Bank tops Choice’s 2025 Shonky Awards
A bank that won’t refund customers fees it incorrectly charged has topped the annual list of dodgy business behaviour from consumer advocates Choice.
Source: Choice
Commonwealth Bank has won a 2025 Shonky Award after Choice said it took “bad bank behaviour to a whole new level” by refusing to refund low-income customers slugged with unfair fees.
The consumer group has presented the Shonkys annually for the past 20 years to call out “dodgy” products, services and companies.
Sharing the Shonky spotlight in 2025 were online shopping platform Temu – described as “an unsafe haven for dodgy sales tactics and fast fashion” – health insurer HCF, a plug-in heater “that doesn’t plug in, or heat”, and Australia’s energy retailers.
But Choice reserved its harshest criticism for CommBank, which earlier this year posted a record annual profit of just over $10 billion.
It was one of several major banks put on notice by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission in 2024 after they were found to be incorrectly charging excessive fees to low-income earners who should have been automatically moved onto low or no-fee accounts.
Choice CEO Ashley de Silva said that in CommBank’s case, 2.2 million customers were collectively charged $270 million in unfair fees.
“Most of the banks caught charging excessive fees said they would issue bulk refunds to some of the customers collectively charged millions in unfair fees,” de Silva said.
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“But Australia’s biggest bank, the Commonwealth Bank, initially refused to issue refunds at all, then said it would only consider them on an individual, case-by-case basis.
“We think that’s pretty shonky.”
Choice, which previously commissioned a poll that found almost nine in 10 Australians thought the bank should refund the account fees, noted that it was CommBank’s fourth Shonky award – “making it the most awarded Australian company in the Shonkys’ history”.
Temu has become a major force on Australia’s retail scene – with a recent Roy Morgan poll finding it gained nearly a million shoppers in the past year – but quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality.
Choice has declared there are plenty of reasons the online shopping site deserves a Shonky award, including that purchases can take a long time to arrive and refunds are often difficult to get.
“Temu is also one of the biggest drivers of fast fashion, selling poorly made clothes at cheap prices,” said de Silva.
However, Choice found one of the biggest issues with the platform, owned by Chinese company PDD Holdings, is product safety. When it tested 15 coin and button battery-operated products from Temu in 2024, all failed at least one requirement of Australian button battery regulations designed to keep children safe and were removed from sale.
De Silva also cited the case of a child in Queensland who suffered serious burns when a Temu hoodie she was wearing caught fire. It was later found the garment didn’t comply with mandatory safety standards.
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“Temu’s insufficient concern for the safety of the products it sells means it more than deserves its Shonky Award this year,” he said.
HCF was given a gong after Choice accused it of “purposefully bypassing” the government approval process for health insurance premium increases by “sneakily closing an existing policy (Premium Gold), and opening a new policy (Optimal Gold) with almost identical cover, but a significantly higher price”.
“Sneaky” pricing tactics were also the reason electricity retailers earned a Shonky.
With most Australian households worrying about increasing electricity bills, de Silva said some retailers had rolled out cheaper plans with the same names as existing plans.
“As a result, many consumers were led to believe they were already on the best plan as their current plan name was identical – potentially missing out on savings as a result,” he said.
“Choice research estimated energy customers could have collectively saved about $65 million per year if retailers had made it clear that the new plan with the same name was cheaper than the existing one.
“Would it really have been that hard to give the new plan a different name? We don’t think so. At a time when so many people are struggling to cut their energy costs, this kind of behaviour is incredibly shonky.”
And on the subject of electricity, what about a plug-in heater that doesn’t actually plug in?
While all electricity devices in Australia are supposed to have a plug that directly fits into an Australian power point, the Handy Heater Turbo 800 needs an adaptor. The travel adaptor supplied wasn’t compliant, de Silva said, adding that Choice also found other safety concerns with the heater.
“On top of the multitude of safety issues, our testing also revealed the Handy Heater doesn’t actually produce anywhere near as much heat as its advertising suggests. It’s well and truly deserving of a Shonky Award this year.”
Facebook owner Meta was one of the major companies called out in Choice’s 2024 Shonkys for leaving Australian users vulnerable to scams. Insurer NIB was singled out for charging single parents more than couples for health insurance.
Other Shonky winners in previous years have included Qantas and supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths.
