{"id":138691,"date":"2025-11-17T01:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T01:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/138691\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T01:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T01:15:10","slug":"real-life-why-consumer-nz-takes-joy-in-being-inconvenient-and-annoying-to-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/138691\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Life: Why Consumer NZ takes joy in being \u2018inconvenient and annoying to businesses\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\u201cIt provides that party a fair right of reply and we\u2019ll always publish, within reason, what they\u2019ve said in response to any allegations that we\u2019re making. So we do meet the normal media standards of being fair and balanced in what we report.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duffy told Real Life the not-for-profit needs to be just as conscious of businesses trying to pull the wool over their eyes as they are of potential legal threats.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always go out and buy things \u2013 the blender that we\u2019re testing from Briscoes or Harvey Norman or wherever [that\u2019s] stocking blenders \u2013 rather than relying on a manufacturer sending us that product,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you can never 100% trust that you\u2019re not being sent a golden product that performs better than those products that are offered generally to the consuming public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consumer\u2019s commitment to being free from bias has put them in good stead with governments of all stripes.<\/p>\n
While the now-charity and incorporated society was an arm of Government as recently as the 1990s, it now sits outside the halls of power. But their kaupapa sees them regularly meet with MPs to lobby them to do right by consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Politicians] actually give you a fairly good reception most of the time,\u201d Duffy told Cowan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re politically neutral, so it doesn\u2019t matter what political colour the government in power is at the time: we will work with everybody for the benefit of consumers, so that tends to help us get meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsumers are voters, and so it really is in politicians\u2019 best interest to at least give us an audience and hear what people are feeling on particular issues, because often it\u2019ll reflect what\u2019s going on in their electorates as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
And their approach is having an effect. As well as the release of their recent Yeah, Nah Awards, which educated New Zealanders on the businesses that were giving them a raw deal through dodgy practices or poor-quality products, Consumer is also helping shift government policy.<\/p>\n
One of the main areas Consumer has been working is in the supermarket industry, where Foodstuffs and Woolworths enjoy an effective duopoly that dampens consumer choice and helps them earn huge profits.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a business [in New Zealand], if you\u2019re caught breaching the Fair Trading Act, the maximum you can be charged per offence is $600,000,\u201d Duffy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you compare that to other jurisdictions \u2013 Australia for example \u2013 the same offence would be $50 million as its maximum penalty. That\u2019s a real, meaningful deterrent. We\u2019ve been lagging behind our other jurisdictions …<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people will probably have had an experience where they\u2019ve been to a supermarket, been charged a different price at the checkout to what the product advertised on the shelf was. Those are each small, individual breaches of the Fair Trading Act. They\u2019ve been going on for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fines and penalties under the Fair Trading Act are insufficient to convince the supermarket industry to change its ways. [But] we have been advocating for tougher penalties and, as we understand it, those penalties are now government policy and should be on their way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the interview, Duffy talked about working at a butcher\u2019s shop, \u201cone of the best gigs in New Zealand\u201d during his time at Trade Me, and New Zealand retailers\u2019 approach to waste.<\/p>\n
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt provides that party a fair right of reply and we\u2019ll always publish, within reason, what they\u2019ve said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,95,87389,665,1558,682,138,10166,3167,3311,9060,16639,30538,78,94443,9216,45671,807,424,5812,111,139,69,1523,3383,6115,1321,1120,8229,61,6436,4276],"class_list":["post-138691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-and","tag-annoying","tag-around","tag-been","tag-being","tag-business","tag-businesses","tag-buy","tag-consumer","tag-decades","tag-decisions","tag-helping","tag-in","tag-inconvenient","tag-informed","tag-joy","tag-kiwis","tag-life","tag-make","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-products","tag-real","tag-services","tag-takes","tag-they","tag-to","tag-well","tag-why"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}