain conditions as an extra product for free in addition to a main product or service they are selling.  An example of a giveaway is when a mobile phone retailer offers free bicycles with a mobile phone contract.

Gifts with purchase are when an extra product accompanies the main product by default.  Examples of gifts with purchase are when toys or accessories come with fast food meals, or when cosmetics or accessories come with magazines, usually attached to them.

Gifts with purchase often have little relationship to the main product they come with.  Similarly, giveaways may sometimes be products that the supplier does not normally deal in.  This can be a risk for consumers, as suppliers may be unfamiliar with potential safety issues associated with the gift or giveaway product.

On this page:

• Possible hazards
• Serious illness, injury or death
• Minimising the risks of unsafe free products
• Check product safety issues
• Check for mandatory standards
• Examples
• Giveaways – Tele Choice mountain bikes
• Giveaways - Universal Pictures (Australasia) Pty Ltd 'Despereaux' stuffed toy
• Gifts with purchase – Kzone Ben 10 alien fighter watch

Free products can cause serious illness or injury if they:

• fail to meet requirements of a relevant mandatory standard or ban
• do not come with instructions for use or assembly
• do not come in their usual packaging, which may include important information and/or instructions for use or assembly.

Minimising the risks of unsafe free products

Check product safety issues

Suppliers giving away gifts or free products as an incentive should always check that the product complies with relevant product safety regulations.

Consumers who are offered or given something for free with a product should check the safety of the free item.  It’s a good idea to look it up on this website – you can start by searching the product categories.

Check for mandatory standards

Even though a supplier may be providing a product for free, they are still supplying it in commerce. This means that they must comply with any laws to do with selling products.  Consumers should be aware that although they are getting something for free, the supplier is still responsible for ensuring the product complies with any relevant product safety regulations.

Some products that have been common as giveaways and gifts with purchase have mandatory safety standards that suppliers must ensure they comply with.  These include:

• toys for children under 3 years old
• toys and finger paints containing lead and other elements
• projectile toys
• toys with magnets
• flotation and aquatic toys
• balloon blowing kits
• cosmetics
• sunglasses
• bicycles
• bicycle helmets.

View the Bans, standards & recalls section of this website for a complete list of regulated products.

Examples

Giveaways – Tele Choice mountain bikes

Tele Choice Pty Ltd offered a free bicycle to consumers who entered into a mobile phone contract.  The bicycle didn’t comply with the mandatory standard for pedal bicycles, including requirements for labelling, seat-clamp strength, front hub retention and bell.  Lack of required safety features meant that the bicycles could present death and serious injury hazards to customers using them, as well as to pedestrians whom the cyclists can’t warn with the bike bell in time.

Tele Choice Pty Ltd began a voluntary product safety recall of the bikes it had supplied to its customers, and offered to fix the bikes so that they comply with the mandatory standard.  It then offered the ACCC court-enforceable undertakings that included, among other measures, sending follow-up recall letters to customers who hadn’t responded to the original recall letter and establishing a trade practices compliance program for Tele Choice staff members.

Professor Alan Fels, then-Chairman of the ACCC, said that this case served as “a warning to companies to take care when moving into products that are not normally in their sphere of business.  They must ensure that if there are mandatory product safety standards for the products they intend to supply, the products do comply”.

You can read more about this case in the ACCC’s undertakings register, or the ACCC’s media release relating to it.

Giveaways - Universal Pictures (Australasia) Pty Ltd 'Despereaux' stuffed toy

Gifts with purchase – Kzone Ben 10 alien fighter watch

The December 2008 issue of Kzone magazine included a Ben 10 alien fighter watch as a gift with purchase of the magazine. The product was capable of firing small disc shaped projectiles. The NSW Office of Fair Trading found the product to not be in compliance with the NSW standard on projectile toys. You can access the recall notice by clicking here.

KZone magazine published a safety advice notice in the May issue of KZone magazine to notify readers who obtained a copy of the December issue to remove the product from the reach of children under their care who were known to have the product.

This example highlights that suppliers need to be careful when supplying product lines as an incentive and that suppliers should always check that their products meet the relevant safety standards.

The ACCC is developing a proposed single national regulation for projectile toys. This new regulation will apply to every Australian state and territory. The proposed national standard may differ from the various current state and territory regulations.

New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory have mandatory standards for supply of certain projectile toys.