Consumer Complaints Disclosure Standard

The Act allows for the Commission to issue disclosure standards, a tool that compels specified parties to supply information to the Commission (among other things), for the purposes of enabling the Commission to monitor competition and efficiency in the grocery industry and to ensure that sufficient information is readily available to the Commission to assess whether the purpose of the Act is being met.

The Commission has developed the consumer complaints disclosure standard to allow us to monitor two areas of particular concern – pricing integrity issues and promotional errors – alongside other areas of the regulated grocery retailer (RGR)’s service quality such as product quality and product range. It applies to the three RGRs as defined in the Act – Foodstuffs North Island, Foodstuffs South Island, and Woolworths New Zealand, and their franchisees, interconnected bodies corporate, and transacting shareholders. The focus is on the Pak’nSave, New World, and Woolworths/Countdown banners.

The disclosure standard sets out the information that is required to be disclosed and/or published by the RGRs and how. The standard requires that the RGRs:

• disclose their refund policies to the Commission;
• publish their refund policies, including on their websites, and a one-page overview in all stores;
• keep records of consumer complaints received, including refunds issued; and
• disclose information on consumer complaints and refunds to the Commission.

The Reasons Paper outlines the context for the disclosure standard as well as the legal framework, and reasoning for the content of the disclosure standard.

Contact us at grocery.regulation@comcom.govt.nz at any time if you have questions regarding the Consumer Complaints Disclosure Standard.

In July 2024, the Grocery Commissioner wrote to all three RGRs about our ongoing concerns around pricing integrity issues in their supermarkets and stated that we were considering establishing a disclosure standard. In that letter, the Commission stated that we would publish a discussion paper on a consumer complaints disclosure standard later in 2024.  We have chosen to proceed directly to publishing a draft Consumer Complaints Disclosure Standard and draft Reasons Paper as the issues surrounding the pricing and promotional practices of RGRs are well-known and the RGRs have known about our concerns for some time.

The draft Reasons Paper outlines the context for the disclosure standard as well as the legal framework, and draft reasoning for the content of the Disclosure standard. The draft Disclosure Standard sets out and the information that would be required to be disclosed and/or published by the RGRs and how.

The submissions and cross-submissions received on the draft Disclosure Standard and draft Reasons Paper can be found in the Documents section below.

We are working through the feedback received and are aiming for a final standard to be published midyear.

You can contact us at grocery.regulation@comcom.govt.nz at any time if you have questions or comments regarding the Consumer Complaints Disclosure Standard. Alternatively, if you would like to contact us anonymously you can do this through the Anonymous Reporting Toolopen_in_new.