The rules that apply to you
If you run a small Australian store that packs and posts its own orders, three sets of held rules attach to your delivery promise: the Australian Consumer Law on misleading representations and delivery timeframes, the Australian Privacy Principles on customer data, and the Spam Act on marketing messages.
This page reads across three instruments The Art of Service holds: the Australian Consumer Law, the Australian Privacy Principles, and the Australia Spam Act. Each rule is our statement of the clause we hold and checked against the copy we hold, and each is linked to its own page so you can read the framework for yourself.
Which rules apply to a small store's delivery promise?
Three regimes meet at the checkout. The promise printed on your page, that an order placed by a cutoff arrives by a day, is a representation about a service, so the Australian Consumer Law governs whether it is misleading and whether you supply in the time you promised. The customer details you hold to fulfil and market an order bring the Australian Privacy Principles into play. The emails and texts you send to sell bring the Spam Act. The three sections below set out the held obligations in each, grouped by the part or schedule they sit in.
What the Australian Consumer Law requires of your delivery promise
Australian Consumer Law (Competition and Consumer Act 2010 Schedule 2), held at 70 controls across 9 Parts and Divisions. Applies to a store carrying on business in trade or commerce in Australia.
Chapter 2 Parts 2-1 and 2-2: Misleading and unconscionable conduct
- Do not engage in conduct in trade or commerce that is misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive. (s 18)
- Do not engage in unconscionable conduct in connection with the supply of goods or services. (s 21)
Chapter 3 Part 3-1: Unfair practices
- Do not make a false or misleading representation about goods or services, including their price, value, availability, performance or the time they will be supplied. (s 29(1)(a) to (l))
- Do not mislead the public about the nature, process, characteristics, suitability or quantity of goods or services. (ss 33 and 34)
- Do not accept payment without the intention and the ability to supply, and supply within the time you promised. (s 36)
- Do not use bait advertising: an advertised special must be available in a reasonable quantity and for a reasonable period. (s 35)
Chapter 3 Part 3-2 Division 1: Consumer guarantees
- Supply goods of acceptable quality, and goods that match their description and any sample or demonstration model. (s 54, ss 56 and 57)
- Supply a service within a reasonable time where no time is fixed, and with due care and skill. (s 62, s 60)
- Do not exclude, restrict or modify the consumer guarantees or the remedies for failing them by contract. (ss 64 and 64A)
Chapters 4 to 6: Offences, enforcement and remedies
- Remedy a consumer guarantee failure for goods by repair, replacement or refund, and honour a rejection on a major failure. (ss 259 to 263)
- Remedy a consumer guarantee failure for services, and refund on a valid termination. (ss 267 to 270)
What the Australian Privacy Principles require of the customer data you hold
Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), held at 13 principles across 5 Parts. Applies to an organisation over the small business turnover threshold, and to a smaller business that trades in personal information or is caught by a related exception.
Part 1 - Consideration of Personal Information Privacy
- Keep a clearly expressed, up to date privacy policy, and practices, procedures and systems that let you comply with the principles and handle a privacy complaint. (APP 1)
- Let a person deal with you anonymously or under a pseudonym, unless the law requires otherwise or that is impracticable. (APP 2)
Part 2 - Collection of Personal Information
- Collect personal information only where it is reasonably necessary for your functions, and only by lawful and fair means, usually from the person. (APP 3)
- Decide within a reasonable period what to do with personal information you received without asking for it, and destroy or de-identify it where you could not have collected it. (APP 4)
- Tell the person, at or before collection, who you are, why you collect, who you usually disclose to, what happens if they do not give the information, and how to access, correct or complain. (APP 5)
Part 3 - Dealing with Personal Information
- Use or disclose the information only for the purpose you collected it for, unless a listed exception applies. (APP 6)
- Use personal information for direct marketing only as the principle allows: for sensitive information, only with consent, and always with a simple way to opt out that is honoured on request. (APP 7)
- Before disclosing information to a recipient outside Australia, take reasonable steps so the recipient does not breach the principles, unless an exception applies. (APP 8)
- Adopt or use a government related identifier for a person only as the principle allows, and do not use it as your own identifier unless the law requires it. (APP 9)
Part 4 - Integrity of Personal Information
- Take reasonable steps so the information you hold is accurate, up to date and complete, and relevant to the purpose it is used for. (APP 10)
- Take reasonable steps, technical and organisational, to protect the information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, change or disclosure, and destroy or de-identify it once it is no longer needed. (APP 11)
Part 5 - Access to, and Correction of, Personal Information
- Give a person access to the personal information you hold about them on request, within a reasonable period. (APP 12)
- Correct personal information that is wrong, and take reasonable steps to notify others you disclosed it to where a correction is made. (APP 13)
What the Spam Act requires of the marketing messages you send
Australia Spam Act 2003, held at 12 controls across 4 Parts and schedules. Applies to a commercial electronic message sent with an Australian link, whether by email, SMS or message service.
Part 2: Rules for sending commercial electronic messages
- Send a commercial electronic message only with the recipient's consent, and do not send to an address you do not believe exists. (s 16(1), s 16(6))
- Identify the person who authorised the message and give accurate contact details that stay valid for at least thirty days. (s 17)
- Include a functional, conspicuous unsubscribe facility that works for at least thirty days. (s 18)
Schedule 2: Consent and its withdrawal
- Hold express consent, or consent that can reasonably be inferred, for each recipient. (Sch 2 cl 2)
- Do not infer consent from a published address, except where it is conspicuously published for work without a no-marketing statement. (Sch 2 cl 4)
- Stop sending commercial messages within five business days of an unsubscribe request. (Sch 2 cl 6)
Part 3: Address-harvesting software and harvested-address lists
- Do not supply, acquire or use address-harvesting software or a harvested-address list for an unsolicited send. (s 20, s 21, s 22)
How is the scope and the applicability stated?
Each framework is held at a stated level, and the obligations above are read at that level and no finer. The Australian Consumer Law is held at seventy controls across nine Parts and Divisions, so a citation names the section the control carries, not the words of a subsection. The Australian Privacy Principles are held at the thirteen principles and the Parts they sit in. The Australia Spam Act is held at twelve controls across its Parts and schedules.
Applicability is stated with each section: the consumer law turns on carrying on business in trade or commerce in Australia, the privacy principles turn on being an organisation that holds personal information (with the small business threshold and its exceptions), and the Spam Act turns on a commercial electronic message with an Australian link.
Where a rule is not held in full, what happens?
Some obligations that sit beside these frameworks are not part of them, and this page names the obligation without stating its text. State and territory fair trading laws, the industry codes of conduct that apply to particular goods, and the mandatory safety standards made under other instruments are separate from the Australian Consumer Law framework held here: where a store relies on one, the duty is named and its text is not quoted here. The privacy principles are held at the principles themselves, so a state or territory health privacy statute is a separate instrument and is not stated. Nothing on this page is invented to fill a gap.
How does Cutoff Promise Checker itself reflect these rules?
The tool is built to keep the store inside the promise rules rather than to rewrite them. Every transit time is read from a carrier-published table held at build time, labelled as carrier-published and dated with the day it was read, and where a carrier publishes a range the map uses the slower end, so a next-day verdict is only given where the whole range supports it. It never shows a guaranteed date, because carriers publish transit times as estimates. A missing cutoff, a missing table or an unknown postcode returns scope incomplete and names what is missing, so the map never defaults to the optimistic promise, which is the representation the consumer law is about.
It does not read live orders or customer records, stores nothing unless you save a store profile to your own account, and sends no marketing messages, so the privacy and spam duties stay with the systems that do hold the data and send the mail.
Frequently asked questions
Can I promise next-day delivery if the carrier might be slower?
A promise you cannot keep risks a false or misleading representation. The Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct at s 18 and false or misleading representations about goods or services at s 29, and requires supply within the time promised at s 36. The map only gives a next-day verdict where the whole carrier range supports it.
What delivery time applies when I have not fixed one?
Under s 62 a service must be supplied within a reasonable time where no time is fixed. The map reads the cutoff, the timezone, the order date and the transit table exactly as you type them: a cleared field is never replaced by a default, so a missing cutoff or a missing transit table returns scope incomplete and names what is missing, rather than defaulting to the optimistic promise. An unknown postcode is named the same way.
Do I need consent to email my customers a promotion?
The Australia Spam Act 2003 requires consent for a commercial electronic message at s 16(1) and in Schedule 2, an accurate identification of the authoriser at s 17, and a working unsubscribe facility honoured within five business days at s 18 and Schedule 2.
Does the tool see my customers' personal data?
No. It reads the carrier-published table held in the page and the postcodes you paste. It does not read live orders or customer records, and it stores nothing unless you save a store profile to your own account.