Although I’ve known for some time that Woolworths “Everyday Rewards” program has little to do with rewards and is mostly an exercise in collecting personalised purchase data, I found today that it is also an exercise in deceiving and exploiting people with poor eyesight.

When you see this discount tag, how much do you expect to pay? $3.50? Wrong. It’s only in the fine, fine print that you read that price applies only if you’re willing to give up your privacy.

How many people (like me today) are being deceived by Woolworths into thinking they’re getting a discount when they’re not? How many people put ‘discounted’ items into their basket and never notice they didn’t receive the discount?

To make matters worse, when I complained to the Woolworths employee about how unreadable the disclaimer is, and how deceptive it is to people with poor eyesight, they brushed off the complaint saying that “there’s lots of big signs around the store” explaining the everyday rewards discounting. I walked around the store and checked – there wasn’t even a small sign that I could see that indicated that some ‘discount’ price tags don’t apply to all people.