Office of Fair Trading complaint process

If you can't resolve your consumer complaint with the business, you can lodge a formal consumer complaint.

Before lodging a formal complaint, watch the resolving disputes and consumer complaints video to learn more about resolving disputes, your consumer rights and how we handle complaints.

We follow our compliance and enforcement policy and standards when processing complaints and conducting investigations.

We manage complaints using the following process.

Assess your complaint

The more information you give us, the quicker and more accurately we can assess your issue to see if we can help or need to refer you on to another agency.

We'll consider the issues in dispute and assess:

• whether the complaint is something we can handle—we can only handle complaints that are covered by the legislation we administer
• whether the trader has met their obligations or offered an appropriate remedy
• options to try to resolve the issue
• whether someone has broken a law that we have the power to act on.

We can't act on every type of complaint. If we can't help, we'll try to refer you to another agency for a quick and effective resolution. Browse our list of other consumer regulators.

Contact you about your complaint

We'll normally contact you within 10 working days after receiving your complaint to:

• confirm we received it and give you a file reference number
• ask your consent (if necessary) to give your contact details to the business, otherwise we might not be able to help you
• refer you to another agency that can manage your complaint, if necessary.

If your complaint leads to an investigation, we'll keep you updated on its progress.

Resolve your complaint

We'll act as an intermediary between you and the business in a conciliation process. Conciliation is an informal way to resolve a complaint. It's free and can help you avoid legal action.

We aim to resolve most complaints within 30 days. It can take longer if it's complex and/or the parties don't cooperate. Every complaint is unique, so the 30-day timeframe is a guide only.

If we can't resolve your complaint

Conciliation doesn't always work. It's also not compulsory—you or the trader can choose not to participate.

Also, we don't have the power to force a business or trader provide a remedy or refund. Only a court or tribunal has the power to make these judgments or orders.

If we haven't been able to help you, you might need to seek independent legal advice about what to do next.

Breaches of the law

Our main aim is to stop serious issues happening again.

Read more about our enforcement processes when we suspect a law has been breached.