Choice Grocery gets the can
Competition minister Craig Emerson it appears has decided that competition is not such a great thing and out an end to the new Choice Grocery website, which was due to go live next week. Read the full article on News and The Australian, or maybe there is more to it and we the citizens are not considered sophisticated enough to understand why anything that will help manage duopolies and potentially keep prices down should be a good thing.
This was a well funded website, with good resources involved. The first effort is reported to have cost around $6m before being canned and the Choice Grocery, to date reported at $7m of the $13m. With 1 week to go before the site goes live, why would you cancel such project? The only possible reasons maybe:
- The supermarket lobbyists are a lot more convincing than we might think
- The supermarkets can bring a lot more pressure to Government that we might think
- Some powerful people out there really do not want any sort of spot light brought onto grocery prices
- The site was really really bad, $7m how bad can it be?
According to Livenews, they just come out and say it. Pressure from the big supermarkets is believed to have caused the Government to abandon their election promises and admit the site is not feasible. Seven million dollars later…
Choice was not told direct and Mr Emerson communicated the news after meeting with Grocery retailers. Hang on a second. if this is correct, he decided this was not feasible with the very people it is meant to manage and potentially cause to reduce their prices and profits. So the players decided the aims of the site which is being developed by an independent part, being the trusted consumer brand Choice, were not feasible. There just has to be something wrong with that picture, I cannot put my finger on it right now though.
The reason is because, the retailers will not give the information required for the site. Surprise surprise and Mr Emerson is not standing up to them to make them give the required information, and as a result say well whatever information they do give will be misleading. If this was an election promise and you were serious about helping the consumers reduce the cost of living, wouldn’t you do something about this?
According to Nick Stace, the Choice chief, Grocery prices are higher in Australia than other developed countries. SO we are being ripped off.
Well at least Senator Xenohon is sanding up and being heard on this one.
So firstly you don’t stand up to the players when they make excuses, refuse, whatever about giving you the information and then as a result say the site is not feasible?
Giving consumers more information at whatever level on grocery choices with respect to pricing, must surely be a start.
Talking to a large frozen vegetable business who supplies Woolies and Coles amongst others, he said that in the last 3 years, their prices had increased 10%, while the retail pricing out the other end had increased over 30% in the same period.
So we know the following:
- Groceries like airport parking is expensive
- There are indicators that they are more expensive then they need to be and that we may be being taken advantage of
- There may be insufficient competition in the market to ensure prices stay fair
- The Government does not seem to have a plan, other than one to squander tax payers money, but is a labour Government for the people
- The retailers seem to be a very powerful bunch, but then so would you be if you were turning over $16bn odd per annum.
So what should we do as a bunch of consumers
- Find who is selling what online and order what you can from wholesalers. Think about the bigger items like nappies, fruit & vegetables and meat. Most suburbs have willing butchers and fruiterers who will deliver and are usually the same or better proceed with better quality. Try them out. Use Google for something useful.
- Find out where your nearest Aldi store is. Go there once a month a buy in bulk. You will save from the data we have seen anyway, around 20%+
- Find local markets in your area. Support them, its a fun day out and you will eat healthier
- Tell your friends
Do what any smart business will do. Find new suppliers, make it easy to access, buy or deal with them and change those habits which really are costing you a lot of money. You can visit the existing Choice Grocery website here.
The part I love about this whole thing is that the trust initially placed into the Consumer Association Choice to reduce our grocery bills, is now rather placed into the hands of the grocery retailers themselves, so they, who turnover billions, have shareholders to report to and executive incentive schemes, can police themselves and ensure that us, the long suffering Australian consumers get a better deal. Trust us…. Yes indeed.
