Lululemon hit with hefty fine after spam email breaches
Athleisure brand Lululemon has been fined more than $700,000 after hundreds of thousands of emails were sent without an option to unsubscribe.
An investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found the brand breached spam laws after sending more than 370,000 emails containing commercial content, including shipping updates and promotional materials, without an option to unsubscribe.
The watchdog found that Lululemon mischaracterized service messages, including order confirmation emails, with a clear marketing purpose between December 2024 and January 2025.
“In this case, Lululemon sent service emails such as shipping updates with direct links to sales materials and promotions,” executive member Samantha Yorke said.
Lululemon has since paid a $703,000 fine for the violation, which the consumer watchdog described as an easily preventable mistake.
“Businesses need to understand that marketing messages must have an opt-out option and the simplest way to comply with this is to keep transactional or service messages separate from sales content and links,” Ms Yorke said.
“This is the fifth enforcement action ACMA has taken in the last 18 months against businesses that mistakenly treated messages as non-commercial even though they clearly contained or had links to commercial material.”
In 2024, Commonwealth Bank paid a $7.5 million fine after sending more than 170 million emails containing a way to unsubscribe.
Online gambling provider PointsBet was fined $500,000 in 2023 for sending 700 emails containing direct links to betting products without adding an unsubscribe function.
Telstra paid a $600,000 fine after sending nearly 10.5 million text messages that did not comply with spam laws.
Lululemon was fined more than $32,000 in 2017 for falsely telling customers they were not entitled to a refund or exchange.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged that the website misrepresented in advertisements for sale products that consumers had no right to return, make up, refund or replace a product under any circumstances.
The sports brand has entered into a comprehensive court-enforceable commitment, committing to an independent review of its compliance with the spam rule, according to the watchdog.
The business will need to report to ACMA on the implementation of the proposed improvements.
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