Unfair Contract Term Lawyers in Melbourne

The clause is probably in there because nobody ever pushed back

You signed because you had no choice. The supplier, franchisor, lessor or platform handed you their standard terms, and the deal was take it or leave it. Now a clause is doing exactly what it was built to do: the price has jumped mid-term, the contract has renewed without asking you, or the other side has walked away with no liability while you are locked in.

The Australian Consumer Law calls that an unfair contract term, and the consequences of using one have changed sharply in the last few years. An unfair term used to be merely void. Now it is illegal to propose, use or rely on one, and a company that does so faces penalties of up to the greater of $100 million, three times the benefit gained, or 30 per cent of its adjusted turnover for each unfair term. Individuals face up to $2.5 million. The ACCC has listed unfair terms in small business contracts among its 2025-26 enforcement priorities and sued Amazon over its Prime subscription terms in June 2026.

In practice that shifts the conversation. A business told its clause is unfair is now weighing a penalty rather than a modest legal risk against a commercial gain, so a single letter setting out why the clause fails the legal test often ends the argument. Call 1800 130 120 and read us the clause. The first call is free.

The three-part test we run your clause through

A term is unfair if it does all three of the following:

• causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations
• is not reasonably necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the party it favours
• would cause you detriment, financial or otherwise, if it were relied on

The law lists the usual suspects: terms letting one side vary the price or the contract unilaterally, terminate at will, renew automatically, limit their own liability, or penalise you but not them for breaching. Being transparent and plainly worded does not save a clause, though a buried one rarely survives the test.

When a court declares a term in a standard form contract unfair, the same clause is exposed in every other copy of that contract the business has issued. A single declaration therefore reaches a lot further than the one contract in front of the court, which is a large part of why these disputes settle quickly.

Who the regime protects

You are covered as an individual consumer, and as a small business if you employ fewer than 100 people or turned over less than $10 million in the previous income year. There is no longer any cap on the contract value, so a $2 million equipment finance deal can qualify alongside a $60 gym membership. The contract must be standard form, which means prepared by the other side and offered without any real opportunity to negotiate. If they claim you could have negotiated, the law makes them prove it.

Franchise agreements are the sharpest example of the type. A franchisee signs the network’s document unchanged and then lives inside it for years, so an unfair clause has a long time to do damage. Where the clause is only one part of a wider franchise dispute, we run the two together rather than in sequence.

Bring us the contract before you comply with the clause

Most people call after the clause has already cost them money, once the price rise has been paid or the cancellation window has quietly closed, and by then the money is much harder to get back. We read the contract, tell you which terms fail the unfairness test, and put the other side on notice before you hand over anything else. If the contract is fair and the clause holds up, we tell you that too, on the first call, for nothing.

Have the clause reviewed

What we do with an unfair clause

For most clients the fix is a letter. We set out why the term causes a significant imbalance, why it is not reasonably necessary to protect the other side, and what detriment it causes you, then we invite them to stop relying on it. Faced with penalty exposure per term, most businesses do. Where they dig in, we seek a declaration that the term is void, which for a consumer or small business contract usually means bringing a VCAT consumer dispute rather than a court proceeding. Either way the rest of the contract keeps running without the offending clause.

If you are on the other side of this page, a Melbourne business whose own standard terms were drafted before 2023, your auto-renewal, termination and price variation clauses are now penalty risks sitting in every contract you issue. We audit standard terms and redraft the clauses that would not survive a challenge, which is commercial contract drafting rather than litigation and costs a great deal less than defending one. Where the real fight is about performance of the contract rather than fairness of its terms, our contract lawyers take it from there.

Talk to us before the clause bites again

If a standard form contract is squeezing you, or your own terms need a penalty-proofing review, call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page. Unfair terms are one strand of the wider protections our consumer law lawyers work with, and they often travel with consumer guarantee problems in the same dispute. One free call tells you where you stand on both.