After many of warnings, Australian travel companies who do not declare the full price of services will be fined, the Australian consumer watchdog has warned.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is still fighting to get some operators to comply with a law protecting customers from omissions about pricing in advertising, a year on after changes were made to the Trade Practices Act.

Price structuring with airlines were the initial trigger for the reforms enacted in May 2009 to prevent companies from understating the total price of goods and services in a range of industries, including car hire.

Sellers of travel products and motor vehicles had been viewed as the worst offenders in the practice of so-called component pricing, where the advertised price omitted extras which were compulsory and had “asterisked” in fine print.

The consumer watchdog spent most of last year urging businesses to comply with the law, however chairman Graeme Samuel is now warning that the commission’s low-key approach of educating businesses will be replaced by litigation and enforcement.

Samuel said that a degree of tolerance and patience had been shown with getting people on board, but now there’s a point in time when the tolerance and patience  runs out and people are just blatantly disregarding the law.

It was announced late last year that hire car company Avis had agreed to apologise and offer refunds to affected customers last month after covering up the true cost of its compulsory rental charges on its website as late as October last year, five months after the alterations were made to the Trade Practices Act.

The company failed to disclose that a $10 per day special on sat nav did not include a mandatory $3.50 administration fee and 10 per cent GST, bringing the total amount to nearly $15 per day.

Many car rental firms in Australia have ended the practice of advertising vehicles for $39 a day that didn’t include compulsory extras, although Samuel warns that there are still many ‘optional’ charges in rental car quotes, which start from about $50 a day for a small, four cylinder car with basic insurance.

He also expressed anger at airline pricing tactics, where a $9 fair could end up costing as much as $90 when compulsory taxes and fuel surcharges are added to the price, which led to a change in the law three years ago.