Welcome to the 19th annual Shonky Awards, a smorgasbord of bad that ranges from terrible products we personally find hilarious all the way through to services that discriminate against some of society's most vulnerable people.

"As we approach 20 years of CHOICE Shonky Awards, it's clear they're needed now more than ever. This year's winners, both big and small, prove that shonky products and business practices are still rife," says CHOICE CEO Ashley De Silva.

Just last year we gave Coles and Woolworths a Shonky for profiteering during a cost of living crisis. That helped kickstart a whole movement against supermarket pricing, shrinkflation and sham discounts. Now the whole country is paying attention and will be holding the duopoly to account.

Fast forward to 2024 and shonkiness is taking new forms. Scams were a huge priority for CHOICE this year and they're everywhere, plaguing the online platforms we frequent on a daily basis – even the digitally literate are finding it increasingly difficult to spot them. It feels like no-one is doing enough to stop the spread.

We reckon it's time to call out some of the worst perpetrators. Let the Shonkys begin!

The 2024 Shonkys go to…

• Meta – for failing to protect Australians from scams
• NIB – for squeezing single parents
• Daily Juice Co – for proving it is easy to be green
• Acerpure Clean Lite Cordless Vacuum – for being the worst stick vac we've ever tested
• GroundingWell Grounding Socks – for making unearthly promises

Meta

If you're going to be scammed online, on any kind of social network, there's an extremely high chance you're being scammed on a Meta-owned platform.

WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram combined accounted for a whopping 76% of all reported losses to scams that originated on social media in 2023. That's an astonishing number. 

And while most online platforms – including Meta – are investing in tools that identify and remove scams from their apps and websites, it's nowhere near enough. Especially when you consider that Meta is taking advertising revenue from those who create these scams in the first place. 

The protections that Meta is offering its users have not kept pace with the increased threat of scams consumers now face every day

"This is a huge tech company, with some of the best resources to take action in this area, and yet we're still seeing so many scams originate on Meta's platforms," says CHOICE senior campaigns and policy adviser Alex Söderlund.

"The protections that Meta is offering its users have not kept pace with the increased threat of scams consumers now face every day."

You have to do better, Meta.

NIB 

If you've had to renew any kind of insurance this year – be it home, car or health insurance – you'll almost certainly have noticed a significant price hike. In a cost-of-living crisis, that's pretty shonky in and of itself.

But the manner in which health insurance companies treat single parents? That takes shonkiness to a whole new level. Simply put, if you're a single parent it costs more – way more – for you to add a child to your health insurance policy than it would if you were a two-parent family.

NIB's health cover is the worst offender. If you're a couple with Gold Top Hospital health insurance with Basic Extras, it will cost you just 4% extra to add a child. If you're a single parent on the same plan? Adding a child will literally double your premiums. Now that's shonky.

The manner in which health insurance companies treat single parents? That takes shonkiness to a whole new level

But, incredibly, this practice is widespread throughout the insurance industry. On average couples will be charged an extra 1% to add a child to their health policy. Single parents are charged an extra 65%.

"We think this is unfair," says CHOICE health insurance expert Mark Blades. "If health insurers add children for free – or for very little – to a couple's policy, they should do the same for a single parent."

Daily Juice Co

Look, call us old-fashioned, but if we buy juice from a supermarket and that juice is called "green juice", we expect that juice to be green. We also expect that juice to at least have some sort of green vegetable in it – like spinach or celery.

Throw us a bone here!

The Daily Juice Co's Daily Juice Green Mix, which on store shelves is completely green in appearance, is made completely of fruit juices. There's not a single vegetable in it!

In fact, the only thing actually making the Daily Juice Green Mix "green" is "Colour (141)", more commonly known as – you guessed it – green food colouring.

We know this because we took the time to gather the ingredients listed in the Daily Green Juice Mix and made our own version in the CHOICE labs. What colour was this juice before we added the food colouring? Sort of a light orange colour.

When the only thing green about your green juice is food colouring, you've got yourself a Shonky

"Our homemade juice looked more like an orange juice or a pineapple juice," says CHOICE writer Marg Rafferty, who conducted the experiment. "There was nothing green about it."

"Afterwards I stirred in a little pre-bought colour (141) and – surprise, surprise – the juice turned green, and looked almost exactly the same as the store-bought version."

When the only thing green about your green juice is food colouring, you've got yourself a Shonky.

The Acerpure Clean Lite Cordless Vacuum Cleaner

The Acerpure Clean Lite Cordless Vacuum Cleaner is one of the worst stick vacs we've ever tested. 

When it came to vacuuming cornflakes, potting mix and flour in our CHOICE lab's hard floor test, the Acerpure performed the worst of any vacuum cleaner we've ever tested. It struggled to pick up anything, and whatever it did manage to suck up inevitably got clogged up almost instantly.

Which is fine. Well, sort of fine. Bad products exist. That's normal. But the Acerpure costs $199, double the price of cheaper stick vacs that vastly outperform it. 

Despite the price, the Acerpure Clean Lite Cordless Vacuum Cleaner looks fairly flimsy and cheap and doesn't even come with a plugged charger (you get a USB A to USB C cable and that's it). 

It's a poorly made, poorly functioning and unjustifiably expensive stick vac

When CHOICE editorial director Mark Serrels had a go at using the Acerpure in the CHOICE labs he almost broke it. (He claims his overwhelming physical strength was to blame. We beg to differ.)

The Acerpure Clean Lite Cordless Vacuum Cleaner is a poorly made, poorly functioning and unjustifiably expensive stick vac that should be avoided at all costs. Extremely shonky to say the least.

GroundingWell Grounding Socks

It's possible you may have heard about the practice of "grounding". In the simplest terms, grounding is the practice of connecting directly to the earth's electrical energy, by walking barefoot in nature, for example. 

While a walk in the woods never harmed anyone, there's a whole host of not entirely convincing science that claims the act of grounding can reduce inflammation, stress and certain pain markers.

But how about you skip all that touching grass nonsense and put on a pair of grounding socks instead?

GroundingWell's Grounding Socks are socks that you literally plug into a wall socket. They're designed to replicate the "results" you get when you do actually get out there and touch grass. 

 They don't even function that well as socks

But even if you do believe in the purported benefits of grounding (and we're incredibly cynical), we find it difficult to support the idea that a pair of socks can do anything GroundingWell claims. And beyond that, its grounding socks are simply a shoddy product. They don't even function that well as socks.

"While the socks do ground you as promised, they don't deliver any of the claimed health benefits such as faster healing, pain alleviation, anti-aging effects and mood elevation – at least in our experience," says CHOICE editorial director Mark Serrels. 

"They're also poorly made. The connection pin, which is hard to detach from the grounding cable, even tore off the socks after just two uses."

Unfortunately, these socks don't pass the sniff test.

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