(Reuters) – Woolworths and Coles Group said on Friday they would defend a class action brought by a law firm in an Australian court over claims of misleading consumer discounts.
On Thursday, Gerard Malouf & Partners filed a lawsuit against two of the country's largest supermarkets, Woolworths and Coles, accusing the two of promoting misleading claims of discounts on everyday products.
Earlier in September, an Australian consumer watchdog took the supermarkets to court over “false” discounts, saying the firms benefited from revenue generated from millions of affected product units.
The country's acting prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who has faced pressure to do more to combat rising grocery prices and is heading to the polls within a year, said the regulator's alleged actions would be unacceptable if true.
Gerard Malouf & Partners, however, has clarified that their case is different from that of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), as the former seeks refunds from affected customers.
The defense firm said its case had been launched to recover the difference in prices consumers had to distinguish between advertised 'discount' prices and actual prices for hundreds of products commonly bought at Coles between February 2022 and May 2023, and at Woolworths. between September 2021 and May 2023.
“We estimate that the average Australian consumer may be eligible for a refund of between A$200 and A$1,300 +, depending on their shopping habits and purchases from these retailers,” the law firm's chairman, Gerard Malouf, said in a statement on Thursday.
The law firm alleges that everyday items at both companies were overpriced and the prices were reduced to the same or higher than the price before the increase.
(Reporting by Rajasik Mukherjee; Editing by Alan Barona and Maju Samuel)
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