00:01Pretty conclusive and brief judgment this morning in the federal court ruling that Coles, the supermarket chain, did indeed mislead
00:11its own shoppers several years ago on its down-down promotions.
00:16Now, this was a bombshell case brought by the ACCC several years ago. It alleged that on hundreds of items
00:24that Coles sold back in 2022 and 2023, that it used illusory discounts on its down-down promotions.
00:32Now, the central part of the ACCC's case, which it has just won this morning, was that Coles would raise
00:40the price of products such as dog food and toothpaste for short periods.
00:46It would then lower those prices back down with down-down discounting promotions, but indeed those prices would be higher
00:53than they had been just months previously.
00:55Now, this morning, Justice O'Brien here, he has ruled that on 13 of the 14 promotions scrutinised in the
01:03court case, that Coles did mislead customers.
01:06And he ruled that this was because the prices had not been at a certain level for 12 weeks.
01:13Now, 12 weeks was the number that he picked of prices needing to be at a certain level to establish
01:19with consumers that they were indeed real prices.
01:22Now, I'm just going to read a little bit of what Justice O'Brien said in court this morning.
01:28He said that I have concluded that 13 of the 14 down-down tickets that were in the subject of
01:34consideration in the joint liability trial were misleading
01:37because the relevant products were not sold at the was price stated on the ticket for a reasonable period.
01:43And as a consequence, the discount represented on those tickets was not genuine.
01:48It follows that in offering the sample products on those down-down tickets, that Coles engaged in conduct in trade
01:56or commerce that was misleading.
01:59Now, we haven't had penalties for Coles heard about this morning.
02:04Indeed, Coles and the ACCC have now been ordered to come back together and come up with penalties.
02:11We've already heard from some experts that the supermarket giant could be facing fines in the realm of $50 to
02:17$100 million.
02:18But really, it's reputational damage that's also been on the line during this case.
02:24It is worth noting that there's also a class action against Coles for a similar issue.
02:30And the ACCC also has just wrapped up a very similar case against Woolworths on the same issue.
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