Misleading or deceptive conduct remained the issue most commonly reported by small businesses with 1,072 reports between January and June 2018, up seven per cent from the previous six months, according to the ACCC’s latest Small Business in Focus report.
The next-most cited issue by small businesses is related to consumer guarantees with 488 reports, followed by wrongly accepting payment with 221 reports.
The report also reported $2.3 million in small business scam losses between January and June, as well as 14 compliance checks conducted by the ACCC.
ACCC deputy chair Mick Keogh said small businesses continue to lose money to sophisticated scams, and that businesses need to be very careful about business email scams, in particular.
“These are where scammers pretend to be a supplier of a small business, or even someone within the business like the CEO or CFO, and intercept payments by emailing new payment details,” he said.
Mr Keogh said it has many more investigations under way and further actions on unfair business-to-business contracts will take place soon.
“At the beginning of the year, we named our priority focus areas to ensure small businesses have a level playing field to compete,” Mr Keogh said.
“We are homing in on unfair terms in business-to-business contracts and making sure industry codes are working in the way they are intended to offer small businesses protection where it is needed.
“We are committed to ensuring that Australia’s 2.2 million small businesses have a fair go. We have a range of regulatory powers available to us, and will continue to leverage these [to] get the best outcomes for small business, franchises and agriculture companies.”
