Eagle-eyed social media users praised for their own detective work on Coles, Woolworths

The competition watchdog has praised consumers for helping to bring on one of its biggest consumer action court cases.

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb. Picture: Jane Dempster

Australia’s competition boss has praised eagle-eyed members of the community who called out ­allegedly dodgy market pricing practices by the country’s major supermarket retailers.

Gina Cass-Gottlieb commended consumers who conducted their own investigations into “misleading” discounts offered by Coles and Woolworths amid a cost-of-living crisis, which ultimately tipped off the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission into a full-blown investigation and on Monday led to the kick-off of a Federal Court case.

“It’s an interesting development,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb told The Australian.

“After consumer reports, we did our own monitoring on social media and found hundreds of reports on social media, so on Reddit and X and TikTok, of people reporting short-term price spikes, and are these (discounts) genuine,” she said.

“It’s interesting that consumers are watching and alert.”

The ACCC has hauled the two supermarket majors into the Federal Court, after it alleged on Monday they misled consumers about discounts on hundreds of household items.

The supermarkets offered certain products at a regular price for at least 180 days, the ACCC said. They then allegedly increased the price of the product by at least 15 per cent for a relatively short period of time, and then “discounted” them.

Reddit user Top_Tumbleweed was probably one of the hundreds of comments about the alleged misleading conduct examined by the ACCC on social media. “The old inflation bait and switch, raise the price by $3 then says it’s on special two weeks later for $2 more,” they said.

Another Reddit user Frankiethegiraffe said one year ago: “Frosty fruits went from $5 to $7.50. Down to “now” $6 and then up to $8 in the space of a year.”

And Ewan82 one year ago noted: “They did that with their little Woolies brand soup. Jacked up the price from $2 to $3.50 and then price dropped it to $3.00.”

The users were responding to a post that highlighted the alleged practice as it related to Pepsi.

“Anyone else noticed, or tired of Woolworths (and I assume Coles) raising then lowering their prices just so they can whack a big PRICES DROPPED tag on the shelves? Example Pepsi Max 30 cans,” the poster wrote.

During a press conference on Monday, Ms Cass-Gottlieb said the regulator was tipped into the alleged fake claims by consumers.

“We first identified this conduct because of contact from consumers. We then tracked social media and saw on X, Reddit and TikTok that hundreds of consumers were reporting prices that they did not consider were genuine,” she said.

“We followed that up with our own in-depth investigation.”

The ACCC alleged the display of the Prices Dropped and Down Down tickets was misleading, as the price of the products was in fact higher than or the same as the regular price at which the supermarket had previously offered the products for sale. It claimed Woolworths breached consumer law on 266 products, and Coles did the same for 245 products.

Coles has vowed to defend the court case, while Woolworths is reviewing the matter carefully.

Originally published as Eagle-eyed social media users praised for their own detective work on Coles, Woolworths