TELEPHONE DISCUSSION INITIATED BY ACCC

DATE: 19 May 2021 at 10am

THOSE PRESENT:
• ACCC manager - Nicholas Heys, Deputy General Manager - Enforcement Co-ordination & Strategy;
• ACCC - Name removed at request of ACCC;
• ACCC team graduate - Name removed at request of ACCC;
• Change.org PETITIONER - Gordon Craven (GC).

LENGTH OF DISCUSSION: 57 Minutes.

ISSUES : Petition to ACCC - https://www.change.org/End_Floristry_Scams

A WRITTEN PETITION REPORT was provided to the ACCC prior to the discussion on 18 May 2021, with following details :

> Petition to ACCC - https://www.change.org/End_Floristry_Scams

> Petition commenced on 16 April 2021. Along with a Facebook Boost targeting florists, Florist Businesses from the following regions have been invited to support the petition:
• Sunshine Coast QLD & south to Redcliffe • Gold Coast QLD
• Townsville QLD • Central Coast NSW • Canberra ACT • Newcastle NSW • Wollongong NSW • Toowoomba • Ipswich QLD

> Florists located in Brisbane and most of Greater Brisbane, and in the rest of Australia including all of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Tasmania, ARE YET to be invited for support. 

> Consequently, only a small proportion of Australian florist businesses have been invited to respond so far.

> As at 18 May 2021, the Change.org list of names of signatories to the Petition were provided which numbered 409, together with the comments received so far.

> Notice to the ACCC was given regarding the Petitioner’s archive of over 3,300 fake reviews by one phony florist,  which have been made by that phony over a one year period.

THE INITIAL TAKEAWAY
The initial takeaway from the ACCC position in the matter, appears to be a collection of reasons as to why there has been (and maybe still is), a do nothing approach.

One of those reasons, being that over the years the florist industry and online platforms has changed and the impact on consumers and their behaviour has changed.

To that GC responded that nothing has changed, and that looking at a Google search page it’s exactly the same… there are the same people from a number of years ago doing the same things now… and that real florists have to compete with the same dishonesty and unfair competition which causes them to suffer a loss of trade.

Another ACCC reason for inaction is that there is no quantification of consumer loss, to which GC responded by pointing out that for contravention of Section 18 of Schedule 2 of the ACL legislation to be made out, does not require there to be a loss, and that the bottom line is the wording of Section 18 of the legislation, which ACCC acknowledged was very broad.

Another ACCC reason for inaction is regarding what component of the total floral industry market do the alleged phony florists occupy, to which GC provided some figures (from Dun & Bradstreet source) for the FlowersCorp entities being:
• Flowerscorp Pty Ltd 2017 annual revenue $30.05 Million in USD;
• Flowerscorp Group Limited 2018 annual revenue $33.04 Million in USD;
and referred to https://Fake.Florist where there is a video of Jack Singleton and transcript, stating how much FlowersCorp relies on the expensive Google Ads and how successful they are.

And so it continued… however at the end, ACCC stated they are to have a “closer look” at the complaints.

The discussion was recorded for analysis of ACCC logic and annotation purposes.

A further more detailed report will be published subsequent to the analysis.