Woolworths New Zealand has acknowledged the announcement by the New Zealand Commerce Commission on 10 December that it intends to file legal proceedings against Woolworths New Zealand under the Fair Trading Act in relation to pricing accuracy issues. The timing and extent of the proposed proceedings are not clear.
Woolworths New Zealand has been cooperating with the NZCC in relation to its investigations in relation to these matters for some time.
Woolworths New Zealand will carefully review the legal proceedings once they are filed.
Woolworths New Zealand’s Managing Director Spencer Sonn says: “We know how important it is that our customers can trust that the prices we advertise, or have on our shelf labels, are what they pay at the checkout. But sometimes errors occur.
“To address this, Woolworths New Zealand has a long-standing and market-leading refund policy. In summary, if a customer is charged more for a product than the price we advertised it for, or is displayed on our shelf, they get a refund and to keep the product.
“More broadly, we are also in the process of introducing electronic shelf labels in all of our stores – to ensure that there are no paper-based shelf label errors. To date, 130 of our 186 stores have electronic shelf labels in place.”