Commerce Commission finds Celebration Box may have breached the Fair Trading Act

Thursday, 18 July 2019

The Celebration Box which arrived was not what we were promised.

The Commerce Commission's investigation into controversial online company Celebration Box found it may have breached the Fair Trading Act but chose not to take legal action.

Celebration Box sells gift boxes online, filled with packaged and loose confectionery and doughnuts, and priced between $40 and nearly $100.

The company, which was started by social media influencer Iyia Liu, left a sour taste for some customers and complaints about late deliveries, or boxes arriving that weren't as advertised, escalated on social media after feedback comments were deleted.

The commission's investigation, which started in November following several complaints and concluded last month, found Celebration Box may have made misleading representations of goods, therefore possibly breaching the Fair Trading Act.

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In its compliance advice letter to Liu, the commission said while it would not pursue legal action, it would consider Celebration Box's compliance advice history if it received future complaints.

'Compliance advice represents our opinion that the conduct in which CBL have engaged possibly breached the FTA.'

If the commission had taken legal action Celebration Box could have faced fines up to $600,000 and an individual up to $200,000 per offence.

In its investigation the commission considered several complaints about the products consumers received being different from what they had ordered, whether Celebration Box had breached the Fair Trading Act by deleting negative consumer feedback and instructing influencers to promote products without disclosing they were advertising.

In its response to the commission, Celebration Box attributed its missteps to not being keeping up with unexpected demand.

Celebration Box is Iyia Liu's fifth business.

Celebration Box said it deleted adverse consumer feedback in response to a massive surge of negative publicity, at the direction of police and Netsafe.

It also said that it provided celebration boxes to influencers free of charge but did not instruct the influencers to provide posts about its products.

Liu shot to fame with her Waist Trainer business, which was worn by world's youngest billionaire Kylie Jenner, whom she paid $300,000 for publicising her product.

Last year Liu told Stuff the backlash around her Celebration Box had been stressful and frustrating.

Her business partner Briar Howard said on Thursday the company had worked hard to meet all guidelines over the past year.

'Just like any new business we had to make early changes, ours were unfortunately publicised and received a lot of attention and we are very sorry for the incident that occurred almost a year ago,' Howard said.

'We have made successful changes that are in line with the fair trading act and run a fully legal operation.'

Howard said this year Celebration Box had sold about 30,000 gift boxes.