Proposed UTP Laws (Revised)

They signed up in seconds. Cancelling took weeks.

The offer looked simple. Low monthly price. Easy onboarding. No friction.

What they did not see:

• The fees added later
• The renewal that triggered automatically
• The cancellation process buried behind multiple steps, emails, and delays

Often technically compliant under current rules. That is changing.

The Government’s proposed Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) laws, with a proposed commencement date of 1 July 2027, are squarely targeting this kind of conduct:

• Subscription traps
• Drip pricing
• Hidden fees
• Design choices that steer decisions through friction or confusion

The shift is not that misleading conduct stops mattering. The existing ACL prohibitions on misleading conduct and component pricing remain. What is new is an additional question sitting alongside them: was the conduct fair?

A few features of the Exposure Draft worth knowing now:

1. It is not just about consumers. The subscription rules would also apply to standard form subscription contracts with small businesses (fewer than 100 employees or under $10M turnover). B2B SaaS and subscription suppliers are caught.

2. Sign-up disclosures. Before the customer commits, suppliers would need to clearly disclose the initial price, frequency of charges, whether the subscription auto-renews, and any price changes after a free or discounted period.

3. Reminder notices. Prescribed reminders would need to be sent before renewals and before a free trial converts into a paid subscription.

4. Cancellation parity. If a customer can sign up online, they must be able to cancel online. No phone calls, no in-person visits, no manufactured hurdles.

5. Drip pricing. Total price, including mandatory fees, must be disclosed clearly and early enough for meaningful comparison across advertising, product pages, and checkout.

6. The general UTP prohibition still applies. Even if a business meets every technical requirement above, broader design choices can still attract scrutiny if they unreasonably manipulate or distort the customer’s decision-making.

Does your business operate like this?

• “$9.99 per month” with mandatory fees added at checkout
• Subscriptions that renew automatically unless cancelled in a narrow window
• Cancellation processes that require multiple steps or delays
• User flows engineered to push one outcome over another

Most businesses will not realise they have a problem. These decisions often sit with marketing, sales, product, or IT teams… not legal.

If the laws commence and nothing changes:

• Your pricing model is reviewed
• Your onboarding flow is examined step-by-step
• Your internal design decisions are scrutinised

The question will not only be whether the conduct was misleading. It will also be whether it was fair.

Steps that can be taken now:

1. Review pricing structures and fee disclosures across all customer-facing channels
2. Audit subscription and renewal mechanics, including reminder notice capability
3. Map customer journeys from sign-up to cancellation and test cancellation parity
4. Consider whether broader design choices could attract scrutiny under the general UTP prohibition

If your model looks like this, ask:

1. Are all mandatory fees disclosed upfront?
2. Is cancellation as easy as sign-up?
3. Is renewal actively agreed, or assumed?
4. Could this process be seen as creating pressure or confusion?

How Bird Law approaches this

We do not just review the contract. We look at how the business actually operates: pricing models, customer flows, subscription mechanics, and identify where exposure sits and how to fix it.

The outcome: clear pricing, defensible processes, reduced regulatory risk.

If your model relies on customers missing something or struggling to exit, it will need to change. With a proposed commencement of 1 July 2027, the time to look at it is now.