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Ryan Bridge: Is supermarket pricing as bad as we think it is? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This business with the supermarkets and their pricing. Consumer New Zealand,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: in case you didn't catch it yesterday, came out with
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a petition which we should all sign, apparently, and they
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: want change. They want to stop prices being incorrectly labeled.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: So when you go to the checkout and you scan
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: your receipts and something's different to what you expected, something
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: is different to what was on the shelf, then under
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: their plan, you would get a refund on the product
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and you would get to take the product home for free.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: The idea is that if you make the punishment more
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: than fit the crime, then they'll stop doing it, which
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I get. But the supermarkets reckon and Consumer DZED calls
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: this spin. But they reckon that there's just too many products,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and they honestly make mistakes more often than not. It's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: out by literally a few cents, you know, so like
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: five ninety nine instead of five ninety five. The key
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: question here is whether we think the supermarkets are doing
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: this on purpose, or whether they're just large organizations that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: occasionally get small things wrong and wreck the errors when
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: they're spotted and give refunds where necessary and where people
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: have asked for them. If we're saying they are deliberately
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: doing this, that's a whole other thing. And I'm not
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: saying that supermarkets should be given a hall pass here.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: But if we're talking about a few million dollars a year,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: which is what they think, it adds up to spread
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: over a population of five million people, plus the free
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: products and the cost of those, on top of refunds
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: that they would have to pay for, and the staff
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: hours of going around and checking all the prices. Again,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you've got to ask yourself if the potential payoff is
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: worth the cost of pushing a policy like that one.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to News Talks. It'd be from five am weekdays, or
• 1:45
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