Submitted 1 month ago by zero_gravitas@aussie.zone to australia@aussie.zone
“We also allege that in many cases both Woolworths and Coles had already planned to later place the products on a “prices dropped” or “down down” promotion before the price spike, and implemented the temporary price spike for the purpose of establishing a higher “was” price.
They are trying to blame “inflation”, but at the same time they are reporting record profits.
The dumb thing is that inflation is measured by the increase in colesworth prices.
Greed capitalists are conflating themselves while lying? Nooo! //S
Isn’t that the same thing though? If inflation is at record high, their equivalent profits in dollars will be up because money is now worth less
Profits have increased as a percentage of revenue (i.e. profit margins have increased).
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. Another reminder to give the big chains the flick where possible.
The smaller guys need to do a better job at providing a good service though, too. Small local grocery stores have had scan & go options for half a decade overseas, something that Woolies only started rolling out last year, and no other store in Australia has, to my knowledge. The big guys also have options like regular self-checkout, checking prices & stock online/in-app, and direct-to-boot ordering. These are all things that smaller guys could reasonably fix, to varying degrees
Much harder for the small guys to fix is the fact that Colesworth are more likely to be a one-stop-shop place. They’re huge, and with that comes a huge range of stock. Supporting your local grocer is fine, but might then mean you have to make a separate trip to a baker and butcher. Given these less-easily-surmountable drawback, it just becomes extra important that they don’t fall behind in things they can control. But they do.
Disagree.
It might seem like some of these technical implementations are easy, but in many cases it’s not practically possible. The IGA down the road had self checkout but no one ever used them because they would call the operator after almost every item. Recently they just got rid of them and replaced them with old fashioned checkouts.
I’m struggling to remember a time when I’ve wanted to look at a price for a grocery item online. I’ve never done direct to boot.
I don’t really think these technical services are the right way for smaller vendors to compete with Colesworth. It’s just too expensive to create a comparable ux. They’re better off focusing on local products or speciality lines.
It’s a pity the small chains do exactly the same shit.
My local supermarket (formerly an IGA, now Drake’s) recently did that with an item I buy regularly. Bumped the price up from $26 to $45, only to have it ‘on sale’ a week later for $28. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the only instance.
The funny thing is that I could have probably lived with the direct price increase, but that doesn’t sell as well to the people who aren’t paying attention. All they see is the ‘price drop’ sticker.
I wonder what slap on the wrist they might get?
It is critical that Australian consumers are able to rely on the accuracy of pricing and discount claims.
It’s almost like we as a society shouldn’t trust corporations to be honest, and should instead expect constant greed and ratfuckery, and opt for implementing continuous, real-time, transparent, and open data capture to mitigate these problems.
We already do this with energy regulators. Why don’t we do it for all big businesses? They can’t claim this to be expensive, because they already price everything digitally; it’d just be about enabling the regulator to view and capture it.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 1 month ago
Ooh boy they’re gonna get such a slap on the wrist they’ll think about doing it again.
Taleya@aussie.zone 1 month ago
The courts have the lettuce ready to gooooo!