One year on: Success stories from the 2025 Shonky Awards

CHOICE has been exposing dodgy products and services through our Shonky Awards for 20 years. A look back at the most recent recipients highlights how our calling out bad behaviour has led to positive changes for Australian consumers.

The 2025 Shonkys saw us shining a light on shameful behaviour from one of Australia’s biggest banks, a health fund exploiting loopholes to hike prices and the entire energy industry for intentionally misleading consumers for the sake of profit.

Here’s a look at the impact some of our 2025 Shonky winners have had over the past 12 months.

• Commonwealth Bank
• Energy retailers
• HCF
• Temu

Commonwealth Bank

Last year we gave the Commonwealth Bank a well-deserved Shonky after it refused to refund $270 million to its low-income customers who were unfairly placed on accounts that came with high fees.

In July 2025, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) called out several major banks for this questionable behaviour. Most of the banks agreed to issue bulk refunds to some of their financially vulnerable customers who had been impacted. CommBank was not one of them.

But after its initial refusal, the bank eventually conceded to consider refunds on a case-by-case basis. Following pressure from ASIC and a sustained campaign from CHOICE that culminated in more than 27,000 petition signatures, CommBank committed to a partial refund of $68 million to some of its affected customers, two days before Christmas in 2025.

CHOICE head of policy Morgan Campbell called it a huge win. “CommBank should never have charged these fees in the first place, and we shouldn’t have had to drag them kicking and screaming to make these refunds,” he says.

“But together with supporters we built so much pressure that one of Australia’s biggest corporations had to make a $68 million backflip. That’s huge.”

On top of that, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) made a decision this year that requires banks to be proactive and identify their low-income customers who may be eligible for low-fee or no-fee accounts – ensuring they’re not charged excessive fees.

“We were really glad to see the ACCC impose these conditions,” says Campbell. “Banking is an essential service, and people on low incomes shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to access a low- or no-fee account. The CommBank situation showed how desperately this change was needed.”

Energy retailers

Energy retailers have been engaging in dodgy pricing tactics designed to confuse customers, so we had to slap them with a Shonky in 2025.

These sneaky tactics include the practice of “same name messaging”, whereby energy providers launch new cheaper plans, but give them the exact same name as existing ones. This means that when a retailer informs customers that they could save by making a switch (which they are legally required to do), the customer is tricked into thinking they’re already on the cheaper deal – because it has the exact same name as the older, more expensive deal they’re signed up to.

Providers have also been caught using words such as “saver” or “save” to describe plans that are actually more expensive than other options – and the cheaper plans they do have are, conveniently, not named as such.

CHOICE had to act, so we filed our first designated complaint to the ACCC in May 2025. As part of its actions in response to our complaint, the competition watchdog took a closer look at Origin Energy’s plans. From this investigation, the ACCC raised concerns that customers could be led to believe they were saving money on the “Ongoing Saver” plan compared to the “Basic” plan, when in fact the Basic plan was the cheaper option.

In July 2026, after the ACCC’s investigation, Origin agreed to refund $270,000 to more than 4500 customers over the alleged misleading representations on its “Ongoing Saver” plan.

HCF

Consumers have had a huge win since HCF joined the Shonky Hall of Shame.

CHOICE originally called out health insurers back in 2024 for “product phoenixing”. It’s a shifty practice where insurers avoid the government’s approval process for raising premiums by quietly closing an existing policy, and opening a new one with the same or similar cover, but with a jacked-up price.

We awarded HCF the Shonky because it had been particularly egregious with this behaviour. Last year, on the very same day the Health Minister announced the average annual increase to health insurance premiums would be 3.73% for all existing policies, the health fund closed its Premium Gold policy to new members and opened a new one called Optimal Gold. It was almost identical, but with an eye-watering price increase of 34.6%.

Health funds had been exploiting this loophole to get around the official approval process for years, but thanks in part to this CHOICE investigation, legislation has now passed through parliament to close it. Now, health insurers must get approval for premiums on new products too.

CHOICE insurance expert Jodi Bird says it will help keep health insurers honest. “This legislation shuts down a loophole and forces the insurers to be more transparent,” he says.

“The Health Minister and the departments involved in the legislation have consistently linked the changes back to CHOICE’s work. It’s validating to see legislative change from the work we do, sifting through tens of thousands of health insurance policies and working out the bottom line for CHOICE members who just want value from their health insurance,” says Bird.

Bird also notes that with the legislation pending this year, health insurers had been better behaved with their pricing practices.

“Unfortunately we don’t expect it will make health insurance more affordable come the next price rise. But it makes it harder for insurers to hide their pricing tactics, and easier for the government and consumers to hold them to account,” he says.

Temu

You’d probably have an easier time listing what isn’t shonky about Temu, but we think one of the biggest issues with the online retailer is product safety.

It’s the reason why CHOICE used our second designated complaint to the ACCC to call out online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Shein and Temu for their rampant selling of unsafe products.

After receiving a Shonky Award and following calls from CHOICE for Temu to step up its commitment to product safety, the online retailer signed up to the ACCC’s Product Safety Pledge in June this year – a voluntary commitment to strengthening product safety.

While it’s a great first step, CHOICE wants to see the government introduce strong product safety laws that make it illegal to sell unsafe products to begin with.

CHOICE will be announcing our next Shonky Awards in November – we can’t wait to put more of the worst products and services on notice, and get real change happening for you.

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Jasmine Gearie

Jasmine Gearie is a content producer at CHOICE. She writes about a range of topics including skincare, household appliances and supermarket trends – always with an eye on helping consumers make better-informed choices. Before joining CHOICE, Jasmine covered personal finance for Mozo and consumer tech at TechRadar. Jasmine has a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism and Public Relations) from the University of Newcastle. LinkedIn

Jasmine Gearie is a content producer at CHOICE. She writes about a range of topics including skincare, household appliances and supermarket trends – always with an eye on helping consumers make better-informed choices. Before joining CHOICE, Jasmine covered personal finance for Mozo and consumer tech at TechRadar. Jasmine has a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism and Public Relations) from the University of Newcastle. LinkedIn