Furniture retailer James Lane and play equipment seller Vuly have paid penalties after Australia's competition regulator today alleged that the deadlines on their sales around Black Friday 2025 were not real deadlines. James Lane paid $19,800 over a sale it had decided in advance to extend past its advertised close; Vuly paid $39,600 over countdown timers that, on reaching zero, were set to a new end date while the same or larger discounts carried on.

In Short

Two Australian shops told customers their sales were about to finish, then kept the discounts going, or made them bigger, once the clock ran out. Australia's consumer watchdog says this pushes people to buy in a hurry for no real reason and makes them less likely to compare prices at other shops. The shops paid $19,800 and $39,600, promised to follow the law in future, and the regulator says it is watching sale end dates and countdown clocks again ahead of this year's Black Friday.

Three notices, two retailers

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) published the outcome as media release 112/26, filed under advertising and promotions, compliance and enforcement, and pricing. The penalties followed infringement notices: one to The Sleeping Giant Pty Ltd, which trades as James Lane, and two to Systems Operations Pty Ltd, which trades as Vuly Play Group. All amounts in the case are Australian dollars.

Both matters surfaced during the regulator's own sweep of Black Friday sales advertising in November 2025. The allegation in each case concerns time, not price. According to the ACCC, both retailers told consumers that products would be discounted only for a limited period, when the discounts in fact continued after the advertised end date.

"We are concerned that retailers are increasingly using tactics that create a false sense of urgency, pressuring consumers to make rushed purchasing decisions for fear of missing out on a discount," ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said. "These claims also hurt competition as they can discourage consumers from shopping around."

James Lane: an extension decided before the sale began

James Lane advertised that its Black Friday sale would end on 3 December 2025. Black Friday itself fell on 28 November that year, so the stated close already sat five days after the event that gave the sale its name. Products then continued to be advertised and sold at the discounted price for a further week, according to the ACCC.

The detail that separates this case from an ordinary extension sits in the regulator's investigation. The ACCC found that James Lane had decided, before its Black Friday sale started, that the discount would run beyond the advertised end date. The deadline, on the ACCC's account, was known to be false when it was published.

A screenshot of the James Lane homepage on 3 December 2025, published with the release, shows a full-width banner reading "Black Friday" above the words "Sale ends today!", with a black strip across the top of the page repeating the message. James Lane paid $19,800 under the single notice.

"We allege that James Lane created a false sense of urgency for consumers by using an early end date for its sale and statements such as 'Sale ends today!' despite the retailer deciding in advance that its sale would be extended," Ms Lowe said.

According to the ACCC, James Lane sells furniture, homewares and bedding online and through approximately 30 showrooms nationwide. It is part of the Bart Group, which manages a range of brands including Sleeping Giant and Bed Bath & Beyond. The release does not say whether any other Bart Group brand ran a comparable promotion.

Vuly: two timers, two restarts

Vuly's case involves a clock rather than a date. In early November 2025, its website advertised products, including a trampoline, as discounted by "up to 30% off" in its Click Frenzy sale, alongside a countdown timer to the sale's end. The screenshot published by the ACCC shows a purple panel headed "Click Frenzy The Main Event" offering savings of up to 30% sitewide with free delivery and accessories, subject to terms and conditions, above the line "Hurry offer ends midnight 14th Nov". A pink bar across the top of the page carries the timer itself, captured at 3 days, 8 hours, 45 minutes and 39 seconds.

Immediately after that timer ended, according to the ACCC, the discount increased to "up to 45% off" as part of a new sale, and the timer was updated to a new end date. Later in November, Vuly's Black Friday sale advertised discounts of up to 45% with a countdown that ended on the official Black Friday date. When it did, the discount continued and the timer reset to another end date.

Two notices produced penalties totalling $39,600. "The ACCC alleges that Vuly also created a false sense of urgency for consumers through its use of countdown timers for sale promotions, because after the specified sale period had ended, the same or higher discount continued to be offered with a new countdown timer," Ms Lowe said.

The sequence carries an irony the release does not dwell on. On the headline figures, a shopper who acted before the Click Frenzy clock reached zero was offered up to 30%; one who waited was offered up to 45%. Because "up to" figures describe a ceiling, the release cannot show how many individual products actually became cheaper, and it gives no product-level prices.

Timing adds a second layer. The ACCC set out its 2025 Black Friday sweep on 10 November 2025, with countdown timers that did not match the actual duration of a sale at the top of its list. Vuly's banner gave midnight on 14 November as the end of the Click Frenzy offer - four days after that public warning.

Vuly sells trampolines, swing sets, monkey bars and accessories for outdoor play equipment, predominantly through its website and approximately 20 resellers across Australia, according to the ACCC.

What the release does not establish

Much of the release rests on allegation. Its headline refers to "allegedly" misleading representations, and payment of an infringement notice penalty is not, in legal terms, an admission of a contravention, a point PPC Land set out when WeFlex paid $19,800 over an NDIS funding advertisement. The wording does shift in places: the ACCC "alleges" in its framing but "found" James Lane's extension had been planned in advance.

Neither retailer is recorded as having admitted anything. Both have "committed to the ACCC" that their future sales advertising will comply with the Australian Consumer Law. The release does not describe that commitment as a court-enforceable undertaking, the instrument that turns a promise into an obligation enforceable in court. That marks a difference from the case published eight days earlier, when digiDirect paid $99,000 and admitted in a court-enforceable undertaking that strikethrough discount claims on its website were misleading.

Several other details are missing. No provision of the Australian Consumer Law is named, although PPC Land's coverage of the sweep pointed to section 18 on misleading or deceptive conduct and section 29 on false representations about price. The release does not say how Vuly's two notices divide between the Click Frenzy and Black Friday conduct, how many products were affected, what either retailer earned during the extended periods, or on what date James Lane's discount finally stopped. The phrase "another week" is the only measure given.

There is also a small inconsistency in the text. The background section names the electronics retailer as digiDirect and, one sentence later, as "digitDirect". PPC Land's coverage of that case uses digiDirect. The headline's reference to "last year's Black Friday sales" is similarly loose, since the first of Vuly's timers belonged to Click Frenzy, a separate event earlier in November.

The same sum per notice

One figure recurs. James Lane's single notice cost $19,800, and Vuly's two notices divide to $19,800 each. The same amount per notice appears across the ACCC's infringement notice work this year: digiDirect's $99,000 across five notices, Doreen Egg's $39,600 across two, Hismile's $138,600 across seven and HSK United's $79,200 across four.

When digiDirect's case was published, PPC Land noted that the totals track the number of notices issued rather than the size of the business or the revenue at stake. Today's release fits that pattern. James Lane, part of a group that also manages Bed Bath & Beyond, paid exactly what WeFlex paid for one social media advertisement.

The court route, and its ceiling

Why notices and not proceedings? The release does not say. The gap between the two routes is wide, and the closest precedent for Vuly's timers went to court.

On 24 April 2026, the Federal Court ordered Emma Sleep entities to pay $15 million over conduct that ran from 15 June 2020 to 27 March 2023. Among other things, Emma Sleep's timer reached zero before a campaign concluded and then reset to a new period, while products continued to be advertised at the same or similar discount. That is mechanically close to what the ACCC alleges against Vuly. The Emma Sleep case, however, also involved strikethrough prices across 74 products, ran for nearly three years, and reached consumers through email and SMS as well as the website.

Court penalties for companies can reach the greatest of $50 million, three times the benefit obtained, or 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach period. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Act 2026, passed on 26 March 2026, lifted the fixed limb to $100 million for conduct from 28 March 2026. Both James Lane's and Vuly's conduct took place in November and December 2025, before that date. Conduct during Black Friday 2026 would fall under the higher ceiling.

Why a clock is a claim

Countdown timers occupy a particular place in the vocabulary of dark patterns. The most widely used classification, from a 2019 study by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, groups manipulative designs into seven categories, urgency among them, with countdown timers listed as one of fifteen specific types. The difficulty for regulators is that a genuine timer and a fabricated one look identical on screen. Only what happens when the clock reaches zero distinguishes them.

The ACCC's stated position is not that timers are unlawful. "Businesses must ensure any sale end dates, countdown timers or limited-time discount claims are genuine," Ms Lowe said.

Genuine timed offers are common on marketplaces. An Amazon lightning deal runs for between four and 12 hours in a slot Amazon chooses, and ends when the time expires or the discounted units are claimed. The clock there is tied to a real stop controlled by the marketplace. On a retailer's own website, the timer is a script the retailer configures, and the end date is whatever the retailer chooses to enter next.

Marketplaces have moved further on price claims than on time claims. Since 23 April 2026, Amazon's List Price ruleshave required a seller's reference figure to match a recent price at another retailer or a price customers actually paid for the Featured Offer on Amazon. The struck-through reference price has become something platforms and regulators both test against sales data. A sale end date has no equivalent platform check on an independent retailer's site; in Australia, the sweep is the check.

Why this matters for marketers

Urgency devices are among the most common conversion tools in ecommerce, and they rarely stay on one page. The Emma Sleep case showed how far a single representation can travel: emails carrying the misleading claims went to more than 4 million consumers, and SMS messages to nearly half a million. The James Lane and Vuly findings concern website banners and timers only, and the release does not mention paid media.

Automated creative raises a related question the release does not address. Google's text customization, part of AI Max, generates search ad headlines and descriptions from landing page content, and those assets are reviewed and refreshed at least every 48 hours. A "sale ends today" line that stays on a landing page after the deadline has passed can therefore become source material for ad copy, with no human deciding to repeat it. There is no suggestion in the release that either retailer's advertising was generated this way.

The calendar gives the release its weight. Black Friday falls on 27 November 2026, 59 days from today, and Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days run on 6 and 7 October across 22 countries. The ACCC referred directly to this year's Black Friday sales being close. "We will continue to actively monitor retailers discount claims and will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action against businesses who make misleading claims to consumers," Ms Lowe said.

The Australian approach sits within a wider tightening. In February, the ACCC named dark patterns and misleading pricing among its 2026-27 enforcement priorities, and today's release repeats that misleading pricing in the retail and supermarket sectors is a compliance and enforcement priority. In Europe, false urgency is one of the few manipulative practices already blacklisted in Annex I of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, as PPC Land noted in its coverage of Finance Watch's study of investment apps, with a Digital Fairness Act expected to address manipulative design more broadly. In February 2026, the Brussels Commercial Court ordered Ryanair to suspend pressure-selling tactics including urgency messages and non-existent discounts.

For agencies and retailers running holiday campaigns across several markets, the practical effect is that a timer configured once for a regional promotion is now a representation assessed by different regulators under different penalty scales, and in Australia under a fixed court ceiling that has doubled since the conduct in today's case.

Ten months from sweep to outcome

The ACCC has now run Black Friday sweeps in consecutive years. The 2024 sweep, which covered Black Friday and Boxing Day advertising, produced penalties for Michael Hill, My House and Hairhouse Online in June 2025. Two public outcomes have followed in the past eight days: digiDirect, whose release did not say which year's sweep caught it, and now James Lane and Vuly, both from the 2025 exercise.

James Lane and Vuly followed some ten months after their conduct took place, and 323 days after the sweep was first made public.

Today's release does not say whether other retailers from the 2025 sweep remain under investigation. The digiDirect release eight days earlier stated that the ACCC was continuing to investigate several retailers over claims made during the 2024 and 2025 end-of-year sales, without naming them. With Black Friday 2026 less than nine weeks away, the question is whether those files close before the next set of timers starts counting, and whether any of them go to court.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, with Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe quoted. The Sleeping Giant Pty Ltd, trading as James Lane, a furniture, homewares and bedding retailer with about 30 showrooms and part of the Bart Group. Systems Operations Pty Ltd, trading as Vuly Play Group, which sells trampolines and outdoor play equipment online and through about 20 resellers.

What: James Lane paid $19,800 under one infringement notice for allegedly advertising a Black Friday sale end date of 3 December 2025 while having decided in advance to extend the discount, which continued for a further week. Vuly paid $39,600 under two notices for allegedly using countdown timers in its Click Frenzy and Black Friday sales that reset to new end dates while the same or higher discounts, rising from up to 30% to up to 45%, continued. Neither retailer admitted a contravention; both committed to the ACCC to comply with the Australian Consumer Law.

When: The ACCC published release 112/26 today, 29 September 2026. The conduct took place in November and December 2025 and was identified during the Black Friday sweep the ACCC set out on 10 November 2025.

Where: Australia, on the retailers' own websites, jameslane.com.au and Vuly's Australian site at vulyplay.com, as captured in screenshots published with the release.

Why: The ACCC says false deadlines pressure consumers into rushed purchases and discourage them from shopping around, harming competition. The outcome arrives 59 days before Black Friday 2026, under a penalty regime for new conduct whose fixed court ceiling has doubled to $100 million.