Marketplace
Four Corners story about price guarantees at Bunnings on tonight (12/5/25). We're all very familiar with these tactics, but it's still nice to see Bunnings getting a serve for once.
Hammered: Inside the Bunnings Machine
Cheap Gamer on 12/05/2025 - 09:52
Last edited 12/05/2025 - 09:54
Last edited 12/05/2025 - 09:54
Related Stores
Comments
- 1
- 2
Yeah this is big fat lie.. event the other common brands have specific items only sold at bunnings and not stocked elsewhere and is never discounted because of that. Here is an example of it
Yeah when the standard go-to items are unique brands that Bunnings owns, or unique models that Bunnings acquires, or products only Bunnings has the right to sell in store in Australia, then it's all just a big scam.
Home brands and exclusive model numbers from major manufacturers is nothing new at Bunnings. This has been their business model for decades.
But the advertising is Misleading/Deceptive.
Not excusing them as it's a pet gripe of mine, Myers, David Jones, Domayne, Harvey Norman, Office works, many products have slightly different models and only sold in that store. Many Printers (eg; Epson), Beds ect…
Did you read the story?
@jv: Thought I did, and IMO it's the same as I said. Office works for example has the same price promise but many of the products you can't by elsewhere as the models are unique, so meaningless.
Office works for example has the same price promise but many of the products
Show me a pic of an Officeworks product that is only sold at Officeworks with a price match promise advertised on it.
@jv: Never been to officeworks hey? Everwhere you look, big banners, A4 sheets on the shelves, find a cheaper price we will not only match but beat by 5%.
As per my example Take printers specifically the ET-3820 - Officeworks model, likely zero other places will have that model, Epson will ship say a ET-3825 to BingLee and something else to Harvey Norman. That's misleading and deceptive, you won't find that model in-stock elsewhere.
As I said I am not excusing bunnings, but they need to crash down on them all.
@jv: I recall the Brother HL-2132 was an Officeworks exclusive over a decade ago. The comments made at the time say as much. I believe it's identical to the HL-2130 that was sold elsewhere in Australia.
They pushed out smaller operators using the same tactics that Coles and Woolworths employ when they move into town. Now we have a near monopoly for hardware stores and all that entails.
@Exec-Matrix: These are just my thoughts based on what I observe, the shear number of customers that go-to Bunnings every weekend. If I'm after advice I'll shop at Mitre 10, where the staff outnumber the customers and there's no que.
What a load of garbage. You're happy with Bunnings trampling their way through the hardware market forcing many to use them as the ONLY hardware store?
We live in a free country, people can shop wherever they want. They chose Bunnings over other stores for various reasons and that's why the business has thrived.
What's next, shutdown Netflix so BlockBuster can survive.
@JIMB0: Do you not understand that:
a) Monopolies are bad for consumers. Did you not play that game as a child or were you too busy trying to jam the houses up your nose?
b) Netflix isn't a monopoly.
c) It's spelled "queue".
@Charmoffensive: I actually learnt to play Monopoly pretty well. The secret is to buy everything you land on and charge rent to those that didn't.
Netflix has exclusives. Bunnings has exclusives. If one’s not a monopoly, neither is the other.
And thanks for the spelling lesson. Luckily, real life doesn’t hand out trophies for perfect spelling, it just rewards those who know how to play the game.
@JIMB0: When Bunnings has faded for the viewers minds, I'd like to see 4Corners go after Telstra (another virtual monopoly for many) and a few other telcos for their charges ,service & support.. I'd also like them to investigate what goes on in offshore call support centres and how much of our ID and data is accessed by the faceless minions in those centres. Maybe they could poke around at how much the billionaires who are buying off govts spent on the recent election,too.Of course I think the govt should shut down the ACCC first, and give that white elephant $$ to the ABC. I mean they seem to do the ACCC's work for them.
BTW it's a bit hard to choose where to shop, when the choice has finally been consumed.I actually learnt to play Monopoly pretty well. The secret is to buy everything you land on and charge rent to those that didn't.
And the game was invented by a teacher to demonstrate why monopolistic behaviours are bad for consumers. Shame you didn't put two and two together.
Netflix has exclusives. Bunnings has exclusives. If one’s not a monopoly, neither is the other.
Yeah, I don't think you learned much about what consittutes a monopoly.
And thanks for the spelling lesson. Luckily, real life doesn’t hand out trophies for perfect spelling, it just rewards those who know how to play the game.
Turns out any game requires basic literacy, which is probably why you haven't read the rules of monopoly and aren't playing it properly. Sorry.
Yes, as long as they don’t raise prices.
Yeah this is low hanging fruit for them. I think The Checkout did a story about it ages ago. Bring back that show please!
Such a good show, definitely worth a reboot and re-analysis how things look nowadays.
I miss The Checkout 😭
Misleading and deceptive advertising…
Why aren't the ACCC going after them?
Jobs & growth
The ACCC is worthless.
But the government give them about $300 million every year ???
careful… they'll name and shame both oil companies.
Toothless tiger!
Yep. Allowed chemist warehouse to merge with sigma, they now dominate 50% of the entire pharmacy market by sales volume alone.
You think the lawyers working at ACCC are seemingly only there so they can get a job at one of these places later on…
they sent a strongly worded thoughts and prayers…
Bunnings has minimised choice too. (Much like the supermarket screwopolies) Some of the better 'cheaper' lines have gone completely. Mainly because they last too well, I assume. It's also shit that different stores can run entirely different lines, so when you visit another store to top up, find out there is no stock and never was. And these are common garden and hardware items, not rare sellers.Who doesn't prefer the Hammer Barn? Much friendlier, and if they don't have stock, they draw it up while you wait.And your dollar buck goes further.
Exactly as predicted, Bunnings drove most small hardware stores out of business. Where I used to be able to walk 300M to my local True Value franchise or drive 3km to a private hardware and landscaping supplier, I now have a round trip of 37km to reach Bunnings. At about 10c per litre for fuel, that's close to $4 before I start looking for the single screw I need to fit a handle back on a cupboard. Toss in car wear & tear and time, that's a very expensive screw. Generally, Bunnings quality is cr@p.
My local landscaper told me Bunnings shut him down, despite his prices matching or beating Bunnings and his products like sleepers being rated to bear higher loads. I am landscaping my own yard and went there for a lot. He told me many locals used him when they didn't quite order enough from Bunnings. "One bag of concrete mix please"; "oh, that's a better price than Bunnings". Fortunately, we have another landscape supplier 14km round trip away. They don’t seem to try to compete with Bunnings, but time and distance make it worthwhile.
Forget the advertising. Use local your local businesses. It works out better if you help to keep them operating. Driving all over the place to save a few cents on an inferior product is far from my definition of 'bargain'.
Anecdotally, I've noticed an increase of apparent theft (pkgs broken open and item/s missing etc) ,product swapping (price difference) and pilfering stock at our nearest Bunnings stores. And FMD there are a shed-load more items being put back in the wrong spot.
Most of the time they seem to be what I would call trade specific items.
I asked at my local Bunnings why the self-service registers always seemed to be closed lately. They said theft.
@pjetson: LOL, save money on staff & pay the price with a rise in theft.(at the same time requiring someone to hang around self serve anyway.) Genius
When doing some casual work, I went to one rogue as requested by the boss. His method was trying to get me back by jacking up the price and giving me the cash difference. I valued the work and handed the cash to the boss, telling him the story. Apart from that, all I've noticed is ability to buy quality tools I buy at a competitive price, but bigger markup on less expensive things. The price is openly displayed when you pick something up. That's not cheating, that's survival for small operators trying to fight monster corporations.
This is just like standard practice for trade suppliers like Reece, Tradelink, etc
1) Set a sky-high non-competitive retail price for your products
2) Give trade customers a huge discount
3) Tradies invoice customers for the full retail price, and pocket the inflated difference.
Could that be a reflection on yourself than "all those little hardware stores"?
I've found them great, with owners who knew their products rather than part time uni student workers who have no clue.
I miss the old school mom and pop stores. Walked into one once with my toddler and they gave him free mini torches. Not going to happen at Bunnings.
I decide what I need before I get there. Asking staff for help is asking for trouble. They either have no idea or steer you to products with the highest margins.
Does happen. I regularly get promotional items from their suppliers. My son has Ryobi keychains all over his backpack.
Used to be 5 great small/medium hardware stores in our area stocked by genuine knowledgeable old tradesmen…
They'd ask what project your doing and then give you hints and tips and the right stock first time… Try that with Bunnings.. Its hard enough to get them to tell you where an item is without them disappearing.Christ on a bike. Have you ever watched the DIY videos on the Bunnings website? I reckon 2/3 of the one's I've checked out would end in disaster.That's if the viewer can join enough dots left out of the process being filmed. They spend more time putting PPE on than explaining the task properly. Not sure why they bother.
Be the same from these home renovation and gardening shows on Tele with much of the show being fake
I don't see what's so misleading or deceptive about it. It's not like the good old days where a retailer wouldn't match a product because their product code had a different letter in it.
If I want to price match something, I either get the cheaper price and take it to a more convenient store, or I see something I want to buy and look elsewhere to see if it's cheaper. It's not like I'm walking into Bunnings and being denied a valid price match, there's just not one to begin with. And their home brands are still usually cheaper than buying elsewhere (or at least competitive).
I won't lose any sleep if Bunnings gets told to stop advertising their price beat next to products that no one else sells, but it seems a pretty minor thing to go after. I'd be more worried about how they've used their market power to reduce competition in the market, but the ACCC doesn't seem to care much about market power.
I think something not spoken about enough is Bunning's anti competitive behavior. They do similar things to woolies and coles.
E.g. Forcing suppliers and brands to work exclusively through them if they want their products sold at bunnings. This gives small players no chance.
If suppliers and brands were smart, they'd do the same as Bunnings is doing when private labelling. The supplier sells Bunnings Item X, Model Y, complete with Bunnings-based packaging. Other stores get Item X, Model Z. Any store which insists on exclusivity gets their own Model.
I don't think you understand. What you describe is how it is already with many suppliers, but ontop of that, Bunnings wants exclusivity of the entire supplier, not just the one product.
I reckon a lot of the recent wave of shoddily built houses have to do with Bunnings becoming the preferred (or only) material supplier.
And not by a small proportion the downward quality of Strayan trades ppl.These days everyone in fluoro driving a ute can call themselves a tradie. Just add and ABN and off you go.It not impossible to have an entire home built with ony 2 or 3 old school qualified trades ppl involved. As long as there's a builder with a license registered to the project and 'overseeing' the build.The self regulation model needs to be pissed off or a high% the houses built since covid are going to be crap.
And once a builder goes bust that record should stay on their re-badged licenses so 'buyers' can beware going fwd.There should also be a public register of all building complaints involving costs over $5000.
Always found it a bit strange how much everyone kicks up a fuss about the Colesworth duopoly, while turning a blind eye to Bunnings. For many consumers, there is no alternative to Bunnings, and if you're a supplier, it's even worse, because if it's not stocked in Bunnings, it may as well not exist.
The PR power of the sausage sizzle is how they get away with it.
IMO Bunnings is worse than the supermarket duopoly. At least at supermarkets a lot of the stuff can be good. Bunnings is mostly crap with a little bit of good.
fat profit margins apparently
I'm not sure how the price policy is related to their home brand items. I also don't understand how this is misleading.
They do have a price beat policy to win sales.
What does that have to do with them selling home brand items?
Do they have to stop selling home brand items because they have price beat policy?
I'll be very interested to see if 4 Corners (order Pizza now) mention Masters Hardware in all of this.
Masters had a go (briefly) and failed. Ironically some Bunnings are ex Masters stores.
Masters is by far the store I miss the most. R.I.P🪦
The difference is Bunnings grew organically. Masters thought they'd steal a slice of the pie and build their own empire, allot of their stores right next to Bunnings. They went too hard too fast and hadn't bothered to build trust with the consumers. Its no different to how REX tried to steal a piece of the pie from Qantas. Qantas retaliated and dropped their prices and squeezed REX out of business.
I remember Bunnings bought Lloyds (in SA) and McEwans (in Vic).
Bunnings tried to get going in the UK. It went pretty much like Masters did in Aus. Somehow a different style of store to what people were used to. In the UK there are big stores like B&Q and Homebase but there are a lot of small and mid sized competitors. I guess it's the population size and density that can support it. I wonder what we should expect Bunnings to do ? They're not a charity and they must employ a lot of people. I don't like how they seem to screw suppliers though, I'd hate to be involved in that !
Bunnings had minimal impact on the failure of masters IMHO. Masters financially screwed themselves over from day 1 with exorbitant startup/acquisition costs and an overzealous bunch of board members.
So their username was ironic?
Ironic or misleading and/or deceptive?
@Muppet Detector: I guess 'beginners' ,'newbies' or startups' failed to get board approval.
If they called themselves NOTbunnings, they'd probs be the dominant player now.
They also sell sizes which you can only get at Bunnings so its impossible to find the same item at a lower price. They are doing this more as they get into household cleaning products.
be interesting to see how they compete on the auto products angle they are going for since bunnings never holds sales
where as supercheap, et al regularly hold sales of 20% +
will the bunnings price be the supercheap price when on a 20% off sale?
"I think it's misleading," says John Dahlsen, a competition lawyer and former chairman of Woolworths, who now chairs his family's hardware store and building business."
Look like someone is jelous lol
former chairman of Woolworths
Well, at least he knows a lot about market control and screwing customers then.
He apparently drove taking over Dan Murphy's, which basically does the same thing as Bunnings, house brands, automatic price matching, etc.
How does the automatic price matching work? Sounds like a smart competitor could use it to mess with them.
How does the automatic price matching work?
They check their competitors advertising each morning and proactively reduce their prices.
@jv: So a competitor business could list a whole bunch of deals that will never be honoured, sit back and watch DM drop their prices?
sit back and watch DM drop their prices?
It's at DM's discretion….
The won't drop prices and make a loss…
Managed to pricebeat against their own advertising:
Bought a few click brand 45W PPS chargers for $10 each.
Find the Staff at Bunnings pretty good.
Do have Powerpass tho…
Local Mitre 10 are ok but they win no friends by having a cheaper price online.
They were always pretty clear about it. In fact it was written in huge letters on the side of the shed.
"Lowest prices are just at the beginning."
They have my respect, they honoured a PRICE ERROR for an EV charger.
We all make mistakes, so didn't expect them to.
People that expect stores\businesses to honour pricing errors\mistakes are in dream land. Not being offensive, but some of the staff at Bunnings are either close to retirement or special needs, so cut them some slack.So are half of the customers that chuck a wobbly in there because they thought the price would be cheaper.
I miss Masters
…"closing sale"
I didn't show enough appreciation for them while they were around
I should have used a lot more of those ($25 off when you spend $125) vouchers
This is also how they screw you at airport 'duty free'. There are so many products that you will just NEVER see an exact item to google and compare while you're in an airport.
Clearest example I know of: in 99% of reality, scotch is 8, 12, 18, 25, 30, 40 year age statement. Maybe you get 10 and 15 for some brands like Springbank and Laphrioquwehglkhberg, but it's a small outlier. Airports are the only place in the world I know where you will routinely see 9 and 19 year scotch, with no workable way to compare the 'duty free' saving.
Even the stuff that isn't home brand is often exclusive, so they can lean right into oligarchic competition but keep up the facade. Oh no, we don't sell the cheap Logitech SomethingSomething300 and expensive Logitech SomethingSomething600, we sell the cheap Logitech SomethingSomething200 and expensive Logitech SomethingSomething700, which are totally different things and can't possibly price match anything.
Treat things adversarially, it's the only way to win and the only thing they deserve. Treat their products like rentals and return them when you're done. Broken voucher code here on OzBargain? Exploit the hell out of it. See someone shoplifting? You didn't see anything. The majority of Australian retail stores are rent seeking scum (not the workers in the stores, they are getting burned worse than the customers).
This is Democracy manifest!
I've said it for years that it's BS that Bunnings gets away with what they do. They've cornered the market and shoved everyone out of the way.
bunnings is so ridiculously expensive. But you know what, they are open until 9pm weekends and I can pick up crap i need for the next day, I'm happy to pay a premium for that.
on another note, their welding rods are the cheapest I can find.
Insiders know as to why there was a 5 Year Masters showdown.
Why throwing a tantrum now?
why there was a 5 Year Masters showdown.
Why?
Well only "insiders" understand on they trick the ACCC to believe competition was bad. Even Gerry wanted to have both JB and the GG but he failed.
Such are the endgames of Capitalism …
Bring back Nock and Kirby.
This is why you should have zero guilt about using Bunnings as a tool library.
or zero guilt about any of the big department / box / food / electronic / etc stores when they cry about theft
or buying a tool at Bunnings for a single job and then returning it
Old news. Thats why you dont find any other hardware stores in WA.
- 1
- 2
A 10% price guarantee on 0 items is 100% worthless.