{"id":423691,"date":"2026-05-12T09:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T09:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/423691\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T09:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T09:53:15","slug":"hamilton-and-auckland-paknsave-stores-await-penalty-after-admitting-fair-trading-breaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/423691\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton and Auckland Pak\u2019nSave stores await penalty after admitting fair trading breaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mill St trader pleaded guilty<\/a> to eight charges and the Silverdale supermarket admitted 10 charges.<\/p>\n

Each charge is subject to a maximum penalty of $600,000.<\/p>\n

The sentencing was heard in the Auckland District Court last week before Judge June Jelas, who reserved her decision.<\/p>\n

Commerce Commission prosecutor Nick Flanagan argued the supermarkets could be incentivised to take risks if the penalties imposed were not significant.<\/p>\n

He said being a high-volume business that made frequent price changes was not an excuse for the breaches.<\/p>\n

Flanagan pointed out that another Pak\u2019nSave had earlier been before the courts regarding similar breaches.<\/p>\n

He said this indicated the level of penalty in the previous case, against Pak\u2019nSave M\u0101ngere, was not enough to prompt the supermarkets to make necessary changes to ensure prices were accurate.<\/p>\n

In the 2020 M\u0101ngere case, the supermarket was fined $78,000 for discrepancies between the promotional price displayed or advertised and the price charged at the till.<\/p>\n

Flanagan argued the fine imposed on the two latest stores needed to \u201csubstantially increase\u201d from this figure.<\/p>\n

He also told the court prices had been being advertised as specials when they were \u201cnothing of the kind\u201d.<\/p>\n

For instance, one product was advertised as extra low, when it was actually priced at that level 90.7% of the year.<\/p>\n

Staff were manually updating prices at Silverdale, he said, without a systematic approach. <\/p>\n

An electronic system came into effect at the store in October 2024.<\/p>\n

However, Flanagan said errors continued because there was so much confidence in the new system that prices were not being checked as often. <\/p>\n

At Mill St, which did have an electronic system, the store did not have processes in place to properly record price complaints before June 2024, Flanagan said.<\/p>\n

\"GroceryGrocery pricing is under the spotlight in the Commerce Commission case against two major supermarkets. <\/p>\n

This failure would have led to more breaches, he submitted.<\/p>\n

Flanagan argued the excess revenue from breaches recorded at Mill St \u201cmaterially understates\u201d the true gain the store would have received from its misleading prices.<\/p>\n

He sought a penalty starting point of $550,000 and in the Silverdale case, $400,000, but accepted the operators should get a 25% discount for pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity.<\/p>\n

The commission, however, could not accept both entities receiving the same discount for co-operation. Flanagan argued the Mill St store should receive a lesser discount of 5%, compared to 10% for the Silverdale store.<\/p>\n

In response, defence lawyer Iain Thain argued both stores should get the full 10% discount for co-operation.<\/p>\n

He said the court was not in a position to decide on the commission\u2019s claim that Mill St had not provided the \u201cfull facts\u201d during an interview.<\/p>\n

Thain also said it was \u201cnot right\u201d to say the two stores had learned nothing from the M\u0101ngere case.<\/p>\n

The M\u0101ngere store used paper labels in its product pricing, while Mill St used electronic shelf labels, in part due to increased errors associated with paper pricing.<\/p>\n

Pak\u2019nSave Silverdale had also moved to digital labels before the prosecution commenced, towards the end of the offending period.<\/p>\n

Thain pointed out that on some occasions, consumers had benefited from breaches. <\/p>\n

For example, a wooden display board had advertised Vogels for $5, but customers were charged less at checkout, in most cases $4.<\/p>\n

At Mill St, a staff member with a scanning gun would check prices every morning in the fresh food section to ensure they were correct, Thain said.<\/p>\n

As a result, only two of the 18 breaches were related to the fresh food department.<\/p>\n

Unless staff were \u201cconstantly\u201d scanning, errors could still occur with electronic prices, Thain said, for example, if someone bumped an electronic label or it ran out of battery.<\/p>\n

Thain said each store had made further improvements to their systems once the proceedings began, which he argued showed remorse.<\/p>\n

Following applications from the media, the supermarkets asked the judge to suppress some aspects of the summary of facts, citing commercial sensitivities and disputed facts relating to Mill St.<\/p>\n

Judge Jelas reserved her decision on the summary, and the sentencing, until at least mid-June.<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mill St trader pleaded guilty to eight charges and the Silverdale supermarket admitted 10 charges. Each charge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10106,74,95,51,113435,11421,27252,138,5842,1121,7520,2371,6963,6288,13484,111,139,69,27952,37667,23941,5351,6122,5257,653,168643,7227,131,1361,780],"class_list":["post-423691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-admitting","tag-after","tag-and","tag-auckland","tag-await","tag-breached","tag-breaches","tag-business","tag-calling","tag-case","tag-commerce","tag-commission","tag-fair","tag-hamilton","tag-higher","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paknsave","tag-penalties","tag-penalty","tag-previous","tag-rules","tag-significant","tag-stores","tag-substantially","tag-supermarkets","tag-than","tag-that","tag-trading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423691","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=423691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}