Bonnie Tuttle considers herself "sober curious", a term she says is used to "describe someone who's moving into a space where I consider myself now a non-drinker who will sometimes drink".
So when she received a telemarketing call from The Wine Group, a wine retailer, she told them she was not interested.
"They asked me, 'How are you going for wine at the moment?', and I said, 'I'm actually fine thanks because I'm sober now'," she said.
"The gentleman actually proceeded to say, 'Well, that's a real shame because we actually have 80 per cent off shiraz at the moment and when you were drinking that's what you really liked to drink, wasn't it?', which I just found shockingly unethical."
Ms Tuttle is a Hobart-based consultant who has worked with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Council.
She reported the phone conversation to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
"I ordered with these people, I reckon, more than five years ago and I haven't had any contact with them before," she said.
"And if there are people in that situation who have been sober for five years to then receive that phone call out of the blue could be quite triggering for some."
Ms Tuttle later called the marketing number back and connected to the same man, called Jeff, making her suspect she had actually been speaking with a bot.
"It sounded really weird, like bits of audio spliced together, his responses were really robotic and bizarre," she said.
She called twice and asked to be put through to a complaints department, but was immediately disconnected both times.
The ABC also tried to contact The Wine Group for this story but was put through to an automated message advising to call back later.
The ABC called three times.
The first two times the call was answered by a male voice, introducing himself as Jeff, while the third time the same voice answered but introduced himself as Luke.
The Wine Group is an online retailer based in California and it has been the subject of infringement notices in Australia as recently as May.
The ACMA reported that The Wine Group had paid $204,240 in infringement notices after it was found to have breached "multiple spam and telemarketing laws".
"The Wine Group, which operates under the names Oak Road Estate and Top Drop, sent unsolicited SMS [messages] to consumers who had tried to unsubscribe, made telemarketing calls to phone numbers on the Do Not Call Register after the consumers withdrew their consent to receive those calls, and failed to terminate telemarketing calls when requested," its report said.
The ACMA said in May that it would be actively monitoring The Wine Group's independent review and implementation of improvements, promised as a result of the investigation.
Alcohol marketing 'targeting those most at risk'
Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the rate of alcohol-induced deaths was at its highest in 10 years in 2021, with 1,559 deaths.
The ABS said the rate increase over the last decade was "largely due to conditions associated with long term alcohol use including liver cirrhosis".
Caterina Giorgi, the CEO of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), said alcohol marketing was being targeted at people who were most at risk.
"By its very nature, people who purchase more alcohol will be targeted more," she said.
"People who've made the decision to not drink alcohol and people who are particularly vulnerable are getting messages that just keep pushing alcohol on them.
"And that's really concerning because alcohol is a drug that causes so much harm, one in 10 Australians meet the criteria for an alcohol use disorder."
Ms Giorgi described telemarketing as a "dark approach" to advertising because no one other than the individual recipient could see what was being marketed.
Ms Giorgi said the government needed to act and introduce stricter regulations.
"The truth is that regulations haven't kept pace with the movement by alcohol companies and the alcohol industry to just really relentlessly market their products at people," she said.
"We don't have the right checks and balances around this, it's really hard to regulate what we can't see so we really need urgent action by government to get on top of this to stop these addictive products being pushed on people in their private environment."
