While Australia’s two largest supermarkets, Coles (ASX: COL) and Woolworths (ASX: WOW), may be the country’s least trusted brands according to Roy Morgan research, it was a bank stock that took out line honours in this year’s Shonky Awards.
Shares in Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA) are up 22% over one year, after posting record annual profit exceeding $10 billion.
But that didn’t stop the consumer watchdog, Choice, naming the country’s largest bank the most shonky operator after taking bad behaviour to new heights by refusing to refund low-income customers slugged with unfair fees.
Now in its 20th year, Choices' Shonky Awards attempt to shed light on dodgy products, services and practices.
Ironically, CBA’s fourth Shonky award in 2025 - making it the most awarded Australian company in the Shonkys’ history – follows on the heels of the bank being lauded the new winner in Roy Morgan Trusted Brand Awards for 2025 back in September.
The banking giant previously won Shonky Awards for targeting primary school kids with its Dollarmites program, allowing financial planners to put clients into risky investments while pursuing bonus rewards, and having poorly performing credit cards linked to frequent flyer points.
Fee refund refusal
Despite earning around $270 million in fees from 2.2 million low-income customers between July 2019 and October 2024, the bank has refused to make any refunds, arguing that the accounts provided value through features like informal overdraft facilities.
While CBA does not report its total earnings from fees in a clear, single figure, the bank’s FY25 results suggest operating income was $28.465 billion, which includes both net interest income and non-interest income (which would include fee-based revenue).
While other banks, like ANZ Bank (ASX: ANZ) and Westpac (ASX: WBC), have made additional fee-related refunds to customers, to the tune of $93 million, after being put on notice by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the regulator has expressed disappointment with CBA's response.
CBA’s refusal to refund fees flies in the face of comments by CBA CEO Matt Comyn, who noted that after four years of cost-of-living struggles, many Australians are still finding the context challenging.
Meantime, while CBA refuses to follow the lead of other banks and refund fees, it plans to move customers to a new account to prevent future issues.
Interestingly, while CBA has set aside $52 million for "domestic customer remediation" for the six months to 30 June 2025, these costs do not relate to its unfair fee scandal.
It was CBA's willingness to only review fee refunds on an individual, case-by-case basis that spurred Choice CEO Ashley de Silva to describe the bank as pretty shonky.
However, de Silva’s sentiments towards CBA were also echoed in a previously commissioned Choice poll that found almost nine in 10 Australians thought the bank should refund the account fees.
Temu
Sharing the Shonky spotlight with CBA in 2025 were online shopping platform Temu and health insurer HCF, which, according to Roy Morgan, is - along with CBA - also one of Australia’s most trusted brands in 2025.
A recent Roy Morgan poll found that Chinese e-commerce platform Temu - owned by the Chinese company PDD Holdings - has become a major force on Australia’s retail scene, having gained around a million shoppers in the past year.
However, quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality, with Choice describing the online operator as “an unsafe haven for dodgy sales tactics and fast fashion”.
“Temu is also one of the biggest drivers of fast fashion, selling poorly made clothes at cheap prices,” said de Silva.
Choice also discovered that one of the biggest issues with the Temu platform is product safety.
When the consumer watchdog tested 15 coin and button battery-operated products from Temu in 2024, all fell short of at least one requirement of Australian button battery regulations designed to keep children safe and were removed from sale.
De Silva also cited evidence that some garments didn’t comply with mandatory safety standards.
“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
Meanwhile, Choice also awarded Australia's largest not-for-profit health fund, HCF, a shonky gong after accusing it of “purposefully bypassing” the government approval process for health insurance premium increases.
What HCF did was surreptitiously close an existing policy (Premium Gold) and then open a new policy (Optimal Gold) with virtually the exact same cover, however, at a significantly higher price.
HCF's price rise for the "Optimal Gold" policy was almost 35% more than the "Premium Gold", jumping from $325 to $440 per month.
Choice also noticed that HCF had the biggest Gold Cover price hike of the five largest health funds.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Mark Butler also berated the move, saying he would "not tolerate this shameful phoenixing tactic from private health insurers" and warned it had to stop.
Electricity retailers also called out
However, HCF wasn’t alone in its sneaky pricing tactics, with Choice also calling out electricity retailers for similar shonky practises.
While most Australian households are fearful of spiralling electricity bills, de Silva notes some retailers have rolled out cheaper plans with the same names as existing plans.
The net effect is that many consumers were misled to assume they were already on the best plan, as their current plan name was identical, which saw them missing out on savings as a result.
“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,” said de Silva.
“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.”
