Coles has been caught red-handed. But don’t discount this pricing loophole

May 14, 2026 — 7:20pm

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Thursday’s Federal Court finding that supermarket giant Coles engaged in misleading conduct is good news for grocery buyers, but doesn’t solve all the problems of being a consumer in one of the world’s most concentrated retail food markets.

Justice Michael O’Bryan upheld allegations from consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), that Coles hiked prices on various goods for short periods before dropping them “Down Down” and claiming they’d been discounted. Consumers began to question it – flipping tags to find some shelf prices that were the same or lower than the new discounted prices. But the issues ran deeper.

Choice previously caught Coles hiking the price of a product it claimed was “locked” well before the retailer said it would. In December 2023, we........

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