Not so fresh rodent droppings and gnawed food found in Woolworths triggers refunds

Rodents have left a Woolworths in Melbourne’s west littered with droppings — and the store admits it “missed the mark”, offering refunds on certain products.

Sunshine Marketplace Woolworths has been found with rodent droppings and products eaten. Photo Steve Pohlner

Woolworths has been accused by customers of ignoring a longstanding rodent problem in its Sunshine store.

And the retail giant has admitted it has “missed the mark”, offering customer refunds on products on certain noodle products.

Images taken by a shopper at the Sunshine Market Place store on Friday show rodent dropping scattered on boxes of noodles in the supermarket, with regular customers saying staff and managers had been made aware of the rodent activity for some time.

Concerned locals took to Facebook with one customer saying: “this is a regular occurrence unfortunately.”

Other customer said they alerted staff when the images were taken three days ago.

But long-time shopper Jan Carrick said she told staff about the issue last year.

“I went there last year … mice poo was all over the shelf and on the boxes of stuff I wanted to buy,” she said.

“I told staff to take the (items) off the shelf. I was told it must have happened overnight and staff did not see it.”

Woolworths head office were only made aware of the situation when contacted for comment by the Melbourne City News on Monday.

Customers are now being offered refunds for all Fantastic Noodles 85g Beef and 70g Chicken varieties bought on January 8.

Rodent droppings found by a customer inside the Sunshine Woolworths.

Another photo taken by a customer inside the store.

A Woolworths spokesman said they “missed the mark” and have chucked out the stock in the aisle.

“We hold ourselves to the highest standards in store hygiene, so we’re really disappointed,” a spokesman said.

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we conducted a thorough clean of the affected aisle to return it to our usual high standards.

“We also took the precautionary step of disposing the stock in the affected aisle.”

The spokesman said store staff cleaned the aisle on Monday night and a pest control service was hired to prevent future activity.

Woolworths claim no further rodent or pest evidence was found in the store on Monday night