The Commerce Commission is huffing and puffing and threatening to blow the two big supermarket chains down over some of their pricing practises.

Well, it’s certainly huffing and puffing. Whether it’s going to do anything more than that remains to be seen.

In fact, I’ll tell you right now - it isn’t going to achieve anything more than that.

Because all it’s doing is going through the motions after getting a complaint from Consumer NZ about Woolworths (which runs the supermarkets which used to Countdown, until recently) and Foodstuffs, which runs New World, Pak'nSave and Four Square.

Basically, Consumer NZ isn’t sure whether supermarket pricing and promotions comply with the Fair Trading Act. That’s the official way of describing it.

It’s got about 600 examples of what it calls “dodgy specials”. Not sure whether that’s the wording it uses in the official documentation it sent to the Commerce Commission - but that’s what it’s on about. Dodgy specials.

Things like customers being charged more than the shelf price. Weird multi-buy specials where it’s actually cheaper to buy products individually. That sort of thing.

The one that really gets me is, you see a price for something on the shelf and it’s only when you get to the checkout that you find out that the discount is only available for clubcard holders, or something like that.

How many people do you think find themselves in that situation, and just shrug their shoulders and pay the extra because they just want to get out of there?

If it happens to me, I generally hand it back or get a cheaper option. But you’ve got to keep an eye on things. And I reckon a truckload of people walk out of supermarkets thinking they’ve got a special on something, when they haven’t.

And the problem Consumer NZ has with all that, is that it’s getting harder and harder for us to actually know whether we’re getting a good deal or not.

Just this morning, I went past a billboard which had an ad for one of the supermarkets telling me I could get one of their garlic bread sticks or something for the (quote) “low price” of $1.50.

That’s all it said. The “low price” of $1.50. A low price compared to what? A low price considering how much it costs them to make it? Of course not. Trust us John - it’s a “low price”.

And I see that and I think ‘yeah right’.

But I don’t get outraged about it. I’m not going to go marching in the streets about it. I just think 'oh yeah' and move on.

And that’s because we have such little faith in what the supermarkets tell us these days, that we see ads like that for what they are.

And yes, the Commerce Commission will look into these dodgy specials that Consumer NZ isn't happy about, and it’ll probably tell the supermarkets that they have to be more upfront about their pricing and specials.

But, on the basis of how things are now, they’re not going to have to do much to lift their game, are they?

You might have heard Jon Duffy from Consumer NZ on with Tim this morning. As well as the pricing practises, he doesn’t think the penalties dished out to supermarkets are tough enough.

Another thing he finds dodgy is the lines that supermarkets use about “everyday low prices” and “New Zealand’s lowest food prices”.

But I actually don’t have a problem with that sort of thing because that’s advertising. I can decide for myself whether the supermarkets live up to it.

It’s not quite so easy working out whether those everyday low prices are actually everyday low prices. And that’s what the Commerce Commission is going to try and do, on our behalf.

Good luck to it. But I don’t see anything major coming out of it.

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