My complaint:
Yesterday I went to my local supermarket New World Motueka, I don’t frequent this supermarket, only two supermarkets in my town, and was very disturbed by my experience. About 25% of products where club card only prices. It took two other shoppers and two staff members to identify the normal price, which was so small they had to get glasses to read it. Each item was about $1.00 in difference. As I don’t have any supermarket Loyalty cards, one of the staff members said that I could get it ‘swiped’ by a cashier. On reaching the cashier and telling her that I would like to use the store ‘club card’. She put through all my items and then asked me for a store card. There was about $6 difference between the normal store and club card total for my 4 purchases. The cashier then asked me for my club card and when I said I didn’t have one she said “Are you a local or a tourist”. I said a resident of Motueka and she said “ Its store policy that we only swipe the store card for people on holiday not for residents”. I returned my shopping.
Is it ok to hold local shoppers (especially in small towns) hostage and bully them into agreeing to outrageous ‘terms and conditions’ by making them pay huge differences in prices. Is the extra $20 – 30 you would have to pay, especially for families, perhaps leading to shops having to ask for a $2 donation at checkout to supply food and clothing to children for up to 6.000 schools in NZ. Is it culturally, socially, and in a very real practical sense reasonable, acceptable or fair? Is it the Kiwi way?
Countdown was recently taken to task over its loyalty card system both nationally and locally and I have defiantly seen a change in their behaviour with less card priced goods, clear pricing, and not huge differences in prices. Although I have complained about the incorrect pricing from shelf to checkout.
Although letter of the law does not state you can be discriminated against by where you live it is certainly the spirit of the law that is been broken here. I’m sure that this will be amended in the legal sense soon. This has certainly been proven in court recently by a resident who was denied enrolment at the local doctors because of the area (street) they lived in.
I am disgusted, shocked and horrified at this behaviour and unless we start saying no with our wallets and feet we will be totally compliant in allowing ourselves to robbed in broad daylight and being forced, yet again, to sign up to ‘terms and conditions’ we don’t understand and don’t know the long term consequences to.
Suggested solution:
They should resolve this complaint by removing the Club Card completely or reviewing the dicrimination against local residents.
