Consumer magazine is organising a petition on pricing accuracy code..
advocating for
clear pricing rules
requiring supermarkets to automatically compensate consumers when pricing errors occur. For example, by requiring products be provided free of charge if the shelf price is cheaper than the scanned price, there is a special that doesn’t offer a genuine saving, or incorrect unit pricing.
requiring your rights to be clearly disclosed both instore and online
with infringement notice powers and much higher penalties (similar to those in Australia) for misleading pricing and promotions.
Can anyone see any specific detail about how this would work? I had a look at the link, but maybe I missed it (very possible!)
I wonder which 'supermarkets' this would apply to?
Will it only be Woolworths and FoodStuffs? If FoodStuffs, will it apply to each individual supermarket, as they are (mostly, if not exclusively) individually owned? Would it also apply to all the FoodStuffs member FourSquare stores (mostly quite small least compared to NW, Woolworths, and PNS stores)?
If it applies to FourSquare stores, does it also apply to all the independent dairies, some of which are larger than a FourSquare (some were previously FourSquare stores but left the FoodStuffs group)? If not, that seems to create a pretty unfair competitive landscape?
Would it apply to The Warehouse? Fruit World? Mad Butcher?
Would it also apply to the much discussed, if theoretical, potential new entrant to the NZ grocery retail sector, that is trying to 'get going', and starts out with only one, or perhaps a handful, of stores? If so, that seems to make the NZ market less attractive, and thus reduces the potential for additional competition, and helps to maintain higher prices - which seems to be the opposite of what the authors of the petition should want? What are their true motivations here?
What about product types? Does this apply to everything that a 'supermarket' sells? Including, say, pens? If so, does it apply to pens that are sold by Warehouse Stationery too? Does that then extend to everything that Warehouse Stationery sells? Does that then mean that it actually extends across all retailers for all products sold in NZ?
If so, does that mean that every retailer will need to put their prices up to cover the extra time it will take to ensure that there are no pricing errors, else it could be punitively expensive for them? Given that it probably takes the same amount of time to check the price of a basic ball-point pen, as it does to check the price of a $100 pen, does it mean that some fixed amount will effectively be added to the cost of every individual item? Would that disproportionately impact people purchasing at the lower end of the price / quality spectrum? If so, why are the petition authors seeking to deliberately punish the poorest members of our society?
So many questions about how this would work, but I'm sure they've thought it through far more comprehensively than the ten minutes I've considered it for.