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

This business with the supermarkets and their pricing... 

Consumer NZ has launched a petition. They want change to stop prices being incorrectly labelled. 

So you go to checkout and scan receipts, something's different to what you expected. Then we would get a refund on the product, and the product for free. 

The idea is that if you make the punishment more than fit the crime, they'll stop doing it. 

Which I get. But the supermarkets reckon —and Consumer NZ calls this spin— that there's just too many products and they honestly make mistakes. 

More often than not the prices are out by a few cents - so $5.99 instead $5.95.

The key question here is whether we think the supermarkets are doing this on purpose, or whether they're just large organisation that occasionally get small things wrong. 

And correct the errors when spotted. Refunds where necessary. 

If we're saying they are deliberately doing this, that's a whole other thing. 

I'm not saying the supermarkets should be given a Hall Pass here, but if we're talking about a few million dollars a year spread over a population of five million, plus the free products on top of refunds they'd have to fund...

You've got to ask if the potential payoff is worth the cost of pushing a policy like this. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.