It hasn’t all been easy times for Ruslan Kogan.

On 25 November 2008, Kogan ran an advertisement in The Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne containing a series of offers, such as a 35% saving on a 47” 1080p Full HD LCD TV.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) wrote to Kogan raising concerns that the pricing representations for its electrical products may have amounted to contraventions of the Act, in that the products were never sold by Kogan at the higher prices.

Specifically, the ACCC believed that the represented ‘savings’ were not genuine savings as Kogan had not previously advertised or sold the products at the higher non-sale price in reasonable quantities for a reasonable period of time and within
a reasonable period of the date of the said advertisements. Accordingly, the LCD TV had only ever been offered for sale by Kogan at $1499 and never at $2999 (the latter incorporating the alleged $1500 saving).

The ACCC found Kogan’s savings were based on an estimated average price that a consumer might pay for a product with the same specifications from another manufacturer and not a saving on the price previously offered by Kogan for those products.