Placing items on an end of shelf display marked "1/2 Price"
Then the girl on the register says "no, that's tomorrow!" Update (this was at 5:45 PM Tuesday)
Ask them would you please go check and of course they see it, and that is all. Still refuse to honour the price.
Photo: https://imgur.com/a/QB6WNow
What does the community think?
Thanks for your opinion(s).
Poll options look like Slav wrote them lol
I can't even answer this poll!
Happens all the time when the catalogue is about to change over
Do you think they stack the shelves at midnight on the dot?
I often see them early Wednesday putting out the new tickets
.
Tuesday night is most popular time to do it for obvious reasons. Those boxes are completely filled so theyre likely newly placed, but the actual price tickets arent even on there yet.
Many friends I know work night shift in woolies at they paid twice, yes they do often change mid night
To be fair, ww could just leave a cover over promo price until the sale is active
Surely you agree it’s misleading to have a price prominently displayed that doesn’t represent the actual sale price at that time?
Do you see a price in the attached pic?
It is still misleading to say it is half price.
@spackbace: How do you justify a company advertising half price on a price that doesn't exist yet? Are you telling me when you go shopping you look at the price of every single item you buy? Obviously this benefits Coles as most people have a rough estimate of how much things normally cost and will think the half price sale is based off that if the price isn't listed. Coles may not have done anything technically illegal but in terms of the spirit of the law it isn't hard to see how this could be misleading.
@spackbace: “It's the vibe of it. It's the Constitution. It's Mabo. It's justice. It's law. It's the vibe and ah, no that's it."
@baskinghobo: "Are you telling me when you go shopping you look at the price of every single item you buy?"
I actually do, although I appreciate others may not.
'Half price', '25% off', '10 %' style promotions often provide decent savings, but just as often are designed to lure people into buying something because it's on special, when the actual discount may not be that….special. The only way to guard against this is to look at the prices and have some knowledge of what a reasonable standard price is….which can be challenging in these inflationary/supply chain shortages times.
When I worked in retail you were not allowed to put up a price unless it was the current price. I would expect them to put it up the morning of the specials going live. Often you would just use an old half price paper banner and put it backwards to cover the half price banner and just rip them off the next morning,
As far as I'm aware what they are doing does not meet ACL obligations.
Do you see a price in the attached pic?
No, but would you agree that this Woolworths store is making claims about their prices that are incorrect or likely to create a false impression?
I hate shopping on tuesday evening.. u really dont know what is really on half price this week or is it for next week.
Agreed
At Coles there's an easy way to get an idea of it. If you look in the bottom right of the specials ticket it tells you a date when the promotion ends. If that day is tomorrow, it's your last day to buy it on special. If it's next week, it's either already on special or it starts when the old specials expire
Is it that hard to stack and change the tickers after 9?
Seems like it falls afoul of ACCC regulations, and depending on how your Karen-game is you might be able to have some real fun here.
Was it a tuesday night?
Looks like it, that special started from this morning essentially
I think the specials started on Wednesday morning.
Seemingly, the op clicked that picture on Tuesday night.
Yeah my bad, got my days wrong
@spackbace: lol, it’s a useless piece of information anyways.
I only know this coz I used to work there.
Coles have done the same thing before too, not a big deal.
not a big deal.
That's OP's complaint
Do you have a taller picture because pretty sure the top of that aisle clearly says TOMORROW'S SPECIALS. Literally saw one Tuesday evening at Wolli Creek.
This happens every Tuesday evening. Just part of life. The sale dates are written on the price tag.
Need poll option..
"OP is entitled"
I used to work at Woolworths managing the weekly promotions 'changeover' and this is pretty standard. We started preparing the promotional items for the end of the aisles at 5PM. Some large & bulky items (e.g 30xdrink cartons, pallets of toilet paper) could not be brought out of the loading dock too early as it would occupy the stores floor space and present a hazard for customers.
Customers would often ask if the item was on sale within that week or the next but never had a response like this.
Safeway dogs body reporting for dirty. No, I don't know how all those melons ended up being non-symmetrically halved.
Since they're big and they do this every week, a different set of standards and rules should apply to them.
Nah, they should be getting the night staff to do it. If something says it's on sale, it should be on sale. Simple as that.
Exactly, but they no longer pay night staff and just do it all earlier… except actually changing the prices at the register. Tuesday nights are annoying to shop.
They shouldn't be allowed to do this but it happens at every store ever since they've gotten rid of most of the night fill staff. The other annoying thing is that if you try and shop on a Tuesday night after 8pm you might find all the specials tickets in the store missing.
They do this at about 4 PM here in Qld. Frustrating the customer is OK. Tuesdays are not the day to shop. But it happens to be my payday.
Why not shop the day after on Wednesday when you've been paid and there's a new set of specials? (And in case your pay gets delayed)
That's your idea of a resolution to op?
@Spootage: Hey, and do you think this would still be a reasonable resolution if everybody was suggested to shop on weds instead, or would it change if we were talking about more than one person? Intrigued to know if this changes things.
Yeah the missing special tags on Tuesday night annoys me regularly.
Sounds like a "Them" problem. I'm sure they can pay enough to attract nightfill if they wanted to.
Yes, as @iTzTeFish^^ already pointed out.
This only happens on Tuesday evening/nights.
They are only prepping the displays for next week’s promotions. Price tickets get inserted the next day when the specials take effect..
Coles does that too…it’s a logistics thing and not a scam that they are trying to pull.
Chill out, there’s bigger things to worry about.
But OP wants her half-priced Cornados…
Op’ll just have to stuff one in their pants then…
Don’t know what else to tell ya..
Don’t know what else to tell you.
Tell her him that she's he's being calm and rational and totally not like a Karen, and that if she he starts harassing the $7/hour Colesworth aisle-stuffer about the ACCC and the Consumer Rights Act that everyone in the store will give her him a standing ovation and not think she's he's splitting hairs at all.
ETA: Fixed. Wouldn't want to misgender, of course.
$7/hour Colesworth aisle-stuffer
Maybe 15 years ago. It's a lot more than that these days.
Level 1 team member $20.55
+25% between 6pm-11pm
Your aisle stuffer after 6pm is making nearly $26ph
@Muzeeb: Yes, BUT no one on the floor controls prices. This is really something I am very surprised people never get- the pricing is centralised and set by the strong room and sometimes the floor super (the key bearer).
You cannot have POS (point of sale) where every register can independently price things. New prices are supposed to be entered into the CENTRAL computer so every check out just operates as normal, no new codes to learn- and in peak times- those less familiar with the till will be able to refer to their old training without learning new codes.
They were for the wife home recovering from surgery.
I am a male but sometimes I identify as a stoned hamster!
If your wife is recovering from surgery then for goodness sake man just get her the Cornados she wants at full-price. There's a time and place for pennypinching.
@KLoNe: Even moreso. If she's just lost her manhood then the last thing she needs is her husband coming home and telling her that he didn't get her the Cornados because they were $3 instead of $1.50 and "I'm not fkin' made of money, honey!".
Obviously
Agree - be reasonable -
If they decided to do it on Wednesday then Op would probably be complaining that the catalogue shows half price but yellow signs werent up on a Wednesday morning
Ok but notice how there’s no price there. No before price. No after price.
They haven’t actually said a price and then not honoured it.
Without the price there, they could also plausibly argue the opposite; that the price it’s scanning at is half price.
No, they can't.
The ACL requires comparison pricing to be to an actual price. So, unless it is half off the actual price it has recently been sold at, its misleading.
Go down the aisle and check for all the digits there.
Also what would you do if you picked up an item where the sale ENDED the Tuesday you were there, the special price ticket was gone, and you think it’s $5 and it scans at $2.50? Are you gonna give them an extra $2.50?
Shouldn't be allowed. Back in the day you'd get the product free if advertised/ticket/shelf price was different at checkout. Question is, what is the advertised price?
But if you see that picture, there is no price ticket next to it…
Just that standard half price promo strip that’s always there anyways
You still do - I often get products free when the item has scanned higher than the shelf price.
Got a freebie 5 kg of washing powder that way. The price scanned higher than the shelf price. I just wanted the price match.
You still do. The staff just didn't respect OP - this usually happens when OP's appearance or mannerisms don't demand respect.
Haha ?
Btw op, there should be an option in the poll for
‘Not a big deal, Maybe I’m just getting the munchies’
The banners say half price but what did the tags say?
Were the sale price tags printed and placed too?
If there were no tags it’s easy enough for them to say the advertising is in the wrong spot.
In any case though… who cares 😂
Edit: seems after reading back up the comments no tag = no price commitment is strong. Add it to the poll!
They were building the front ends for the next day. There are no price tags there. Peak Karen.
They set it up the day before instead of at night because it saves them 25% loading on labour costs after 6pm, 50% after 11pm, and 100% after 2am.
And then they pass those savings onto the consumer, right? …
👉👈
Hahahha
Maybe, if those consumers happen to be shareholders too. Even the fattest cat needs to pass some value on to shareholders to keep his job.
adorably naive. No. Look at Nick Gleeson and one of England's oldest banks. Look at ENRON.
Exacltly, stuff em. They can afford it.
I'd say is sits in the realm of false advertising.
Is the popcorn 1/2 price?
So they were filling the shelves in preparation for Wednesday sales.
There is no price shown just a 1/2 price label.
Woolworths is under no obligation as no price is shown.
precisely what we were told to say (safeway).
Doesn't that violate advertising laws? I'm no lawyer but maybe you are
The flip side of this sort of laziness is that you can often get bargains on wednesday morning because in the rush to redo all the prices on the shelf for the new bargain week, they sometimes forget to remove the "special" prices from the previous week. And according to the rules, if you buy something that is labelled at a certain price on the shelf, and you get charged more than that at the checkout, they have to refund your money. You get it for free. In my experience they always have.
Not that I'd look for a way to cheat them into giving me free products, but I have been caught, repeatedly. And benefitted by noticing afterwards on the checkout tape that I was.
The "special" price tags have two dates on them in small print, the date the special price starts, and the date it ends. You know from the end date whether you've got to buy it this week to get that price, or whether it'll still be on special next week.
if you buy something that is labelled at a certain price on the shelf, and you get charged more than that at the checkout, they have to refund your money. You get it for free. In my experience they always have.
Thought it'll be more common case where they just give it to you for that discounted sale price, not for free
Usually the policy is first item free and the rest at the lower of the two prices
Yep. I saw cashews were on sale at $13, rather than the normal price of $18. Bought two. Got home, looked at why the total amount had been higher than expected, saw I'd been charged 2x $18. Went back with the checkout tape, and they checked the price shown on the shelf, then refunded me the whole $18 for the first one and $5 for the second.
Coles & Woolworths sign up to the scanning code of practice which says if the item scans higher than the shelf price you get it for free (if you're paying attention!)
Always check your receipts!
Yup, this happened to me. One time they had on the shelf a bulk pack of razors marked at half price - I think that even at half price they were something like $25. I went through the self checkout, and then when I paid I thought - hmmm that total is a little high. So I checked my receipt. Then went in the store, checked the shelf - saw it half price. Then went to the service desk. The staff member checked the shelf and sheepishly said, yup, you're right, and refunded me the amount. Best bargain, got it for $0. I think they immediately went and corrected the shelf price.
Quite a few years ago a Woolworths I used to frequent would have both week’s specials on a Tuesday afternoon/evening. It wasn’t always marked as such but would come up that way at the register. It was great.
I think it was many years ago and it did not last for long.
Yesterday, it was Chemist Warehouse. Today it's Woolies. Expecting a thread bashing Coles tomorrow.
I'd just like to remind everyone that we have a choice on where we shop.
I'd just like to remind everyone that we have a choice on where we shop.
We do and we don’t. Owning a supermarket, even a little one is pretty big business. There isn’t unlimited competition or suppliers. Monopolies and price collusion can happen (that’s why there are laws about such things). So for chips, for sure they are not essential and yes we can get them elsewhere, but this isn’t the case for everything. We’ve become pretty reliant on a small number of larger companies. They have power of infrastructure, real estate and supply chains. Depending on where people live they may have very limited choice. I don’t think OPs situation is anything to be upset about, but it’s not always as simple as shopping elsewhere.
Not really it's a 4 way monopoly. Aldi, Coles, Safeway, IGA. Next you'll be telling us we have abundant choice of banks.
I have had issues with prices being wrong and if the register person will not fix it (give the first product free and then the rest at the shelf price) I ask them to call the manager as they are violating Woolworths scanning policy. The manager 99% of the time comes over and fixes it the other 1% of the time never arrives and then I ask for the supervisor and they fix it.
it does not matter if the ticket is old or has been put up early as the scanning policy is that the scanned price V ticketed price, not if the ticketed price is correct. When the ticket is wrong it never goes back on the shelf.
It shows that they do not train their staff correctly and it's not the register person at fault, but the manager.
No- that's wrong. We got 4 hours of IQ60 level work videos and how not to use your back to lift, and why not wave to your mates when using the bone saw. And how hiding in the box crusher was not a good prank idea (we use a maybe 5 tonne press to squish and then bail the cardboard). Then maybe 8 hours check-out supervision.
The idea is to NOT let the customer it's on sale- that looses money. In my day we were allowed a max till shortfall of $25 a week- more than that we'd be considered to be pilfering. We had weekly catalogues to be placed in a difficult to reach spot (behind us under the packing area). The strongroom is supposed to enter into the centralised stock-POS computer (point of sale, not the other POS acronym) system the new pricing is so the check-outs will enter the usual code for say bananas- and it will automatically be at say priced at 20% at the POS. It's inefficient to have the cashiers remember prices (we don't care), new codes etc- and just continue as if nothing has changed because in peak times you have to call in the guys from fruit and veg, store-room etc to man the tills- and they won't be up to speed on the latest codes. So when a cashiers scans- it should automatically have a price reduction .
Imagine the stock loss if check-outs could adjust prices without supervision? They can tally what's on the shelves to what's missing and that was late 1990s, from the strongroom out back (where all the vacuum tubes go)- not allowed to keep a $100 note in the till and as few $50's as possible always aiming for a $250 till- the spendy notes go into the vacuum tubes. Strongoom is supposed to issue coins in rolls (rare).
So don't think it's the check-out fault- the fault is with the salaried geniuses in the strongroom, and the floor supervisor (at the cigarettes and 12 items or less counters) for not haranguing the strongroom super-geniuses (too busy gossiping)- they can use their key to enter in price changes on the fly).
Just be wary when shopping on a Tuesday night whether what you're seeing on sale is actually on sale. Or don't shop on Tuesday nights for this reason. No big deal. Whoever thought to change the tickets before you got there probably had the "work smarter not harder mentality" so instead of doing it late at night when they can't be arsed they decided to do it earlier.
Sadly the "work smarter not harder" mentality doesn't always lead to good outcomes for everyone.
They do that every Tuesday night, for new catalogues.
take them to court
I hear RHC solicitors are good
youll be hearing from them soon too, no doubt!
The case will soon be heard in the food court. If unsuccessful an appeal will be lunched in the super supreme court.
Poll please.