{"id":370482,"date":"2026-02-17T09:26:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=370482"},"modified":"2026-02-17T09:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:26:40","slug":"accc-sues-coles-over-misleading-down-down-discounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=370482","title":{"rendered":"ACCC Sues Coles Over Misleading Down Down Discounts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched a Federal Court trial in Melbourne against Coles, alleging the supermarket artificially inflated prices on 245 products for short periods before promoting illusory discounts under its Down Down campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Examples include Arnott&#8217;s Shapes biscuits, Band-Aids, Strepsils and dog food, where prices spiked briefly\u2014often 7-28 days\u2014then fell back to or above prior levels, misleading customers amid cost-of-living pressures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coles denies any deception, blaming supplier cost increases from inflation, while a similar case against Woolworths awaits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If the ACCC wins, penalties could reach hundreds of millions, with consumer groups eyeing refunds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coles denies any deception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":370483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[19610,19609,19608,993],"class_list":["post-370482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-accc","tag-coles-supermarkets","tag-federal-court","tag-melbourne"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":370484,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370482\/revisions\/370484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/370483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}