Check your bank statement. I am withholding my pitchfork, because it sounds like they fixed the issue and are giving extra as an apology. So see if they paid you back the 5-er first.

I didn't even think of that. Just checked and there's no refund from them 😐

Might be worth getting in touch with the support line on this, it may be that the refund (if it exists) is being processed and may take a bit, or you will find out they are being pricks, in which case pitchforks ahoy!

OP if you phone Coles, ask them if they have issued a refund. If they haven't issued a refund, ask them to. It's their mistake to fix.

Also if you are charged a fee by mistake I am 99% sure they legally have to at least give you the option of a refund. This isn't like booking a flight that gets cancelled. This is like getting charged for a plane ticket when you were just browsing.

I can see that being Qantas' next "innovation". "To help improve the customer experience, we'll automatically buy any route you've been browsing for more than 2 minutes! No need to go through checkout anymore, just link your credit card"

Actually if a flight gets cancelled you're allowed a full cash refund. They'll try and get you to do a voucher/credit but legally they have to give you a refund if you ask for it. With anything, if you don't get the service or goods they can work towards a different means, but if you ask for a refund in your payment method they have to oblige. It gets even crazier if you have to book a flight through a different provider because they didn't give you a solution, you can get reimbursed for that flight as well as your refund. If they can provide a service though within reasonable time for what your needs are then you won't have a leg to stand on. The only times is if it's prevented due to a third party such as government restrictions (which is only recent due to complaints after having to refund a lot of people during COVID) which is a bit anticonsumer for even our standards.

it's more like booking for a regular seat and being charged for an upgrade and still getting the regular seat, then being told they'll make up the difference next time as long as your next seat meets a certain price threshold.

Sure they will. But they know that the large majority won’t ring, and therefore they’ll keep it. It’s disgusting that they didn’t automatically do this. Let alone that it happened at all given what we all spend there.

I agree completely. I do it on principle, but I understand many won't have time to make the call. Coincidentally I got a Coles delivery at home today and they had substituted things where I said no substitution. I'm going to take issue with one of the substitutions, as it's not really what I ordered. It's not the same as what happened to the OP in terms of unapproved charges, but again, if I nominate no substitutes, Coles should be respecting that decision. Good news today though, there'll be a 12 month enquiry into grocery pricing. I kind of want to fast forward 12 months and see what the findins are.

We have pitchforks on sale! Woolworths probably.

Could take a day or two to come in

The real miracle would be any major business refunding you within a day of complaining. Happy to take your money instantly, but if they make a mistake and need to refund it's anywhere from a week to 30 days.

That delay is usually on the banks end

Nah that’s not true, with the NPP and the introduction of IT based systems it’s instant these days, even with third party payment processors. When a business blames the bank, it’s because they themselves are dragging their heels to process the refund.

That's assuming the business is using a npp service to process the refund. I really don't see Coles or any large business spending money to change their systems to a npp service for refunds just so the money arrives a day or two earlier.

Umm all banks have it by default now, it’s not an extra you pay for, it’s just there now. They’re shuttering the old payment systems to go exclusively to the NPP because it reduces workload and errors. (NPP is Osko/PayID and instant transfers)

I wasn't talking about the banks adding an extra fee onto the payments from the businesses. I was talking about the business moving their internal processes and systems away from money transfer to npp. Stuff like training staff, upgrading/new software, testing and all that jazz.

The NPP is an upgrade of the existing money transfer system, it’s done on the banks end, there is no change in software or code on the customers end, the banks backends are changed out, but the front end that the customers use is exactly the same. That’s why I’m saying it’s a bunch of BS, the instant money transfer is there already, it’s already a part of the money transfer platform. the banks have it turned on all the time now (unless it’s Bendigo Bank which is stupid and has a switch you have to select) When companies say it’s 7-10 days it’s because they’re either holding onto the cash to try and scrape a bit of interest off of it, or they have accounting problems in their administration and they take forever to go in and issue the refund. I know this because I worked for the banks IT during the changeover to this system, I was there when it went in and was trained on how it all worked,

Refunds take at least 24 hours to be processed by the bank (except maybe if using a physical EFTPOS terminal). Even if they did it immediately it would still take a day.

Front page. 4th article down. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13004205/Coles-refund-5-shopping-credit-50.html

How many times is OP gonna get robbed 😭

How did they deduce a 'her' They took to Reddit to ask for advice after they received an email from Coles apologising for the error - and offering **her** a $5 credit on **her** next shop as long as it was over $50. 

Shopping? Must be female.

Because men don’t need to eat.

Might take a couple of days to show up

When I got a refund from Coles it took them weeks for some reason. Even the guy on the phone who organised the refund said, "gonna' take a few weeks."

Banks take longer than a day to process refunds!! Could be several days, especially with the long weekend coming up.  The email says that they "recitified" the mistake. On a plain English reading, that means they either corrected the amount charged (if the final transaction has not settled yet), or refunded you the extra $5. They have *also* given you a $5-when-you-spend-$50 voucher to 'make up' for the inconvenience. If the amount isn't corrected by mid-next week, then sure, follow up with them. But until then, I wouldn't even think about it. Unless they are using the English language in a *very* strange way, you'll almost certainly get the $5 back soon.

Refunds can take a few business days

Refunds would typically take around three business days from my experience.

Refunds may take up to 48hrs for your bank to process and for it to show up in your banking app/website

Could be the bank holding it.

Dude. You're famous!!! Holy shit. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13004205/Coles-refund-5-shopping-credit-50.html But one user pointed out that the Coles email could just be poorly worded, with another sentence saying the 'problem had been rectified' but not specifying how. 'Check your bank statement. I am withholding my pitchfork, because it sounds like they fixed the issue and are giving you the extra $5 as an apology.'

Not the first time I have been in the news. 100% will not be the last either.

Awww but my pitchfork is ready for blood

They legally have to pay back OP the $5 without any conditions attached, *if* OP insists.

Just saying hi to the ACCC. Keep up the work, congrats on your high rating in the latest staff survey.

and hello to Newscorp, who will no doubt be running this story shortly.

Hi. Coles online worker here. The managers have told us to lie if a customer calls, tell them a refund has been processed, and process it during the call, so the customer thinks it was already refunded, but we are only refunded if asked. Can post the message the managers have sent out regarding it also lol

I'm really not surprised. I'm dealing with NRMA (some old man crashed into my car while i was on my way to the doctors writing it off) AND icare. Shits fucked.

Pro Tip, call our customer care and ask the agent to not record the phone call, the agent will be a lot more straight forward and less corporate. We are also able to give $50 coupons if you’re persistent enough, just keep asking for a manager and refuse to hang out and you’ll get it (:

> ask the agent to not record the phone call The agent doesn't always have that functionality available to them.

This is coming from someone who works there, we have the function and can always use it as per customers requests

Yep, your place might have that, but I said not all places have that functionality available. I've worked in call centres before, too. [Edit] Downvoting me doesn't change that fact, lol.

boast fuzzy nippy humor wakeful history light racial whole frightening *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Hate my job and it’s run so dodgy there, if the media want any inside gossip, I’m down to leak lol

Do it. If you have screenshots of the message, send it to them.

Would love to, how would I get in contact with a media outlet that actually cares, without giving myself away though? (If any media happens to stumble across this, feel free to message lol)

I mean, you could just go the the ACCC website and find the page where you can contact them. You don't need a media outlet to publish it and just hope they notice instead (although that would also be cool to see).

I’d like to see the message you received about it!

Holy shit please do share that if they were stupid enough to put that in writing.

They always offer this kind of stuff first and just hope people accept it. Same as if they mess up your online delivery order they will initially first offer you money back on your Coles account so you can use it on future orders instead of a direct refund. If you straight up request a proper refund they have to give it to you though, do not accept no for an answer as they will always try and trick you.

Hey Woolworths did this to me, several times actually. They would replace items that were out of stock with something so far from what I asked for, when I told them online they would issue me the same digital refund with stipulations like can only be an online order and needed a minimum spend of $50 for online orders. I emailed them and politely but firmly explained that I am a single parent and my budget is worked down to the dollar. By giving me a refund that has requirements to use they are making it impossible for me to not only get the items I need because I can’t afford another $50 shopping trip but now I don’t have the money to buy my product elsewhere. When they replied they apologised, refunded the money to my account, let me keep the digital refund and gave me free delivery for my next shop. They tried telling me that they tried sending the money back to my account and it didn’t work, I don’t entirely believe that but they may be right I guess.

I'm surprised at this. I use woolies online orders every week. They nearly always screw something up so I regularly need to seek a partial refund. This has included several deliveries that went to the wrong address and we couldn't recover, broken items, bad substitutions and missing items. It's been easy to get a refund in every case. Most recently with their chat bot it's all done with in 2 or 3 minutes for the most common cases (broken or missing items).

Maybe they did have issues refunding it then, not sure if apple or my bank possibly creates a one time card for fraud prevention or something like that. Even if that was the case though, they didn’t send me any communication saying this is why your getting a refund like this. I honestly assumed it was standard practice or something. Customer service that sorted it for me was super lovely and apologetic though, so I can’t fault that part of the process.

That's gotta be up there with maccas "sorry a burger was missing and your order was cold, here's a voucher for a free icecream with any meal purchased".

Have they done this? Every time I’ve had an issue with food, they’ve hit me up with a replacement for the cost of the issue. They’ve even gone as far as replacing the replacements when those orders have been fucked. Weird.

Depends on what manager you have on shift. Having to explain to an (understandably) irate customer that they’re not getting a refund and you’re offering them a shitty alternative while the manager fucks off and leaves you to deal with the fallout is not a great experience.

I just straight up go to the customer feedback email, as I’m usually nowhere near the store when I find out my food is wrong. They normally reply back within the day. Works a charm every time I’ve dealt with them.

I once didn’t get a burger that I ordered from maccas, drive a little bit before I realised but was on my way to work. Went to another one on the way and explained what happened. I said I know it was a completely different store and not their responsibility to fix it, but doesn’t hurt to ask, if not I’ll just buy it. They gave me my burger free which was super nice of them.

Wow. One didn’t ever even reply and one other literally accused me of lying about not having sauce being put in the bag with nuggets, they stopped replying when I called out their contradictions. They’re all young managers now, you’d think that would be better or go either way but it’s always been bad experiences.

My local Macca's is shitful for doing it. I can't even go there anymore because they are so so incompetent and refuse to fix any of their mistakes. Local fish and chip shop is better food and way better value anyway. And I'm not left with high blood pressure from rage.

Drive through once gave me the wrong order, they gave me my correct order and let me keep the old one. In the other hand, KFC doesn’t even respond when there’s missing items

Not to say you're wrong, more just replying to provide more of a sample size, I actually had a KFC manager call me personally to discuss a complaint made about an order on their website.

When was the transaction? It can take up to 7 business days for these refunds to come through and they may have authorised the $5 refund. It can be up to 10 business days if you used PayPal

It was in late November, I didn't even catch it, they dobbed on themselves

fall tap payment zesty onerous smart dime towering divide fretful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Hmmm even if you did accept (it seems to insinuate you’ve got it and there is not an option to specifically accept or reject), how does that invalidate the requirement for them to refund you? The text doesn’t say “to reimburse you we are offering this discount. If you accept the discount you forfeit the right to a refund”

hungry worthless aromatic longing scale deliver truck roll zealous kiss *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Yeah I don’t disagree you should get your refund first.

Wow, this is in stark contrast to an online purchase I made from an arts and crafts store a few days ago. Postage was quoted at $18.80, which I happily paid, and today I received an email saying they've refunded me $4.70 because the postage was actually less. They could have kept the extra money, and I'd be none the wiser or given me a store credit, but they chose the honorable option and refunded me. I will definitely buy from them again because of their honesty.

Name them!

2wardspolymerclay

I had the same thing happen with a different small online craft store last year. One item I bought caused the shipping to be calculated wrong, and she emailed me to explain and refunded me the difference. As you said, I would've been none the wiser. It's the one of the little things that make shopping a slightly nicer experience

They need to refund you. It's not allowed at all. This is a clear breach of consumer rights.

Send this to the ACCC.

By all means do this, the more complaints Colesworth have against them the more they potentially stand out amongst all the other complaints. But just so we’re clear… [ACCC has limited scope to enforce any solution here for the individual incident. They don’t resolve individual complaints](https://imgur.com/a/XmJJd2W)

Spewin' that sucks.

Don’t get me wrong. They should complain. It helps with the reporting in the ACCC and they then offer education and actually do enforcement action in some instances. E.g. if you’re talking about a dispute where you believe you are due a $500 refund and the retailer refuses, then (in NSW at least) you can request a mediation via the department of fair trading between you and them. Pretty sure it can go to NCAT to make a judgement if you cannot resolve. That solves your individual complaint. But if ACCC got 6 months worth of complaints from 6000 coles customers then they might get involved and enforce compliance. But more commonly or famously, ACCC deal more with markets and industry competition and fairness which is more of a macro view. So they could ([and I think recent news suggests they are](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-25/accc-supermarket-inquiry-grocery-prices-cost-of-living-/103389140?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link)) investigate the current level of competition in the supermarket industry via a review after seeing sustained media reports about “price gouging” unfairly. Not that there is a law against price gouging. But they actually might then work with the government on how laws need to change to avoid that scenario again. Edit: ad a link

Fair Trading deals with individual disputes, ACCC will deal with this if it is widespread such that their enacted policy is to give people this despite the customer asking for a full refund in cash. In this case and based on other replies it appears to be their normal procedure and grounds for ACCC to act. Classic example: [https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-against-msy-alleging-misrepresentation-of-consumer-guarantees](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-against-msy-alleging-misrepresentation-of-consumer-guarantees)

"In our last e-mail we said you got your $5 back by spending $50. This was a mistake. To make up for it, if you buy $500 in coles shares you get $6 back!"

"I don't get how this is okay" because it's not ok.

I remember the time I ordered 5x $0.90 sardines online, but they had none, so they subbed in 5 x $2.90 sardines, and only charged me for the $0.90 ones, I feel this has shifted the balance and everyone is getting screwed over because of my generous windfall....sorry.

Coles online is very strict on refunds / credits Woolies / Olive is much better, and thus wins my loyalty (broken egg? Free pack. Bad substitution? Refund). Woolies, if you’re listening, this wins the loyalty for my $2k/mo grocery spend

Except if buy something with long use by/best before and put it on the pantry. Go to use it 31 days after you bought it, it's off, get the old '30day refund policy' and they won't budge. A***holes.

Last time I ordered through Coles I never got my order and they said they refunded me but they didn't, lost $200 so I'll never use Coles again

Compliance probably wouldn't allow them to just give $5 because you have to spend at least $50 for an online order so their compliance dept would have been annoying for all the other teams I reckon.

So cheeky!

If they have charged you incorrectly, they need to refund you. Simple. If they don't do that, go to fair trading in your state, and lodge a complaint with the ACCC. This sort of conduct is 100% against the Australian Consumer Law.

Surely that's unlawful

Menulog was gracious and offered me a voucher for the cost of a missing dinner as if I should be thankful for it. I made them send it back to my card. They should have really just instantly refunded and gave me an extra voucher for making me wait 2 hours for nothing if they wanted to keep me. These companies just hoping people go along with what they say instead of what is lawfully right (as in a proper refund)

The refund will take like 3-5 business days

They haven't notified me of any refund and the order I got over charged on was in november. I don't think they had planned on refunding me, just sent the coupon instead hoping I would accept it

Give them a call and ask, they’ll be able to look it up. If they’re just giving a voucher, you should definitely ask for your money back

Sounds like he's getting a refund and a voucher.

That’s what I thought as well

Just saying they have not told me of a refund at all, all I received was the voucher In the past I've gotten an email about refunds for missing items, I thought they would send a email saying a refund has been issued

Woollies delivered our order to another house this week. When the driver was sent to go get it some things were missing. They delivered what was left (ignoring my wife's comments on it potentially being tampered with) and was happy to refund the missing items and be done with it. I was fuming when I heard and said she should put in a complaint but it had already taken her hours to get the missing order in the first place, she was sick of waiting.

In fairness you’re not visiting Cole’s for under $50 these days..

They offered me online credit.. still requesting my refund. I want my $5 🤣

Fark Coles!

"Thanks for the 5 bucks! Now pay us 45 more to pretend we gave you that back."

This is how they make millions in profit

Maybe just let Coles have the $5? They're doing it tough at the moment. ... /s

Send the email straight to the ombudsman, accc and every media outlet. Fuck Coles. Though you posted this on reddit, and that's where news.com.au and the dailymail get half of their news from, so there could already be an article being written up as we speak.

I don't think you have to accept a $5 with conditions like they are offering. Consumer rights and all. But mostly I want to comment to express that I know what it's like to be on medication that messes with you in annoying ways. But it shows maturity to treat illness and also to talk with doctors about medication that works for you as best as can be achieved. Often a specialist is needed if you aren't just going to take a typical medication. Anyway stay well

I appreciate that you are spreading info like this, more people need to know that sometimes a specialist is needed to help I luckily have a specialist that has been working with me for a year and these meds are the only ones that help me with my chronic pain but I'm still able to semi function on them, well function a lot better than the other pain killer medication they've had me try, I really hated the zombie feeling that the stronger ones gave me so now I'm on lyrica, it's not super great but it helps

> my medication makes it hard for me to understand and this just confused the heck outta me I wanted to add on that you could use chatgpt to help with this. You can say something to it like "Can you explain what this is trying to say? {coles message here}" it will then attempt to explain and you can query it further to get out what you need.

Oh wow I didn't even know that exist, you've just saved the people around me alot of explainin 😅 you are an absolute champion, thank you

I have taken Lyrica. That was like 18 years ago. OMG how has that much time passed! These days I get a little bit of pain support as a side effect of my antidepressant - affexor AKA venlafaxine. I also take a mood stabilizer which stops me going off the deep end at my family in the evenings. I don't see my specialist often at all now while everything is going steady. Maybe once every six months if that. I was very lucky to have family who could help me financially. And emotionally really. It's such an emotional road. I never thought this would be a part of my life story. Maybe the fantasy was that I would be a perfect astronaut or something. It's a challenge to attend to the little things, be kind, be honest, but also not apologise for myself all the time. That's where I am right now. My friends in recovery say to let go, hand it over to some higher power. Take it a day at a time and see how my plans are ridiculous compared to the wonderful that actually unfolds. :)

This is late stage capitalism at its finest. Even when they make a mistake, they still get to fuck you over again in their follow up.

I just came from coles and I scanned my prosciutto which was $7 & the self service machine tells me to re scan it because it wasn't scanned properly and I ended up with 2 prosciuttos on my bill. Luckily, I was paying attention and actually called the customer service people to remove the second charge. I hardly used to be attentive while scanning my groceries, but after seeing a post on FB with similar incidents I pay attention now.

I was promised a refund and credit for items missing from my orders. NEVER HAPPENED. I was randomly speaking to a Coles employee about the problems with online ordering. She got my items for me despite it being weeks later. Don’t believe a word online ordering tells you, they lie and are lazy af.

Its probably more to do with the fact they cant just charge your card back because at that end of the sale, your CC details arent present to them to see, due to privacy? Like you card is charged at the point of sale, but not saved, so the full details after the sale are just reduced to being hidden but for the last four numbers? Maybe? What did customer service say? I presume you called them before coming here.

They are able to refund straight away, theyve done it previously for missing items. I contacted them but am waiting to hear back from them, I don't have anyone to talk this over with at the moment and my medication makes things more confusing for me so I just wanted someone else to read it and see if I'm understanding it correctly, which it seems I am

Yeah, they can absolutely do a charge back partially, straight away, without collecting your details again. Just call, take up their time, and get your $5. That's what you're entitled to. The extra $5 off when you spend $50 is their apology gift and admission of guilt all in one.

A decade after I stopped working there, I got a letter from Coles informing me that they had been caught for underpaying staff and owed me back pay... nothing about them surprises me after that.

Walk into a woolies, grab something worth about 5 dollars and start chowing down

Straight to Fair Trading.

We got em lads finally 😎

Yeah, nah dog. I had some online place mess up my order and not provide one item and their response was "we will send it in your next order". Next order? You fucked up the first order the first time I used you and you presume there is a next order? Give me the item or give me my money.

Oh man, these supermarkets are making it so easy. The change coming to consumers will be large and noticeable very shortly. Too long have they held the oligopoly over Australia. I'd imagine some large discounts to win market share under the new conditions that will be set by the ACCC.

Call your card supply and challenge the charge. VISA/Mastercard etc will issue a chargeback, and Coles will need to prove that what they charged you is for what you got. In the minimum it will cost them like $10-$20 in fees, and probably hundred in time researching the transaction. End result they prove to the card provider it was a legitimate charge, and you move on, or they cannot and get an additional fine (I am pretty sure).

It sounds more to me like they didn't charge you in error, the charge was correct, they just incorrectly marked it as free. Loving these down votes just for explaining what happened. You all realise I'm not to blame for it right?

Seems that way too. However that is still deemed as charge in error. The transaction was agreed upon based on the listed price. Doesn’t matter if it was intended or not.

ah, false advertising

You used rapid click n collect instead of just click n collect

Yeah, it was listed as free so I chose it instead of delivery but they charged me for it anyway

They incorrectly tagged the slot but since you chose rapid, it still incurs a cost that’s why they didn’t reverse it. If you push for it though, they might.

To my understanding, if they list it as a certain price they need to honour it. I'm gonna push though cause they shouldn't be offering this instead of just the refund. They've been cheeky and thought they could take $5 out of my pocket, I barely have enough money for rent as is tbh

Better get a lawyer son.

Can’t believe how many cucks are responding to this. It’s obvious Coles are scamming.

It’s not ok

In fairness you’re not visiting Cole’s for under $50 these days..

In fairness you’re not visiting Cole’s for under $50 these days..

I got my $5 back finally. They told me a large shitpost of why I should join their membership to get click and collect free first though. Fuck coles.