Understand the complaint process
We give consumers and businesses information to help them resolve marketplace disputes.
A business is considered to be a consumer if they buy, hire or lease services and new or second hand goods that are:
- worth $100,000 or less
- something normally purchased for personal, domestic or household use, regardless of price
- a vehicle or trailer used mainly to transport goods, regardless of price.
You can seek a remedy if a business or manufacturer sells you goods and services that don’t meet consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law. This remedy might be a refund, repair, replacement or compensation for damage and loss.
The remedy you are entitled to will depend on whether the failure to comply with the guarantee is major or minor.
Express warranties, warranties against defects, and extended warranties can also be offered to you in addition to your automatic consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law.
Lodging a complaint
If you don’t reach a solution or remedy to a dispute, you can lodge an official complaint with us. We will then attempt to conciliate the dispute. The more information you give us, the more quickly and accurately we can assess it. This gives you the best chance of getting our help.
We can’t always act on every complaint, but we will log them in our records.
We cannot:
- make judgments like a court or judge
- provide compensation
- force a business to compensate you or rectify a problem.
When you complain to us
We will assess your complaint to determine:
- which issues are in dispute
- options that may help to resolve it
- whether someone has broken a law that we have the power to act on
- if another organisation could better handle the dispute (if so, we refer you to them).
You can complain to us:
- if you live in Queensland and purchase goods and services from a business that operates from Queensland
- if you live in Queensland and purchase goods and services from another state or territory
- If you live in a state or territory outside of Queensland and purchase goods and services from a business that operates from Queensland
If you live outside of Queensland and also purchase goods and services from another state or territory you will need to lodge a complaint with the relevant fair trading office in that state or territory.
When we contact you
We will contact you after receiving your complaint. This will be to:
- confirm that we received it
- give you a file reference number
- ask your consent, if necessary, to give your contact details to the business (otherwise we may not be able to help you)
- tell you if we’ve referred your complaint to another body.
If we can’t help you, we will explain why and tell you about any other options you may have.
We normally contact you within 10 working days after receiving your complaint. If you have not heard from us by this time, we recommend you call us on 13 QGOV (13 74 68) or email Brisbane.OFT@justice.qld.gov.au to confirm we have received it.
If your complaint leads to an investigation, we will keep you up-to-date about our progress.
How we help
We contact each party to try to resolve the matter.
We aim to resolve most complaints within 30 days. It may take longer if:
- a complaint is complex
- the parties don’t cooperate.
Every complaint is unique, so the 30-day timeframe should be treated as a guide only.
Unresolved complaints
If we still can’t resolve a dispute, we can give you advice on what to do next.
This might be:
However, we can’t force you or the business to take any action.
Alleged breaches of the law
Our main aim with any serious complaint is to stop it happening again.
We may also try to get a remedy for you, but this is a secondary issue for us.
When a business has broken the law, we can:
- notify them and seek their cooperation to fix the problem
- get the business to follow the law in the future
- formally warn them
- publicly warn consumers not to trade with them
- issue them with a fine
- take the business to court to seek a penalty (including compensation in some cases)
- seek a court order to ban the business from operating.
The action we decide to take depends on several factors. We may consider:
- if we think the breach was deliberate or not
- whether they tried to fix the problem before we intervened
- how many consumers were affected
- how long the breach had been going on
- whether the business had committed the breach before.
Interstate businesses
If you’re a Queensland consumer or business and have a problem with an item you bought in another state or territory:
- we can give you advice about whether the business may have acted inappropriately
- you can complain to us
- we will attempt to enter conciliation with the business.
If conciliation doesn’t work, we may contact the fair trading agency in the business’s state or territory. We will notify you and the business. That agency might:
- attempt conciliation
- take other actions, if appropriate.
We will usually only refer the matter if we think there has been a significant breach of the law.
ACLink
ACLink is a secure way for us to share information with other fair trading agencies in Australia and New Zealand. It helps us to track consumer fraud and travelling businesses if they go interstate. By lodging a complaint with us, you agree to let us share the information with these other agencies.
The ACLink system will:
- manage your information with care
- keep it confidential from any other agency (aside from those on ACLink).