Consumer CEO Jon Duffy was on Newstalk ZB's Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.
Consumer NZ has been around for well over six decades, helping Kiwis make informed decisions about the products and services they buy.
But doing right by consumers often results in the charity getting on the wrong side of some of New Zealand’s biggest businesses – and that comes with significant legal risks.
In an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night, Consumer CEO Jon Duffy said the threat of litigation is something of an occupational hazard in their line of work.
“Often we are undertaking work that is very inconvenient or annoying to businesses, because it’s pointing out that their products or services may not be the best in class,” he said.
“But we have very, very rigorous processes. Whenever we publish anything, we will send a pre-publication copy to the company that the article is about, which often teases out problems or any issues with our testing methodology or any of the conclusions before we publish.
“It provides that party a fair right of reply and we’ll always publish, within reason, what they’ve said in response to any allegations that we’re making. So we do meet the normal media standards of being fair and balanced in what we report.”
Duffy told Real Life the not-for-profit needs to be just as conscious of businesses trying to pull the wool over their eyes as they are of potential legal threats.
“We always go out and buy things – the blender that we’re testing from Briscoes or Harvey Norman or wherever [that’s] stocking blenders – rather than relying on a manufacturer sending us that product,” he said.
“Because you can never 100% trust that you’re not being sent a golden product that performs better than those products that are offered generally to the consuming public.”
Consumer’s commitment to being free from bias has put them in good stead with governments of all stripes.
While the now-charity and incorporated society was an arm of Government as recently as the 1990s, it now sits outside the halls of power. But their kaupapa sees them regularly meet with MPs to lobby them to do right by consumers.
“[Politicians] actually give you a fairly good reception most of the time,” Duffy told Cowan.
“We’re politically neutral, so it doesn’t matter what political colour the government in power is at the time: we will work with everybody for the benefit of consumers, so that tends to help us get meetings.
“Consumers are voters, and so it really is in politicians’ best interest to at least give us an audience and hear what people are feeling on particular issues, because often it’ll reflect what’s going on in their electorates as well.”
And their approach is having an effect. As well as the release of their recent Yeah, Nah Awards, which educated New Zealanders on the businesses that were giving them a raw deal through dodgy practices or poor-quality products, Consumer is also helping shift government policy.
One of the main areas Consumer has been working is in the supermarket industry, where Foodstuffs and Woolworths enjoy an effective duopoly that dampens consumer choice and helps them earn huge profits.
“For a business [in New Zealand], if you’re caught breaching the Fair Trading Act, the maximum you can be charged per offence is $600,000,” Duffy said.
“When you compare that to other jurisdictions – Australia for example – the same offence would be $50 million as its maximum penalty. That’s a real, meaningful deterrent. We’ve been lagging behind our other jurisdictions ...
“Most people will probably have had an experience where they’ve been to a supermarket, been charged a different price at the checkout to what the product advertised on the shelf was. Those are each small, individual breaches of the Fair Trading Act. They’ve been going on for years.
“The fines and penalties under the Fair Trading Act are insufficient to convince the supermarket industry to change its ways. [But] we have been advocating for tougher penalties and, as we understand it, those penalties are now government policy and should be on their way.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Duffy talked about working at a butcher’s shop, “one of the best gigs in New Zealand” during his time at Trade Me, and New Zealand retailers’ approach to waste.