Docking buyer – Northern Advocate – 14^th January 2013

Did you get what you needed?

Check your supermarket receipts! Strange things could happen. On checking the supermarket docket the other day I found a 6 pack of Sarsaparilla, a packet of pig’s trotters, a bottle of halibut oil and an egg plant had been charged onto our sales docket.

We hadn’t purchased those so we made a quick call to the supermarket to voice our concerns. They were surprised that we didn’t want to purchase those items. They claimed that there were a small amount of people that did want such items. They continued claiming that we should have purchased them because they thought we needed them.

We explained that pigs trotters, Sarsaparilla, egg plant and halibut oil was not what we wanted to purchase anyway. They insisted that we should have wanted those items and were not prepared to listen to what we actually needed. Upon further explanation we discovered that they were charging everyone for those items and had only received a couple of queries.

Perturbed at their response, they continued to qualify the reasons it was being charged; they explained that only a few people wanted a bridge, only a small number wanted a stadium, an even smaller number were in favour of a Hundertwasser; so if it was good enough for a council to force ratepayers for things they didn’t need or want and get away with it, why can’t a supermarket.

But I had listened to what they said, so guess what? I will be changing my supermarket.

Warren Slater

Maunu