OK, Colesworth, here’s how to repay the $11,250,000 you swindled from me

Good grief, Colesworth. If my fists weren’t already full of “half-price” tins of sour cream and onion Pringles, I would be shaking them at you like a madwoman right now. The last time my faith in the patron saint of supermarkets, Curtis Stone, was this sorely tested, I’d just clocked the size of the so-called “family chickens” in the bain-marie and assumed (incorrectly) that you’d made a sudden decision to branch into barbecued spatchcocks.

Honestly. I haven’t felt this wronged since my Colesworth-branded plastic bag failed (it turns out 12 litres of milk and a kilo of flour was too heavy for one recyclable … who knew?) and you had to break into the chorus of Tina Arena’s Chains on Colesworth radio to get someone to urgently mop up the béchamel-sauce flood.

Down down, prices are … UP?!Credit: Artwork: Marija Ercegovac

At the time, I considered the whole terrible imbroglio a bit of quid pro quo. You decided to charge me for the bag, and since I paid actual money for it, I wasn’t about to part with it before its time (read: when the holes were bigger than the groceries). It’s not my fault that I went through a long period of buying a new bag every time I went in and now I have so many that the boot of my car looks like it belongs to a hoarder with a plastic fetish.

The thing is, Colesworth, other than a brief flirtation with Aldi (which ended the day I was almost trodden to death in the stampede after a new cashier lane opened), I have been an excellent customer. I stuck with you during COVID, aka the Great Toilet Paper Famine of 2020. I’ve memorised your jingles. I single-handedly amassed any number of desperately coveted supermarket chotchkes, knickknacks, and gewgaws, and heroically fought off pleas for overpriced collector albums, before surreptitiously binning everything when the kids were out.

So why, I hear you ask, have I remained loyal (to whichever half of the supermarket duopoly was closest on any given day), when in hindsight I should’ve been yodelling to Chains by Tina Arena all along?

The answer, Colesworth, is that I have spent many happy hours instore, basking in the warm fluorescent glow of yellow-ticketed sale price tags, as well as the half-price shelves at the end of each aisle. Nothing screams #michelleiswinning louder than a trolley full of Strepsils honey and lemon throat lozenges, which I bought in quantities capable of stopping tonsilitis in its tracks, because $6 a packet is cheaper than $7 a packet, which is what Coles said they were previously. But then yesterday I discovered via those calculator-happy folk at the ACCC that those same Strepsils spent almost two years for sale at $5.50 before having their price increased to $7 for 28 days, and then finally being advertised as a sale item at $6.

Then there were the Oreo family packs that sold in Woolworths for $3.50 for almost two years between January 2021 and November 2022. On November 28, 2022, the price went up to $5 for 22 days before being advertised for $4.50 as part of a “price dropped” promotion.

All of this is starting to sound eerily reminiscent of a year 8 maths problem, and I’m here to tell you, Colesworth, I hated year 8 maths and, by extension, I now hate you.

Evidently, the ACCC alleges the “illusory” discounts were applied to a wide range of household items, including Tim Tams, Kellogg’s cereals, Colgate toothpaste, Maggi noodles and Weet-Bix. Talk about covering off all the food groups.

In total, an outrageous 511 goods apparently had their prices inflated since late 2022, before they were temporarily slashed and then reset by up to 29 per cent higher.

Now, listen up, Colesworth: I’ve been thinking. You clearly owe me. And since I have neither the staying power for the ACCC’s upcoming federal court battle with you, nor the stomach for another ad featuring St Curtis Stone and his flock of shiny fresh food converts, here’s what we’re going to do. I went shopping yesterday morning and gleefully impulse-bought approximately 50 tins of the aforementioned half-price sour cream and onion-flavoured Pringles for $2.25 each. Let’s say they were actually retailing for $2 in 2021, before being inflated by 29 per cent for however long it took for Curtis Stone to sing “Down, Down” in a duet with an apple. I will sell them back to you for a fair price – let’s say $225,000 each. I believe that means you owe me $11,250,000, which I’m very happy to collect ahead of grocery day next week.

Since you will no doubt be flogging some sort of hideous collectibles album for precisely that amount by then, I will once again come out of the transaction diminished and miserable, but curiously in the mood for barbecued spatchcock.

As ever, Colesworth, this is entirely your fault.

Michelle Cazzulino is a Sydney writer.