Door-to-door sales in Australia and your unsolicited consumer agreement obligations

If your team sells by knocking on doors, or by approaching people in shopping centres, markets and on the street, the Australian Consumer Law treats you differently from almost every other seller. Because the customer did not come to you, the law assumes they need extra protection: a cooling-off period they can use for any reason, restrictions on when your people may call, and a flat ban on taking payment or starting supply before the cooling-off period ends.

Those rules sit in Division 2 of Part 3-2 of the Australian Consumer Law (the ACL), which is Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). This guide sets out who the regime catches, the duties your team must meet at the door, what the paperwork must contain, how the cooling-off period works, and what happens if you get it wrong. If you run a field sales team selling solar, energy plans, home services or subscriptions, treat this as your compliance baseline before the first door is knocked.

Is your business caught by the unsolicited sales rules?

The regime applies to an "unsolicited consumer agreement", defined in s 69 of the ACL. An agreement is an unsolicited consumer agreement (a UCA) if all of the following are true:

Supply to a consumer: the agreement is for a supply, in trade or commerce, of goods or services to a consumer.
Negotiations away from your premises: it results from negotiations between a dealer and the consumer in each other's presence at a place other than your business premises, or by telephone.
No invitation: the consumer did not invite the dealer to come to that place, or to call, for the purposes of negotiating that supply.
Price: the total price is not ascertainable at the time the agreement is made, or, if it is ascertainable, is more than $100 (or another amount prescribed by regulation).

Four points about that definition are worth stopping on.

First, "dealer" is defined in s 71 to include anyone who negotiates with a consumer with a view to a supply agreement, whether or not they will be the supplier. A third-party sales agency you engage is a dealer, and every rule in the division applies to them.

Second, the place does not have to be someone's home. Section 69 makes clear a public place counts, so approaching shoppers in a car park or on a high street is covered just as much as knocking on a front door.

Third, if you rely on agents, their breaches are your breaches. Under s 77, where a dealer who is not the supplier contravenes a negotiating rule, the supplier is also taken to have contravened it in relation to the agreement. You cannot outsource the risk to an agency; it lands back on your business.

Fourth, the burden of proof is against you. Under s 70, in any civil proceeding an agreement is presumed to be an unsolicited consumer agreement unless your business proves otherwise. If a sale is challenged, you carry the task of showing it was genuinely invited.

The invitation point deserves care. If a customer asked you to quote on a specific product, for example solar panels, an agreement for that supply is not unsolicited, because the customer invited the negotiations. But if the same visit produces a sale of something different, a security system or a new energy plan, that agreement can still be caught. Treat every product beyond the invited one as unsolicited.

The duties at the door

The division imposes a series of obligations on the dealer during every visit. Each one carries a pecuniary penalty for a contravention, so treat them as hard requirements, not guidelines.

Permitted hours

Under s 73, a dealer must not call on a person to negotiate an unsolicited consumer agreement:

Sunday and public holidays: no calls at all on those days.
Weekdays: not before 9 am and not after 6 pm.
Saturday: not before 9 am and not after 5 pm.

There is one exception: calls outside those hours are allowed with the person's consent, provided the consent was given otherwise than in the dealer's presence, for example where the customer books an appointment online or over the phone in advance. Note also that if your follow-up process uses telephone calls, the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth) applies to those calls separately.

Purpose, identity and leaving on request

Before any negotiation starts, s 74 requires the dealer to clearly advise the person that the purpose of the visit is to seek their agreement to a supply, to clearly advise that the dealer is obliged to leave the premises immediately on request, and to provide identity information prescribed by the regulations, which in practice means your business name and the representative's details. Carry identification and produce it when asked.

If the occupier or the prospective customer asks the dealer to leave, s 75 requires the dealer to leave immediately. There is no finishing the pitch first. The dealer must then not contact that person to negotiate for at least 30 days, and that no-contact rule binds the supplier and anyone acting for it as well.

Telling the customer about the termination right

Before the agreement is made, s 76 requires that the customer be given information about their right to terminate during the termination period and the way to exercise it. If the agreement is negotiated face to face, that information must be given in writing. Do not rely on a verbal mention; the customer needs the written termination information before they sign anything.

The written agreement and the no-waiver rule

The agreement itself must comply with s 79. It must set out in full all the terms of the agreement, including the total consideration or, if that is not ascertainable, the way it will be calculated, plus any postal or delivery charges. Its front page must carry a notice that conspicuously and prominently informs the customer of the right to terminate, and it must be accompanied by a notice the customer can use to terminate. The agreement must also set out the supplier's details, including an address, email address and fax number to which a termination notice can be sent.

Two further requirements matter in practice. The front-page notice and the termination information must be given before the agreement is made, so a compliant template has the notice built in, not appended afterwards. And under s 90, the customer is not competent to waive any right conferred by the division, and the supplier must not induce a waiver. A clause that asks a customer to give up their cooling-off rights is ineffective and is itself a contravention.

The cooling-off period: 10 business days, and what you cannot do in it

The central protection is the termination right in s 82. The customer may terminate the agreement for any reason, by indicating in an oral or written notice to the supplier an intention to terminate. No reason is needed, the right survives even if the agreement has been fully performed, and a written notice posted to the supplier's address in the agreement is effective from the time of posting.

For a face-to-face sale, the standard period is 10 business days starting on the day the agreement is made. During that period, s 86 prohibits the supplier from supplying the goods or services, accepting any payment, or requiring any payment in connection with them. In short, no deposit, no first instalment, no "goodwill" payment, and no commencement of installation or service. If you supply goods in breach of the section, the customer has the same rights as if the goods were unsolicited goods, which in practice means they may not have to pay for them at all.

If the customer does terminate, the obligations are immediate:

Refund: under s 84, the supplier must immediately return or refund any consideration given under the agreement or a related contract. Any payment made after termination must be refunded immediately under s 87.
Goods: under s 85, the customer must return goods they have not consumed within a reasonable time, or tell you where to collect them. If you do not collect within 30 days, the goods become the customer's property.
No chasing: under s 88, after termination you cannot bring proceedings to recover amounts, threaten to, or put the customer's name on a defaulter list.

When the cooling-off period stretches to three or six months

The 10 business days is the floor, not the ceiling. Section 82 sets the termination period as the longest of several alternatives:

10 business days: the standard period where everything is done correctly.
3 months: if the dealer contravened s 73 (permitted hours), s 74 (purpose and identity) or s 75 (leaving on request).
6 months: if the supplier contravened s 76 (informing the customer of the termination right), the agreement requirements in Subdivision C, or s 86 (the ban on supply and payment during the cooling-off period).
Any longer period the agreement itself provides: the period stated in the agreement applies.

The practical consequence is severe. One slip, for example a visit outside permitted hours or a payment taken during the cooling-off period, converts a 10-business-day right into a right that runs for three or six months. Every affected agreement carries the risk of a refund, goods returned and a cancelled sale long after the customer signed.

The consequences of non-compliance

Door-to-door contraventions attract both civil penalties and criminal offences, so the exposure is real.

Under s 224 of the ACL, a court may order a pecuniary penalty for each contravention of Division 2. For a body corporate the maximum is $50,000 per contravention, and $10,000 for an individual. Because the penalty is per act or omission, a team that routinely breaches the hours or disclosure rules across many visits produces many separate penalties.

The same conduct can also be a criminal offence. Calling outside permitted hours is a strict liability offence under s 170 with a maximum penalty of $50,000 for a body corporate and $10,000 otherwise, and s 173 and s 175 create parallel offences for failing to give the termination information and for defective agreements.

Beyond Division 2, your scripts and marketing remain subject to the general ACL. Misleading or deceptive conduct under s 18 carries penalties for a body corporate of up to the greater of $100 million, three times the benefit gained, or 30% of adjusted turnover, and the consumer guarantees on goods and services cannot be excluded by any contract term. Savings claims like "you will pay less" must be substantiated with up-to-date data, and total prices, including installation, membership and exit fees, should be stated clearly up front.

Penalties are payable to the Commonwealth, state or territory, and enforcement is split between the ACCC and state and territory fair trading agencies, so the regulator that pursues you may depend on where the sales happened.

A compliance checklist for your sales team

Run through these checks before every shift:

Schedule within the law: build the permitted hours into rostering and route software so a visit cannot start outside them.
Respect requests and signs: leave immediately when asked, log the 30-day no-contact period, and treat "do not knock" signage as an instruction not to approach.
Script the disclosures: purpose, identity, the obligation to leave on request, and the written termination information before any agreement is made.
Freeze payment and supply: block deposit, instalment and service commencement for the full 10 business days.
Paperwork first: a written agreement with the full terms, the front-page termination notice and a termination form the customer can use.
Treat agents as your risk: because of s 77, contract your agencies with compliance obligations, train their reps and audit their visits.
Keep records: for each visit, the date, time, address, representative, disclosures made and the agreement copy provided.
Check the overlays: if you sell energy, telecommunications or other regulated services, sector-specific codes can add further restrictions on top of the ACL, and some local councils run permit or notification schemes for doorknocking.

Where a lawyer earns their fee

A commercial lawyer can review your agreement template and front-page notice against s 79 before you print a single copy, which is far cheaper than defending a cancellation or a penalty after the fact. They can also map the sector-specific rules that apply to your product, review commission plans so they reward compliant behaviour rather than signed contracts, and advise on the response if a regulator complaint or substantiation notice arrives. And when a customer terminates months after the sale and claims the visit was never invited, it is the evidence of the agreement, the disclosures and the invitation that decides the dispute, so get the paperwork and record-keeping right while you still can.

The ten-day blackout is where the sale is won or lost

Across the regime, the duty teams most often miss is not the hours or the identification rule. It is the absolute ban on taking payment or starting supply during the 10 business days, combined with the belief that a signed contract, or a "no refunds" clause, ends the matter. It does not. The customer's rights cannot be waived, and a single breach of the payment or supply rule stretches their cancellation window to six months and exposes your business to a penalty for the contravention itself. If you implement one thing this week, block payment collection and service commencement for the full 10 business days, and assume every breach by a contracted agent is a breach by your business. That change alone removes the longest cancellation windows and the largest penalty exposure in the whole regime.