Latest / Best of Business / Jon Duffy: Consumer NZ chief executive on the Commerce Commission filing charges against Noel Leeming over ‘Price Promise’ claims

Transcript

Jon Duffy: Consumer NZ chief executive on the Commerce Commission filing charges against Noel Leeming over ‘Price Promise’ claims · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now, the Commerce Commission is continuing its run of prosecuting retailers.
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  Speaker 2: It's now filed criminal charges against Noel Leaming and this
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  Speaker 2: is over its price promise. Now. The price promise is
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  Speaker 2: the policy where if you find a product cheaper somewhere else,
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  Speaker 2: Noel Leming will match the price for you. John Duffy
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  Speaker 2: is the CEO of Consumer New Zealand.
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  Speaker 3: A John, Hey, here the ho's going.
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  Speaker 2: I'm very well, thank you. Do you have any concerns
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  Speaker 2: around the price promise.
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  Speaker 1: Here?
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  Speaker 3: I mean it is a high risk strategy for retailers
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  Speaker 3: because you know, there's there's lots that can come in
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  Speaker 3: between your ability to offer the product and the customers
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  Speaker 3: ability to find that elsewhere, including online, including you know, offshore.
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  Speaker 3: There's lots of there's lots of caveats that businesses need
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  Speaker 3: to do when they're offering these promises. And if those caveats,
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  Speaker 3: if that list of caveats gets too long, you know,
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  Speaker 3: agencies the Commus Commission can start getting concerned that actually
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  Speaker 3: maybe the headline offer that it's a price matching promise
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  Speaker 3: might not be as true as you'd hope it would be.
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  Speaker 2: That sounds really subjective though, I mean, there's no there's
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  Speaker 2: no objective way to dealt with the list is too long?
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  Speaker 3: Is there? Yeah? Maybe that that was a bad example,
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  Speaker 3: but if you if you get good examples of caveats
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  Speaker 3: that make the headline advertising misleading. For example, if you
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  Speaker 3: are the only stockist of a product, if you have
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  Speaker 3: an exclusive deal with a brand that can't be bought
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  Speaker 3: or a product that can't be bought anywhere else, and
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  Speaker 3: you say we'll we'll match this price elsewhere, well that's
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  Speaker 3: pretty misleading because you can't buy it elsewhere.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough, do you do you ever see? I
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  Speaker 2: mean they said that they had about two hundred and
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  Speaker 2: fifty thousand people actually use the price promise between twenty
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  Speaker 2: nineteen and twenty twenty one, So if you count all
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  Speaker 2: three years, then what's that about eighty thousand people a year?
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  Speaker 2: Is that reasonable?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it kind of shows if if the price profice
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  Speaker 3: is misleading, it actually shows the scale of the problem.
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  Speaker 3: So if they're putting that much volume through and they're
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  Speaker 3: misrepresenting the terms here, well that's a huge number of
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  Speaker 3: people who have been impacted by what could be misleading conduct.
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  Speaker 3: We'll have to see how the case pans out to
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  Speaker 3: see what the court decides, but we should also remember
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  Speaker 3: that this is although I've noticed nol Lemmings have come
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  Speaker 3: out and made comments refuting the allegations, but they're really
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  Speaker 3: only focusing on this price promise part of the Commission's prosecution,
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  Speaker 3: which is only one part of kind of three heads.
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  Speaker 3: They've also been pained for potentially misleading or allegedly misleading
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  Speaker 3: people about their rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act, which
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  Speaker 3: is really interesting when you look at our complaints data
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  Speaker 3: about nol Lemming, the vast majority of those complaints relate
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  Speaker 3: to products that have broken or are faulty. So if
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  Speaker 3: people are taking stuff back to the store and getting
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  Speaker 3: mislead about their rights to a refund or a replacement,
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  Speaker 3: that's very concerning.
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  Speaker 2: John, Thanks so much, John Duffy, Consumer CEO.
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