In case a reminder is needed: the “beat it by 10%” guarantee technically applies only to “same in-stock items”, but a significant proportion of Bunnings offerings are home-brand, made only for Bunnings.
Bunnings does say – but not openly on their website – that
[Bunnings] “empowers” staff to take a “common sense approach” and will price match on similar items. It makes no mention of this in the “Price policy” on its website.
“We reduce prices on our exclusive products to respond to competition in the market if the similarities of the relevant product are strong,” Bunnings told a Senate inquiry last year.
So the customer has to find a lower-priced and sufficiently ‘similar’ item elsewhere and then negotiate with Bunnings staff, who might or might not decide that it meets the similarity test. If that works, the price reduction only applies for that one item and customer.
[John Dahlsen, a competition lawyer and former chairman of Woolworths] says if a consumer was to find a similar item, which is not always easy, and then is successful in convincing a Bunnings staff member to apply the price guarantee, then the hardware giant still only has to reduce the price on one item.
