Just days after Parliament voted to ban subscription traps, online advice service JustAnswer has been ordered to pay $10 million in penalties and refund customers for systematically offering cheap introductory prices, then tricking them into expensive ongoing memberships.
The ACCC-led investigation began last September after it found that US-based JustAnswer – which connects customers in 196 countries with professionals like lawyers, accountants, mechanics and veterinarians to answer their questions – misled Australian customers for nearly three years.
From November 2022 to August 2025, the ACCC found, JustAnswer’s chatbot invited consumers to “join JustAnswer for only AU$2 (fully refundable)” – but when customers signed up to pay the $2, they were actually signed up for an ongoing subscription that cost $45 to $75 per month.
This bait and switch practice was a “serious breach” of Australian Consumer Law (ACL), ACCC commissioner Luke Woodward said, by “misleading consumers into signing up to a subscription trap by not giving the necessary up-front information about ongoing subscription fees.”
“Consumers suffered financial harm by being charged a monthly subscription fee that they were not expecting to pay,” he added, “which had not been adequately disclosed and continued until the consumer took action to cancel the subscription.”
The Federal Court also found that, from June 2022 to February 2024, JustAnswer had unlawfully claimed that it was affiliated with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) – enticing customers to sign up with promises that it could connect them to an FWO representative.
JustAnswer falsely claimed it could connect consumers with an ombudsman to help with their workplace concerns. Source: ACCC
“Some consumers may have joined JustAnswer under the mistaken belief that their questions would be answered by an Australian Ombudsman,” Woodward said, noting that such claims “prevented consumers from making informed decisions about whether to use the service.”
Dropping the hammer on subscription traps
The JustAnswer penalty comes days after Parliament voted to pass the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026, which were first introduced in draft form in February and will ban unfair trading practices and subscription traps from 1 July 2027.
Unfair contract terms were named as a priority enforcement area for the ACCC this year, after enforcement action against Microsoft and moves to punish food delivery services HelloFresh and Youfoodz for charging over 100,000 Australians after they cancelled their subscriptions.
“Australians know exactly what these reforms are about because they have lived it,” Dr Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury said in welcoming the passage of the bill for Australians who, he said, “have had a gutful of these practices.”
This, he said, “Whether it’s spending half a day trying to exit a subscription that took 30 seconds to sign up, being slugged with last‑minute fees at checkout that weren’t previously disclosed, or being nudged and steered by online design features into decisions they wouldn’t otherwise make.”
A 12-month transition period will help businesses prepare for the new operating environment – after which, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer noted, “any industry where the ACCC has already raised concerns about consumers being misled should consider themselves in the spotlight.”
JustAnswer enticed consumers with a $2 introductory offer, then signed them up for expensive monthly subscriptions without their consent. Source: ACCC
Opaque disclosures and cancellation policies are just two of 18 types of unsavoury behaviour that HSFK notes the new laws will target, with an explicit subscription trap regime requiring “comprehensible, audible, unambiguous” information “disclosed in a reasonable time”.
Caveat clickor
The new penalty represents nearly 4 per cent of JustAnswer’s annual revenue – estimated at around $273 million (US$188.6 million) – and the company has been ordered to publish a corrective notice on its website, pay costs and develop a consumer law compliance program.
Yet it’s far from the first time JustAnswer’s business practices have been questioned: a long Reddit thread dating back to 2020 includes complaints by dozens of customers, all of whom say they signed up for the trial membership but were charged for a subscription they never asked for.
One customer asked a question about his car and was connected to a mechanic who was unable to help – but realised later that “I was being charged $34 every month for a membership I never in a million years would have agreed to, to an account I rarely used.”
Another customer signed up for $1 but was charged an additional $46 for the subscription “which I was never told…. I asked for a refund and they told me they couldn’t because I asked a question even though they said it was fully refundable.”
“There is not some way in which it is not a scam,” another user wrote. “It is just a scam.”
“It is not a complicated scam. They will not help you fix your fridge.
“You allow yourself to be persuaded that you have found someone who will help you so you don't have to educate yourself or hire an expensive tradesperson, and they take a small amount of money from you.”
