Lululemon Hit With Hefty Fine After Spam Email Breaches
Athleisure brand Lululemon has been fined more than $700,000 after hundreds of thousands of emails were sent out without offering the alternative to unsubscribe.
The brand violated spam laws after sending out more than 370,000 e-mails including commercial content, consisting of shipping updates and advertising product, without an unsubscribe option, an Australian Communications and Media Authority investigation found.
The watchdog found Lululemon mischaracterised the service messages, including order confirmation e-mails, that had a clear marketing purpose in between December 2024 and January 2025.
"In this case Lululemon sent service emails such as a shipping updates that also included sales product and direct links to promotions," authority member Samantha Yorke stated.
Lululemon has paid the $703,000 fine, and says it takes its obligations seriously.
The guard dog explained the breach as quickly avoidable.
"Businesses need to understand that marketing messages must have an unsubscribe option and the easiest way to comply is to keep transactional or service messages different from sales material and links," Ms Yorke said.
"This is the fifth enforcement action the ACMA has undertaken in the last 18 months versus services that have improperly treated messages as non-commercial although they consisted of or had links to plainly industrial material."
In 2024, the Commonwealth Bank paid a $7.5 million penalty after it sent out more than 170 million emails that did include a method to unsubscribe.
Online betting company PointsBet has also been struck with a $500,000 charge after sending 700 e-mails containing a direct link to its betting products without consisting of an unsubscribe function in 2023.
Telstra paid a $600,000 charge after it sent out close to 10.5 million text that did not abide by spam laws.
Lululemon was previously fined more than $32,000 in 2017 for falsely telling consumers they were not entitled to refunds or replacements.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged the website incorrectly specified in advertisements for sale products that consumers weren't entitled to a return, solution, refund or exchange of a under any circumstance.
The athleisure brand name has participated in a comprehensive court-enforceable endeavor devoting it to an independent review of its spam guideline compliance, according to the guard dog.
The service will require to report to the ACMA on the execution of advised improvements.
A Lululemon representative told AAP the business was taking all suitable legal and regulative requirements extremely seriously.
"We have actually worked cooperatively with the Australian Communications and Media Authority to address their findings," the spokesperson stated.
"We have actually completed a comprehensive evaluation of our practices for communicating with our guests and have actually made updates to our basic visitor journey emails, including our order confirmation and delivery alerts to guarantee continuous compliance."
