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Speaker 1: The Commerce Commission is going to file criminal charges against Woolworst,

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Speaker 1: New Zealand and two individual Pack and Save supermarkets. The

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Speaker 1: ComCom has accused the supermarkets of having inaccurate pricing and

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Speaker 1: misleading specials. John Duffy is the CEO of Consumer en Z. John,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Do we know exactly what the

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Speaker 1: supermarkets are alleged to have done here?

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Speaker 2: The Commers Comission's media release is a little bit they

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Speaker 2: but based on the complaint that Consumer end Z put

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Speaker 2: in the kick this whole thing off, it looks like

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Speaker 2: there's a range of conduct involved. So it could be

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Speaker 2: from something as simple as the shelf an item on

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Speaker 2: the shelf at the supermarket, the shelf price not matching

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Speaker 2: what you're charged at the till, through to site more

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Speaker 2: complicated potential offending around misleading promotions. So examples where the

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Speaker 2: on special price is actually more expensive than it was

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Speaker 2: the item was originally, or where you know two for

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Speaker 2: one deals where when you buy the twin pack is

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Speaker 2: actually more expensive than buying each item individually.

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Speaker 1: Is it fair to say this is minor stuff in

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Speaker 1: terms of a shopper's bill.

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Speaker 2: Well, for each individual shopper who turns up and I

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Speaker 2: don't know it's charged fifty cents extra for their tin

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Speaker 2: of baked beans. It might appear minor in isolation, but

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Speaker 2: if you expand that out across all shoppers nationwide every day,

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Speaker 2: if every shopper is going to one of the other

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Speaker 2: supermarks has been charged fifty cents extra that they shouldn't

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Speaker 2: have been charged for their baked beans, actually that really

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Speaker 2: adds up, and there's potentially millions of dollars. But over

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Speaker 2: the course of a year.

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Speaker 1: Except that these charges and will put more ways to assign.

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Speaker 1: For a second, but Pack and Say it is named

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Speaker 1: specific stores because you know, obviously they are franchises. So

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Speaker 1: you've got Silverdale and you've got one in Hamilton. So

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Speaker 1: that's only two stores that they've managed to come up

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Speaker 1: with from that entire business.

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Speaker 2: Well, the Commission's media release also notes that there's more

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Speaker 2: to come, so that they're saying their investigations are ongoing.

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Speaker 2: So based on what we've seen, we would expect more

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Speaker 2: food stuffs brands supermarket. So that's Pack and Say for

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Speaker 2: Square and a New World to be involved in this

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Speaker 2: enforcement action, have to wait and see.

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Speaker 1: It's will worse because war worst has come out and said, look,

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Speaker 1: obviously we will cooperate. We don't know what's happening yet.

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Speaker 1: We're waiting to find out ourselves. But sometimes errors happen.

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Speaker 1: We're updating our technology, we have a refund policy. We're

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Speaker 1: a big business. We make mistakes. What are you saying, Well.

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Speaker 2: To be frank, the supermarkets have been running that line

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Speaker 2: for years but nothing has improved. So you know this

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Speaker 2: isn't new news. People have been being overtarched to the

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Speaker 2: supermarkets for years and rather than investing in technology that

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Speaker 2: could improve this, I mean, it's twenty twenty four. Getting

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Speaker 2: the price on the shelf the same as the price

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Speaker 2: in your database. It's not rocket science. It's actually one

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Speaker 2: of the fundamentals have been a grosser. There is enough

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Speaker 2: getting this wrong.

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Speaker 1: I guess for people who are listening to this, it's

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Speaker 1: not going to make a huge I mean, this is

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Speaker 1: going to be in the district court. Cases like this

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Speaker 1: are usually settled. It might be a million bucks for them,

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Speaker 1: you know, whack on the back of the hand with

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Speaker 1: a wet bus ticket, But for most consumers it's annoying

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Speaker 1: when they do it, but it's not going to save

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Speaker 1: the bank.

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Speaker 2: Is that at an individual level? You're right, although actually,

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Speaker 2: you know, thirty percent of consumers we've surveyed tell us

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Speaker 2: that they notice pricing discrepancies, but they move on. That means,

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Speaker 2: you know, seventy percent of consumers are not noticing these discrepancies.

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Speaker 2: So we don't actually know what the cost of the economy,

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Speaker 2: or cost to New Zealand consumers of overcharging is when

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Speaker 2: you extrapolate that out across everybody who's shopping every day.

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Speaker 2: Anything that we can do that actually reduces the amount,

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Speaker 2: the excessive amounts that the supermarkets are profiting and actually

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Speaker 2: leaves money and consumers back pockets is a good thing,

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Speaker 2: And ultimately we shouldn't be sitting aside and letting major

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Speaker 2: businesses consistently mislead consumers about the price of their goods.

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Speaker 1: John, thank you very much for joining me. John Duffy,

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Speaker 1: the CEO of Consumer and Zen.

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Speaker 2: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to

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