A visual guide to the prices that landed Coles in court
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-22/coles-grocery-pricing-down-down-accc-court/106355492
A visual guide to the prices that landed Coles in court
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-22/coles-grocery-pricing-down-down-accc-court/106355492
19 Comments
I’m told by boomers to “Always buys on specials”
Great that there’s evidence that it’s a lie.
Make your purchases based on the unit price. Don’t buy if you don’t see the g/ml price.
damn this is a really nicely formatted article
Ah, so 0+2-1=+1
the billions in profits colesworth make really undo any claims of looking out for customers
Seeing as what Coles are printing on their price tickets is “literally true” albeit misleading, what are the chances that they actually get a big punishment?
I feel like their lawyers are going to argue their way out of it and the worst thing that happens to them is the laws change and they have to stop doing it from now on but will just find some other way to fuck us.
>“Your Honour will have noticed the repeated use of the words ‘Down Down’ and the phrase ‘prices are down,’” Mr Rich said.
>“Your Honour will also have noticed the big red hand … pushing prices down. And the message was not only that prices are down, but they’re staying down.
>“Why on earth are you telling your customers the price is going down? They’re not.”
**Public**: $21 for milk powder that was $18 a month ago? But your ad says, “Prices are down down!”
**Coles Lawyers**: Oh, they got this all screwed up: “Prices are down❓ ^(No, money) down‼️”
This will never stop while supermarkets remain publicly traded companies.
Their number priority now is shareholders and profit, to the detriment of all Australians.
The thing that really did it for me, was the issue was raised by staff that this behaviour was against company policy at the time. So they changed the policy.
They need like the average annual price on the label or something lol
They need to hire Lionel Hutz.
“Works on contingency?
No, money down!”
Whilst this is distracting us, Coles have done another price increase throughout the store.
Very noticeable on many items.
“Coles is arguing the period being used in evidence was “a time of significant inflation in Australia and globally”.”
Yeah that would make sense if they happened all at the same time or at least the same industry… but no, the products had this tactic applied at different times and most are non perishables too.
It’s all a way to disguise a price hike, just be honest.
Oh and how many billions in profit did you make again? Because proper inflation should be impacting businesses and companies in the same way as the consumer…
I hate how some price tags show price per unit and some show price per 100g for basically the same items. Was buying coffee sachets yesterday and tried to compare price between two different brands lol
So who here bought some of those products and can get in on the class action? I bought those Shapes.
“Down down” is just a shell game anyway. Back when it first started (and whatever the woolies version is), the place I worked was shown some market research – for 500ish items that had gone on down down pricing, 1,000 items had had their price increased. They tell you you’re getting a bargain on one item while screwing you on two others.
Price Check Guy on TikTok shows something extremely similar with both Coles and Woolworths. Except it also shows products that go on sale and it goes back years. It’s quite fascinating and also infuriating to see how often this happens.
This past January I was at Coles on new years day picking some stuff up and noticed a bunch of price increases for the new year, but the quoted price reductions on a couple of items were supposedly from a Jan ’26 base – effectively saying the price was higher in Jan ’26 but was dropped to a down down price on litterally the first day of Jan ’26…
Could have been a mistake, but the next time I went the tickets had changed and just showed a price locked sticker instead for the now inflated cost.
It’s early days, but by the sounds of the way this is going, unfortunately it looks they will get away with it as expected
When counsel for Coles argued that the prices are complex, I had to double-check who he was acting for.