Woolworths seeking further details of ComCom’s mis-pricing allegations

Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Woolworths is accused by the Commerce Commission of mispricing errors that breached the Fair Trading Act.

Supermarket giant Woolworths was not required to appear at District Court in Auckland on Tuesday in the first step in its prosecution for alleged inaccurate pricing by the Commerce Commission.

A hearing was to be held at the court, but the commission said it would be done “on the papers” without submissions in open court.

In May, the Commerce Commission filed criminal charges under the Fair Trading Act against Woolworths New Zealand for alleged inaccurate pricing and misleading advertising in relation to pricing.

In a statement to The Post, Woolworths said: “We take this very seriously and we have been actively cooperating with the Commission on this matter.

“We have been assessing the charges and have made clear to the commission that we require further detail of the alleged misconduct in order to decide how to proceed.

“Woolworths has entered a not guilty plea to the charges at this time as we wait on the additional information from the commission. We have explained this to the commission,” it said.

ACT leader David Seymour says new supermarket companies should be fast-tracked through consenting and approval processes to increase competition in the grocery sector.

The prosecution is the second taken by the commission, which has been active in the highly profitable supermarket sector since conducting a market study in 2021 and 2022.

In June, two Pak’nSave supermarkets admitted breaching the Fair Trading Act by misleading consumers with inaccurate pricing.

The Commerce Commission had filed criminal charges in March against Pak’nSave Silverdale in Auckland and Pak’nSave Mill Street in Hamilton for alleged inaccurate pricing and misleading specials that may have breached the Fair Trading Act.

Each charge carries a maximum penalty of $600,000, potentially totalling millions of dollars.

When it first announced it was taking action against Woolworths and the two Pak ‘n Save supermarkets in December, commission deputy chair Anne Callinan said: “Supermarkets have long been on notice about the importance of accurate and clear pricing and specials, and we’re not satisfied with the continuing issues we’re seeing across the industry.”

“Pricing accuracy is a consumer right and an expectation of a competitive market. The major supermarkets are large, well-resourced businesses that should invest the time and effort to get pricing and promotions right,” Callinan said at the time.

Woolworths’s statement said: “We know how important it is for our customers that all of our tickets are accurate and the prices we advertise are the prices customers are charged at the checkout.

Pak'nSave on Mill St in Hamilton was one of the two Foodstuffs North Island supermarkets that pleaded guilty to charges relating to pricing errors.

“We have over 3.5 million transactions in our stores each week, and sometimes errors do occur. When they do, we try to make things right, through our long-standing and market-leading refund policy.

“Under that policy, if a customer is charged more than the advertised price for a product, they get a full refund and can keep the product,” Woolworths said.

Foodstuffs, which owns the Pak‘nSave, New World and FourSquare supermarket brands, has emulated that refund policy.

In its recent annual review of the supermarket sector, the commission said Australia had a voluntary code for dealing with inaccurate pricing, but New Zealand did not, meaning that refund policies were matters for individual supermarkets.

Consumer NZ has called on the government to mandate a supermarket pricing accuracy code that would have clear rules for product pricing, as well as “meaningful penalties and automatic compensation for consumers when supermarkets get it wrong”.