SuperGold Card holders are finding it difficult to cash-in on weekly supermarket discounts with a mish-mash of locations, leaving some regions missing out entirely with patchy coverage in others.
By Nona Pelletier of RNZ
Age Concern chief executive Kevin Lamb called it an example of "grey washing".
For example, the SuperGold Card was accepted at grocery stores in most central business districts, but not in Gisborne, Marlborough Nelson, Tasman, West Coast districts nor the densely populated Auckland CBD, with a fast-growing resident senior population of more than 2000 people.
"It is portraying themselves as supporting older people, but doing what I would call the bare minimum in order to achieve that," Lamb said.
"If you're going to say that SuperGold Card gets a discount in our stores, why wouldn't you do that for every store? Not just cherry pick a handful of stores around the country and have such a lack of consistency about where those stores are located."
Monopoly concerns
Monopoly Watch analyst Tex Edwards said confusing or difficult to get information on the availability of SuperGold Card discounts at leading supermarkets was another example of unchecked monopolistic behaviour.
"What's being exhibited here with the leverage of the senior gold cards, is a concept called geographic monopolisation in several regions of the country, where you don't have any brand choice, you just have to go to the Woolworths, or you just have to go to the Foodstuffs banner of either New World or Pak'nSave and Four Square."
Edwards singled out Wellington, where lobbyists worked on behalf of supermarket chains to maintain the duopoly.
He said it was not surprising that Wellington region had the best coverage of supermarkets offering the SuperGold Card discount in the country, with New World offering it at 100% of its stores, and 63% at Woolworths.
"The monopolies have these people called the lobbyists, and they run round Wellington and busy telling government officials that they're doing everything right, and they're being sensible citizens of New Zealand, and they're doing all this good stuff, except competing on price and competing on any real initiative," Edwards said.
Conflicting information
Co-op Foodstuffs, which supplied New World, said there was no comprehensive list of store locations offering the SuperGold Card discount as individual stores were privately owned and operated.
"The discount isn't offered in our South Island stores. In the North Island, it's up to individual store owners to decide whether to offer it, so there isn't a single, comprehensive list of participating stores," Foodstuffs said in a statement to RNZ.
But internet searches of New World stores offering SuperGold Card incorrectly indicated the card was widely accepted in South Island locations - which was not the case.
Likewise, telephone calls to New World stores also resulted in conflicting information, together with incomplete information online about the terms and conditions at stores honouring the card, such as minimum purchases.
New World's online location finder did link to a standardised template for each store, but none of them contained information about SuperGold, though other services were mentioned.
Woolworths said it offered the discount in about a third of its stores broadly located nationwide, but that was also somewhat misleading as the discount was not evenly distributed throughout the country, with some regions seeing near 100% coverage, while others offered nothing at all.
A list of participating Woolworths stores on the SuperGold app was also out of date with four stores no longer operating.
Commerce Commission response
Grocery Commissioner Pierre van Heerden said supermarkets were not obligated to offer a SuperGold discount at any of its stores, though they needed to deliver on their promises to do so.
"However, we would reiterate that any discounts offered need to be clear and accurate and should not mislead consumers.
"Supermarkets need to follow through where discounts are offered.
"Any exceptions to discounts, including eligible locations, need to be clearly communicated to avoid misleading consumers," he said.
"We would encourage people to report a concern to the Commission if they think one of the laws we enforce has been breached.
"We are unable comment further without undertaking a more thorough assessment of the matter and, if warranted, through undertaking an investigation," he said.
Woolworths response
Woolworths' website indicates a third of its total 185 grocery stores offered the 5% discount on any given Tuesday, but just 23% of its Auckland region's stores offered the discount, and not at any of the five stores located within a 20-minute walk of the Auckland CBD.
"Whilst we may not offer the discount in all Auckland CBD stores, we do offer it broadly across the country," Woolworths director of retail Jason Stockill said.
However, a list of Woolworths stores that accepted the SuperGold card were not broadly located according to data available on supermarket websites, and many of its North Island stores were located near competing New World supermarkets that also offered SuperGold discounts.
"We are aware that some select competitor stores run a SuperGold discount programme. We are not aware of this being directly matched store to store by us or our competitors," Stockill said.
Still, the following table indicates the regions where Woolworths and New World's SuperGold Card discounts are matched store-to-store:
- Gisborne District: Woolworths 0% offers 0/1 stores - New World 0/0 stores 0% offers
- West Coast: Woolworths 0% 0/1 - New World 0/3 0% offers in the South Island
- Nelson: Woolworths 0% 0/6 - New World 0/2 0% offers in the South Island
- Tasman: Woolworths 0% 0/1 stores - New World 0/1 stores 0% offers in the South Island
- Taranaki: Woolworths 20% 1/5 stores - New World 60% 3/5 stores matched 0
- Auckland: Woolworths 23% 14/ 62 stores - New World 61% 19/31 matched 11
- Waikato: Woolworths 26% 5/19 stores - New World 44% 7/16 matched 3
- Southland: Woolworths 33% 1/3 stores - New World 0/3 0% offers in the South Island
- Hawke's Bay: Woolworths 50% or 2 of 4 stores - New World 80% 4/5 matched 2
- Otago: Woolworths 56% or 5 of 9 stores - New World 0/11 0% offers in the South Island
- Manawatu-Wanganui: Woolworths 60% 6 of 10 stores - New World 36% 4/11 matched 3
- Wellington: Woolworths 63% or 12 of 19 stores - New World 100% 21/21 matched 8
- Marlborough: Woolworths 67% 2/3 stores - New World 0/2 0% offers in the South Island
- Northland: Woolworths 71% 5/7 stores - New World 80% 4/5 matched 3
- Bay of Plenty: Woolworths 83% 10/12 stores - New World 67% at 6/9 - matched 5
- Canterbury: Woolworths 95% -19/20 stores - New World 0/20 0% offers in the South Island
Privately-owned Pak'nSave supermarkets do not offer a SuperGold Card discount, though some Four Square supermarkets do. Woolworths-owned Fresh Choice honoured the card at selected locations.
SuperGold Card discounts difficult to access
The SuperGold card was designed to help offset the high cost of living, which statistically hit New Zealand's seniors harder than other groups.
Lamb said many of the SuperGold advertised on the app or website were beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy retirees.
"I think as well, it's often the the interfaces are designed for those people who are extremely efficient at using online technology, and that doesn't apply to a portion of the older population," he said.
"There are still somewhere in the region of 20 to 25% of the older population who don't have any access to any online resource.
"So creating an app or creating a website is meaningless for those people, and those people do tend to be the ones who are the most vulnerable."
In any case, using the SuperGold Card App to figuring out which supermarkets did or did not offer the discount was impossible, with no sense as to the rationale behind the selection of stores.
Auckland CBD and other centres miss out
Stockill said Woolworths considered a number of factors when deciding which stores would be included the programme, including demand.
"We are always looking at options to provide additional value to our customers. We know the SuperGold discount program is very valued in the stores we offer it in and we would love to extend this to all stores," Stockill said.
"However, the truth is that this programme is costly and whilst we would love to roll this out more broadly, we do need to carefully balance this expense with our ongoing investment into lower prices, services and shopping experiences for all our customers."
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