Although I’d never heard the word at that point, greedflation first hit me in the face when my local New World supermarket hiked the price of locally made Check brand tofu from $2.99 to $4.99 overnight. That’s a 66 per cent increase.
At the time I assumed it was due to cost increases, even though the local vege shop still charges pre-pandemic prices for its locally made tofu.
When I whinged on social media, a friend pointed out that she was still buying the same brand of tofu at the nearest Pak’n’Save at the time for $2.99. The two supermarkets are owned by the same company.
Cheap supermarket pizzas have also come up more than once in discussions about greedflation. One friend noted: “Countdown Quattro Formaggi pizzas were $4 pre-Covid and are now $7. Maths is not my strong point, but I think that’s a 75 per cent increase,” she says.
I spotted a similar complaint on social media: “McCain pizza was $5.50 a couple of years ago and now at Countdown it is $8.00.” And when a brand of dog food rose from $26 to $40, another commenter did the sort of thing I would: he phoned manufacturers to see why. “They told me they had not raised the prices and there was no shortage.”
It’s not just the supermarkets that use inflation as a cover for price gouging. Tradespeople and other service industries do it as well.
It’s sad that some businesses are hiking prices “thanks to inflation” but not paying the staff more. When prices go up for services I use, I ask the staff if they’ve received a pay rise. One local business that I patronise did that two weeks before Christmas. Raised prices, but didn’t give its workers extra.
Coupled with inflation, and greedflation is shrinkflation, something New Zealand consumers are all too familiar with. The idea is that the packet shrinks in size, but the price stays the same or does not shrink to the same extent. The manufacturers hope we don’t notice.
Cadbury is shocking for that. Personally I quite like the idea of chocolate bars shrinking. However, the price should match the reduction, which of course it doesn’t.
As if by magic, the week before Christmas a promotion for Cadbury More bars popped up in my supermarket. The shrunken-looking 165g bars were $3.80. The problem here is that a regular Cadbury Chocolate Block is 180g at the same price. The new bars should be called Cadbury Less.
Consumers need to be on their guard for good old-fashioned manipulation by marketing. Case in point is Chemist Warehouse. I’ve been showered with Chemist Warehouse adverts for various products including Only Good body bars, and Healtheries Vit C 1000mg 100 chewable tablets. “Why Pay More? We beat everyone’s prices,” shouts Chemist Warehouse.
In the case of the body bar, Chemist Warehouse’s “Why Pay More?” price is $2.99. On Black Friday it was reduced to $2.69. Bargain? I think not. The regular New World price is $2.19, and it dropped to $1.99 shortly before Christmas.
Likewise, the Chemist Warehouse Healtheries advert for its $17.99 vitamins says: “Why Pay $28.80?” The reason is probably that New World’s price before any sales is $17.49.
When I asked Gemma Rasmussen, head of campaigns at Consumer New Zealand about this she said some retailers deliberately engage in confusing pricing and promotional strategies to entice sales.
Consumer tracked a range of items at major big box retailers and found some items that were on sale almost every week, says Rasmussen. “As an example, at Harvey Norman, The Panasonic 32L Genius Inverter Microwave Oven went from a ‘Price Matched’ $240 to a ‘Price Reduced’ $313 the following week. It was then marked at $249 for four weeks, before rising to a ‘Price Matched’ $298 for two weeks. Two weeks later, it was a ‘Huge Deal’ $268.”
Consumer NZ is currently running a campaign to end dodgy specials at the supermarkets, encouraging shoppers to call out misleading pricing.
