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What exactly goes through a shopper\u2019s mind as they walk down a supermarket aisle and spot tickets advertising a discount?<\/p>\n
Are they enticed and then misled, as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission argues in its case against Woolworths, by specials claiming a discount when the previous price of Oreos was only around for a week or two and the biscuits were actually cheaper before that? Is that too intellectual an approach, as the judge overseeing the case, Michael O\u2019Bryan, suggested, before propounding a multifactor test of whether the previous price was genuine or not? Or is a few weeks enough to set a base price to discount from when inflation is rising, as Woolworths\u2019 highly paid barristers argued in courtroom 1 on the 21st floor of the Federal Court this week?<\/p>\n
One thing is clear: none of those questions will be answered by ordinary people. The case is a civil one in the Federal Court, where trials are heard by judges alone. But across a range of interviews on the street, these customers have a clear opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re getting a deal,\u201d Nicolas Pena, who lives in Sydney\u2019s Ultimo, said after seeing the stickers at the centre of the cases. Robert Dunn, of Balmain, put it more bluntly: \u201cTotally ripped off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether their opinions are representative of the elusive ordinary, reasonable shopper is at the heart of two landmark legal cases against the nation\u2019s twin supermarket giants, the most recent of which \u2013 against Woolworths \u2013 got under way this past week.<\/p>\n
The regulator has accused the retailers of misleading customers by artificially jacking up prices for a brief period so they can truthfully say its new price is a reduction on its previous one, when in fact it is higher than just a few weeks before.<\/p>\n
Central to the ACCC\u2019s case is analysis of hundreds of items sold across the $30 billion grocery giant Coles and its $46 billion rival Woolworths, and timelines showing how those prices changed. Their lawyers, both this past week and at Coles\u2019 hearings in February, break this down into three stages: price one, or an item\u2019s initial price; price two, the allegedly artificially increased price typically only available for a few weeks; and then price three, the newly discounted price.<\/p>\n
As part of the trials, the Federal Court has examined the exact labels for prices of dog food, Tim Tams, baby cereal and Kleenex tissues, advertised with either on Coles\u2019 \u201cDown Down<\/a>\u201d or Woolworths\u2019 \u201cPrices Dropped\u201d labels on store shelves.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n While the proceeding, lodged in 2024 about discount tickets from years ago, plays out in court, the issue of high inflation has reared its head again for Australians.<\/p>\n Grocery prices are set to rise due to war in the Middle East and flow-on shocks. Just this week, both companies upped prices for own-brand milk by about 10 per cent. Against this backdrop, Coles continues to run its Down Down program, unlike its competitor, which retired the Prices Dropped scheme shortly after learning of the legal action.<\/p>\n The central allegation is that the discounts were false and misleading. But as opening remarks in Woolworths\u2019 case were made on Tuesday, the focus turned not to the markdowns themselves but whether the temporary white-ticket shelf prices \u2013 typically held for mere weeks \u2013 were real.<\/p>\n This \u201cprice establishment period\u201d, or how long a price should be held before it can be feasibly described as a \u201cwas\u201d price, has emerged as a legal grey area.<\/p>\n Each side has told Justice O\u2019Bryan what they think the stickers communicate to shoppers.<\/p>\n Related Article When the ACCC\u2019s lead barrister, Michael Hodge, KC, laid out the watchdog\u2019s case on Tuesday, he pointed to the \u201csubtle magic<\/a>\u201d of the red-and-white Prices Dropped tickets that drew shoppers in.<\/p>\n O\u2019Bryan interjected: \u201cConsumers wouldn\u2019t over intellectualise these tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n Shoppers \u201cwouldn\u2019t be thinking in the terms that you put to me\u201d, O\u2019Bryan said, but \u201cat a much more general level\u201d. The judge was concerned that Hodge and the watchdog\u2019s lawyers were placing too much weight on a hypothetical thought process about how long previous prices had lasted, and not simply whether the \u201cwas\u201d, or establishment price, was genuine.<\/p>\n Instead, O\u2019Bryan suggested, what a customer believes is that \u201cwhat was flagged on that ticket was some kind of genuine discount\u201d.<\/p>\n On Sydney\u2019s busy George Street thoroughfare on Friday, this masthead showed passersby reproductions of the exact Woolworths and Coles\u2019 allegedly misleading shelf stickers that have been filed with the court as evidence, with the added explanations of their respective products\u2019 pricing trajectory.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever you see these kinds of tags, you automatically think that you\u2019re getting a better deal than normal,\u201d remarked Maddy O\u2019Connor from Sydney\u2019s Kogarah of the prominent use of red in each ticket and the eye-catching words and typeface.<\/p>\n In response to the sticker Woolworths used to advertise a family pack of Oreos (priced at $3.50 for nearly two years, then hiked to $5 for 22 days before being placed on the Prices Dropped program at $4.50), O\u2019Connor said the sticker was \u201cpretty rude\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t normally get Oreos, you might be like \u2018oh, I\u2019ll treat myself this time since it\u2019s on sale\u2019, so it definitely pushes you subconsciously to want to buy it more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Of a Coles sticker for Karicare baby formula (which had been $18 for more than two years, increased to $24 for 23 days, and then dropped to $21 as a Down Down special), O\u2019Connor, who was with her baby in a pram during the interview, said the label felt misleading.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels very deceptive, especially when they\u2019re claiming it\u2019s a sale when realistically it\u2019s actually still just a price increase from not too long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchel Jones, who lives in an inner-city suburb and regularly shops at Coles, said the short-lived second prices \u2013 or establishment periods, as they\u2019re referred to in supermarket internal guardrail policies \u2013 of about 20 days felt too short. But as for how long is a fair period for it to be compared to as a previous price when demonstrating a discount? \u201cI have no idea,\u201d Jones admitted.<\/p>\n O\u2019Bryan too has not expressed a definitive view, and in his eventual judgment may still not give the supermarkets the certainty they crave. At present, the law doesn\u2019t stipulate how long this period should be.<\/p>\n What did become clear, though, is that one day is certainly not enough. O\u2019Bryan, early in the week, noted that in 2018, the online electronics store Kogan emailed and texted millions of customers to tell them about a 10 per cent \u201cTAXTIME\u201d discount code. The online appliance retailer had, in fact, lifted prices by 10 per cent the day before the promotion began. In 2020, the ACCC claimed a victory after the Federal Court found Kogan had misled consumers, and fined the company $350,000.<\/p>\n Making an entrance<\/p>\n The witnesses making their way to Justice O\u2019Bryan\u2019s courtroom above Queens Square in the Sydney CBD this week would have been forgiven for thinking that interest in their testimony was white-hot.<\/p>\n Supermarket chain head office employees with titles such as manager of \u201cimpulse and snacking\u201d and \u201cbreakfast cereals, muesli bars and spreads\u201d were confronted by dozens of journalists, photographers and cameramen arrayed around the courthouse, especially on Friday.<\/p>\n But the media weren\u2019t there for the supermarket functionaries. Instead, the photographers ran to capture Rebel Wilson as she attended hearings to defend a defamation case. Meanwhile, fallen radio kingpin Kyle Sandilands was mobbed as he arrived for his wrongful termination case against ARN media.<\/p>\n When the Woolworths witnesses got into the courtroom, everything changed.<\/p>\n They were grilled by Hodge on topics from internal rules for how long prices need to exist, before changing to how suppliers request price hikes and subsequent pricing decisions in the same proposal. Former chief commercial officer Paul Harker appeared at times impatient and frustrated, huffing and folding his arms while being cross-examined by Hodge.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cNo, no, no, no. Stop,\u201d said Hodge at one point, interrupting Harker and directing him to answer his question. This prompted O\u2019Bryan to jump in. \u201cLet\u2019s turn the temperature down,\u201d said the judge.<\/p>\n Woolworths\u2019 lead barrister, Robert Yezerski, SC, asked fewer questions of the witnesses. But he did ask one senior Woolworths manager, Sam Woodcock, what would happen if the chain did not comply with requests for a price rise.<\/p>\n \u201cEssentially, if a supplier proposes a cost price increase to be effective from a certain date and we don\u2019t accept that as a retailer, there\u2019s a risk that if we haven\u2019t accepted and actioned it in our system that a supplier will choose not to supply us that product any more,\u201d Woodcock said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I have to say, in Woolworths at that point in time, ensuring that we had product on the shelf was an absolute requirement,\u201d Woodcock said.<\/p>\n Rapidly rising inflation has been the foundation of the supermarket\u2019s defence. In his opening remarks, Yezerski relayed the inflationary environment gripping shoppers and the broader economy at the time. \u201cThey know what is happening in the economy, and they are indeed expecting prices to rise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At times, the watchdog seemed to struggle to land its punches. Hodge\u2019s softly spoken, slow-burn style of questioning appeared to occasionally lose its thread, prompting interjections from Justice O\u2019Bryan to steer him back on course.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re now following a path, I\u2019ve got no idea where we\u2019re going or why we\u2019re going there,\u201d O\u2019Bryan said to Hodge when he was quizzing Harker on the supermarket\u2019s internal rules for how long prices should last.<\/p>\n O\u2019Bryan voiced his concerns at the ACCC\u2019s case as early as Tuesday, during Hodge\u2019s opening remarks, when he suggested the watchdog was setting up a \u201cstraw man\u201d and not directly responding to Woolworths\u2019 case.<\/p>\n Yezerski seized on O\u2019Bryan\u2019s concerns, saying that the regulator was relying purely on what the tickets implied, not what was explicitly written on them. \u201cThe ACCC does not suggest that any information on the Prices Dropped ticket was inaccurate,\u201d Yezerski said.<\/p>\n![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777165997_548_d884196bafeb0356fd6fcad3811011231e3ceb85.jpeg\")
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The ACCC\u2019s lead barrister, Michael Hodge, KC, (centre) leaving court with the watchdog\u2019s legal team this week.Oscar Colman<\/p>\n![\"Woolworths](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777165998_934_d884196bafeb0356fd6fcad3811011231e3ceb85.jpeg\")
Woolworths no longer uses the \u201cPrices Dropped\u201d tagline.Getty<\/p>\n![\"Woolworths\u2019](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2704666f4e941d767a6769dbe326b5538dc22ee1.jpeg\")
Woolworths\u2019 former chief commercial officer Paul Harker (centre) leaving the Federal Court in Sydney.Oscar Colman<\/p>\n![\"Coles](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772031733_694_fc92ea339f926b1d236441b08c680e9e8285a925.jpeg\")
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Woolworths lead barrister, Robert Yezerski, SC, capitalised on the judge\u2019s concerns about the consumer watchdog\u2019s case.Oscar Colman<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d5f02f5c1d89406bd111690660aeaf1845ec5ed7784dc44ef40634449ae96ffe.gif\")
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