Shoppers sceptical of whether Coles or Woolworths specials offer actual savings, Choice survey shows

Most shoppers don’t believe Coles or Woolworths specials or sales promotions make it clear they offer actual savings, new data from consumer group Choice shows, with four in five consumers finding it difficult to discern real discounts.

Of almost 11,000 people surveyed, 88% of respondents said they were worried about the rising costs of groceries, while 83% of respondents said they thought some of the supermarkets’ marked down items made it hard to know if they were value for money.

“While the two major supermarkets each post over a billion dollars in profit, many households are at breaking point from the rising cost of food,” Choice senior campaigns and policy adviser, Bea Sherwood, said.

“To make matters worse, supermarkets are using a number of confusing promotional practices that make it very difficult for customers to work out if they’re actually saving money on their groceries or not.”

“Was/Now” pricing, as Choice has called it, is when supermarkets claim to drop the price of a product that actually has an artificial higher price point, and call the new price a sale. This means that items on “special” may actually cost the same as before the promotion.

Guardian readers have complained about cut-price stickers being used “as a weapon to deliberately confuse”.

Responding to a call out, one reader said that they had been “buying the same items week after week and [had] seen increases each week”. Some products were priced with “down down” stickers despite the product never being sold at the higher price recorded, the reader claimed.

Another reader from Victoria said: “The whole pricing strategy at the supermarkets is designed to eliminate, as far as possible, the shopper’s sense of what the price ‘should’ be, by moving prices up and down.”

Choice has made a submission to the inquiry being led by the Senate select committee on supermarket prices requesting a number of recommendations such as banning unfair pricing practices, introducing new rules about discounts or other promotions and requiring supermarkets to publish historical grocery pricing information.

Choice has alleged the supermarkets’ “complex pricing methodologies lack both transparency and accountability”, and has called for fair and transparent grocery pricing.

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Screenshot of Coles’ down down advertising, published in the Choice survey. Photograph: Choice supermarket survey

With the survey results, the consumer advocacy group also published examples of alleged dodgy pricing claims, including one from Coles Marrickville supermarket, which advertised Palmolive Shower Scrub Coconut Butter 400ml with a “down down” sticker at $4.50.

Choice reported the sticker was from 11 February 2023, and that the sticker showed the price was discounted from $6.49 in September 2017 – a date which Choice claimed “was over five years ago and over three and a half years before the Coles Marrickville store opened”.

This is not the first time Choice has directly called out Coles. In 2023, it lodged a complaint with the ACCC about Coles’ “locked prices” promotion.

Coles apologised and refunded customers after prematurely raising prices on the items it had promised would remain “locked”.

Combined, Woolworths and Coles control about two-thirds of the Australian supermarket sector.

Both supermarket chains have consistently denied they practise price gouging, but Guardian Australia analysis has consistently shown supermarkets expanded their profit margins during the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.

The two major supermarkets are facing several ongoing investigations, including the upcoming Senate inquiry and, separately, a Queensland parliamentary inquiry.

Former Labor minister Craig Emerson is also leading a review of the grocery conduct code which governs how food retailers deal with suppliers and customers.