Coles tells court its Down Down promotions were ‘fair dinkum’ and did not mislead shoppers
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/17/coles-discounts-accc-court-down-down-promotions
Coles tells court its Down Down promotions were ‘fair dinkum’ and did not mislead shoppers
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/17/coles-discounts-accc-court-down-down-promotions
23 Comments
*<cough>*Bullshit*<cough>*
Bullshit.. There’s no way in hell the marketing team are remotely interested in representing pricing policy
lol
Lol what else did we think they were going to say? “Yeah sorry our bad, we’ve been ripping off people for years and our promotions/discounts are complete bollocks. A tube of toothpaste should totally not cost $12”. Come on now.
“your honour, mate, i have been nothing but be a larrikin dinky die true blue fair dinkum billion dollar supermarket”
It’s ok everyone, they used Aussie battler lingo, nothing to see here
Question – why is Coles the focus of this?
Woolies and others do the same thing on the regular as well.
This is not to defend Coles or the behaviour, just to ask why Coles is the one being sued?
How about we legislate that major supermarkets have to show the annual average price over 12 months, and don’t allow products to be reduced more than 10% if the price has been increased by more than 20% in the last 3 months.
I’d love to see the ACCC with far more powers and funding to fight against this kind of bullshit. Big companies like Coles and Woolies have long lost their moral compass, so unfortunately we need a public agency to keep them honest and do the bare minimum of not ripping off their customers.
Fair dinkum eh?
John Howard would approve.
Imagine being a lawyer assigned to defend Coles here, what a stain on your reputation as a human being.
The stuff they get away with when they have barely any competition.
Waiting for the Coles lawyers to show up in court wearing a cork hat and thongs, waving an Australian flag arguing “Yeah nah our discounts are bloody true blue mate. Struth!”
Maybe I’m missing something, but if a manufacturer increases their RRP and the laws require a product to essentially be sold at that price for a period of time before a retailer can apply discounts, what exactly is Coles doing that’s wrong?
Is the ACCC’s argument “Coles dictates to manufacturers what their RRP is”? Maybe the onus needs to be on manufacturers and suppliers to publicly announce increases in RRP and product changes in advance.
Down, down, morals are down.
In response to Coles advertising “down down” and a red thumb pointing down versus prices *actually going up* he said grocery pricing is too complex for the consumer to understand.
Coles, the aussie battler, mum and pop small business.
They should go onto ACA to plead their innocence
My favourite of theirs is the price locked. The bread I buy has slowly and steadily risen over time under that promotion
Laundry detergent isnt $26. They know people wont buy it until they advertise it as half price. It’s absolutely illusionary to make you think youre getting a good price, so you buy it while it is on special.
Haven’t read all of this yet, but is this related to how the “sales” prices are actually more like the real price and the non sales prices seem to be completely fabricated to make the sales look better in comparison?
Well I mean it didn’t mislead us, because anyone with any brains wouldn’t believe anything you hear on an ad in the first place.
If anything it was just one more thing slowly teaching us to distrust, well – everything.
Surely shoppers didn’t think it was the prices that were down? Coles can’t help it if people misinterpret a fair dinkum jingle, which had nothing to do with the price of products. Just a meaningless classic aussie fair dinkum jingle.
How on earth is there not going to be fine in the hundreds of millions to billions. This is so unbelievably obviously fraud.
I’m still waiting on the fines for the PWC scandal. The fines were estimated in the $5-10B range and the AFP raided them a bit over a year ago, but its been crickets.