The Real Cost of a Complaint
Checkedit.ai is a Regulatory teams new best friend leading to fewer bottlenecks, lower volume of approval request, faster approvals and lower risk.
Even a complaint that is ultimately dismissed triggers an expensive chain reaction: legal triage, evidence gathering, and formal responses. Industry estimates suggest this process costs a business between $2,500 and $5,000 in external legal fees or diverted in-house resources.
If a complaint is upheld, the costs skyrocket. When factoring in wasted media spend, creative re-work, stock loss & withdrawal and reputational damage control, the financial impact ranges from $20,000 to potentially $millions.
In extreme cases, the cost is existential.
Real-World Impact: When Complaints Become Existential Threats
Wasted Media Spend & Packaging Recalls
A recent determination regarding appeal to minors on packaging forced a market leader to execute a total product recall and trademark rebrand: erasing potentially $ millions in brand equity overnight.
Rebrand & Packaging Recall
Following ABAC Determination 119/23, a market-leading brand was forced to recall stock nationwide and execute a total rebrand. When factoring in stock write-offs, reverse logistics, agency re-design fees, and wasted launch media, the estimated cost to the business was likely in the $ millions (both hard and reputation cost).
Checkedit.ai offers a smarter, faster and low-cost way to manage this risk.
As your always-on, 24/7 pre-vetting partner, Checkedit.ai catches compliance risks before they go through legal review or go public.
An in-house regulatory lawyer costs the business roughly $100-$150+ per hour, Checkedit.ai secures your campaigns for the price of a cup of coffee a day, ensuring when your legal team do review your creative their time is not wasted on non-complaint reviews.
ROI: The Cost of Compliance vs. The Price of Prevention
In a regulatory environment where complaints are free to lodge but expensive to defend, Checkedit.ai provides immediate protection and measurable returns. Here is how the investment pays off across five key areas.
Mitigating the 45% Surge in Risk
Ad Standards data reveals a 45% year-on-year increase in consumer complaints. Even a "dismissed" complaint consumes internal resources and risks negative PR cycles.
Checkedit.ai advantage: Checkedit.ai acts as your first line of defence, identifying the key compliance triggers that cause 59% of issues before your campaign goes live.
The Pre-Vetting ROI (ABAC Proven)
History proves that pre-vetting works. Recent ABAC reports showed that when pre-vetting usage dropped, complaints nearly doubled (from 126 to 207 in 2023).
Checkedit.ai advantage: Checkedit.ai provides automated pre-vetting that scales with your content volume, ensuring consistent compliance checks before campaigns reach legal review or public release.
Drastic Reduction in Legal Spend
The math is simple.
The Cost of Defence: A single regulatory inquiry can require 5–10 hours of external legal counsel circa $300 to 600/hr) or distraction of high-wage internal teams ($140Kp.a - $185k+ p.a.).
The Cost of Prevention: A Checkedit.ai subscription costs a fraction of a single hour of legal consultation – less than a coffee a day for our Silver tier which includes 2x free team members.
The Result: If Checkedit.ai prevents just one minor complaint per year, the software has paid for itself five times over.
Accelerating Speed to Market
Compliance bottlenecks kill creative momentum. Instead of waiting days for legal approval on routine social posts and web content, your team gets instant, 24/7 feedback.
Checkedit.ai advantage: This frees your expensive human legal resources to focus on high-level strategic value while Checkedit.ai pre-checks the daily volume of digital assets so regulatory teams can speed up their final approval.