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

Consumer NZ says complaints against Noel Leeming go beyond its price-matching policy. 

The tech retailer is facing criminal charges brought by the Commerce Commission - accusing it of making misleading promises. 

Noel Leeming's strongly rejecting the claim, and says it will vigorously defend its stance. 

But Consumer NZ chief executive, Jon Duffy, says the company's also charged with misleading people about their consumer rights. 

"If people are taking things back to the store and getting mislead about their rights to a refund or a replacement, that's very concerning".

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now the Commerce Commission is continuing its run of prosecuting retailers.
It's now filed criminal charges against nol Leaming and this
is over its price promise. Now, the price promise is
the policy where if you find a product cheaper somewhere else,
nol Leaming will match the price for you. John Duffy
is the CEO of Consumer New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
A John, Hey, here, the ho's going.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
I'm very well, thank you. Do you have any concerns
around the price promise.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Here? I mean, it is a high risk strategy for
retailers because you know, there's there's lots that can come
in between your ability to offer the product and the
customers ability to find that elsewhere, including online, including you know, offshore.
There's lots of there's lots of caveats that businesses need
to do when they're offering these promises. And if those caveats,

(00:47):
if that list of caveats gets too long, you know,
agencies like the Commerce Commission can start getting concerned and
actually maybe the headline offer that it's a price matching
promise might not be as true as you'd hope it
would be.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
That sounds really subjective though, I mean there's no there's
no objective way to dealt with the list is too long,
is there?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah? Maybe that that was a bad example, but if
you if you get good examples of caveats that make
the headline advertising misleading. For example, if you are the
only stockist of a product, if you have an exclusive
deal with a brand that can't be bought or a
product that can't be brought anywhere else, and you say
we'll we'll match this price elsewhere, well that's pretty misleading

(01:32):
because you can't buy it elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Ye fair enough? Do you do you ever see? I
mean they said that they had about two hundred and
fifty thousand people actually use the price promise between twenty
nineteen and twenty twenty one, So if you count all
three years, then what's that about eighty thousand people a year?
Is that reasonable?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, it kind of shows if the price profice is misleading.
It actually shows the scale of the problem. So if
they're putting that much volume through and they're misrepresenting the
terms here, well that's a huge number of people who
have been impacted by what could be misleading conduct. We'll
have to see how the case pans out to see
what the court decides, but we should also remember that

(02:11):
this is although I've noticed nol Lemmings have come out
and made comments refuting the allegations, but they're really only
focusing on this price promised part of the Commission's prosecution,
which is only one part of kind of three heads.
They've also been paged for potentially misleading or allegedly misleading
people about their rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act, which

(02:32):
is really interesting when you look at our complaints data
about nol Lemming, the vast majority of those complaints relate
to products that have broken or are faulty. So if
people are taking stuff back to the store and getting
mislead about their rights to a refund or a replacement,
that's very concerning.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, John, Thanks so much, John Duffy, Consumer CEO.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
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