October 2007

ACA – consumerists push for unit pricing – again!

by Ken on October 11, 2007

Every few years the Australian Consumers Association dusts off its tattered old file about unit pricing, puts out a news release, runs a post on its website, paints out the name of the politician who was minister for consumer affairs three years ago and updates the letter. There’s a flurry and it all goes away [...]

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Newsagency blog lists Woolworths’ vendor trading terms

by bart on October 9, 2007

Australian Newsagency Blog has today listed Woolworths’ vendor trading terms. This would be a good place for the ACCC to start trying to understand how the grocery industry actually works, rather than assume that “competition” is a simplistic matter entirely covered by price at the checkout.

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Predatory pricing amendment to be applied to petrol discount dockets?

9 October 2007

Former ACCC Chairman Allan Fels and veteran journalist Fred Brenchley have written a commentary on the recent predatory pricing amendment to the Trade Practices Act, published in today’s Australian Financial Review (online by subscription only). The authors argue that the new predatory pricing provision should be applied to the petrol shopper dockets schemes, which “have [...]

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UK grocery inquiry warms up

8 October 2007

The UK Competition Commission’s inquiry into the grocery industry was scheduled to release its interim report last month. UKCC delayed that report to inquire further into relationships between the major supermarket chains and their suppliers, demanding that Tesco and Asda hand over 11 million emails to try to identify whether the chains had threatened suppliers [...]