Yet Another Successful Scam Perpetrated by Coles (MasterChef Cookware Promotion - Running out of Stock)

random12 on 17/07/2023 - 00:32
Last edited 17/07/2023 - 11:53 by 1 other user

Once again running out of stock well before the competition is over. I checked the site on Thursday and it said that the there were still 20 credit and 100 credit items, and the 60 credit thing had 'limited stock'.

Check now and everything says 'no stock available'. There is still 8 days left (and they were advertising 'limited stock' well before hand).

This must be the most abused use of 'while stock last' (these scams are the only things that run out of stock).

Are there any ACCC executives here? Anyone got any balls and want to go after these scams?

They don't even have a way to search for stores with stock. They should sent it out by post (their whole flybuys scam involves individually mailing things).

I am still pissed off from the last competition when I had like 34 credits and had to settle for a single 18 credit piece of garbage, because their were no 30 credit items.

Food & Grocery MasterChef

Related Stores

Coles
Coles

Comments

  • Hybroid on 17/07/2023 - 00:36
    +132

    You may wish to read some of the other intentionally provocative posts from this user, where they rarely ever reply or engage within, before you waste your time typing out a response that'll too get ignored.

    I'm happy for you OP, or sorry that happened. Whichever fits best.

    • MS Paint on 17/07/2023 - 00:41
      +31

      So much self inflicted stress in the OP's life over trivial matters.

    • DashCam AKA Rolts on 17/07/2023 - 09:26
      +4

      Cup half empty vibe.

    • Tech5 on 17/07/2023 - 09:53
      +19

      All of OP's thread titles seem to resemble clickbait/ragebait headings on News.com.au.

      Payment Card Interchange Fees - Biggest Monopoly Rip Off?
      McDonald's app is garbage - do any of the executives even care?
      Financial Planners - Biggest Rip off Merchants Ever?
      Why Aren't Food Delivery Platforms Dead Yet?

      • AssociatedSpainKing @ Coles on 18/07/2023 - 00:34
        +8

        My personal favourites were-

        KFC Chip Box Poorly Filled

        and

        Just Nuke Afghanistan? (Inappropriate)

      • fatpizza on 18/07/2023 - 11:38

        Almost, but the lack of DESTROYED or SHOCKED in caps means they're nothing but poor imitations.

  • lachhelix on 17/07/2023 - 01:02

    šŸ™„

  • [Deactivated] on 17/07/2023 - 01:04
    +3

    Could you explain how the flybuys scam works? Because I usually get the flybuys dollars loaded directly on to my flybuys card, then pay for shopping with it.

    • 87percent on 17/07/2023 - 07:38
      +1

      Heā€™s talking about the MasterChef cookware promotion

      • CodeXD on 17/07/2023 - 08:44
        +4

        Thanks for this. What a stupid post that doesn't even mention MasterChef or cookware anywhere in the description.

      • [Deactivated] on 17/07/2023 - 22:36

        Second last sentence in O.Pā€™s post:

        They should sent it out by post (their whole flybuys scam involves individually mailing things).

    • AustriaBargain on 17/07/2023 - 11:34

      The scam is you are giving them very detailed information on your shopping habits. Flybys probably knows more about you than you do. Target figured out this girl was pregnant before she knew herself based only on her Target shopping habits, but you're giving Flybys everything from all participating stores! https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targā€¦

      I shared my landlord's Flybys account for a while and the emails I got told me when he was breaking his diet because it would recommend the same kinds of junk food that he'd just bought.

      • Domingo on 18/07/2023 - 14:08

        Before she told her parents*

        • AustriaBargain on 18/07/2023 - 14:24

          Yeah well it told someone before they knew about it anyway, based purely on her switching to non scented products or whatever.

  • hasher22 on 17/07/2023 - 01:05
    +5

    I don't understand "Check now and everything says 'no stock available'. There is still 8 days left (and they were advertising 'limited stock' well before hand)."

    You knew they had 'limited stock' yet you're surprised and angry they ran out of stock?

      • randomusername2017 on 17/07/2023 - 01:19
        +3

        There should be an option to redeem online

        There is…

        I am still pissed off from the last

        Slow learner…

      • LVlahov on 17/07/2023 - 03:45
        +4

        There is still time for them to release more stock, and if you sit back and watch, I am sure you will see that.
        Also Coles is not an organisation that seeks to make money from poor customer experiences. Their approach to mispricings and returns attest to that. They understand that a bad customer experience can lose thousands of dollars of future revenue.

        What you'll find is that they are trying to match supply and demand as closely as possible, certainly not wanting to err too far on the side of abundance, due to the waste involved, but not trying to deliberately shortchange customers either.

        You cannot with surety attest to bad service unless there genuinely is no more stock released from now until then, and if they refuse you a remedy after you contacting them upon looking, and missing out. As the deadline has not passed yet, and you have not contacted them for a remedy post that date and had it refused, you cannot claim negligence or malfeasance on their part.

        For all you know they keep some stock back so they can release it to aggrieved customers that contact them directly.
        The 'stocks limited', 'while stocks last' etc disclaimers are as much about getting customers to act with some urgency, so they can properly forecast supply and demand, rather than having to deal with everything at the last minute, than anything else.

        (Not affiliated with Coles, and not a person ordinarily on the side of corporates, bad corporate behaviour is out there, and should be called out, but we have to be certain that's what it actually is first).

  • cheapjunkie on 17/07/2023 - 01:10
    +2

    I guess this is what happens when you have no friends and dread the start of the work week and need some reassurance with these kinda pointless posts. Keep it up OP we need some cloud yellers for entertainment

    • ComradePoopy on 17/07/2023 - 04:56
      +9

      So, I tied an onion to my belt which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ā€˜em. ā€˜Give me five bees for a quarter,ā€™ youā€™d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah! The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt which was the style at the time. They didnā€™t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.

  • franco cozzo on 17/07/2023 - 05:13

    yeah they still owe me a (profanity) pan from 2021!

  • payless69 on 17/07/2023 - 05:50
    +1

    Lol,
    Coles now had to follow Woolies to give freebies to kids.
    They usually eat half a banana and toss the skin onto the floor waiting for somebody to slip and break a leg.
    Coles has to recover the cost somewhere!

  • onetwothreefour on 17/07/2023 - 06:29
    +1

    Anyone got any balls and want to go after these scams?

    Obviously not you even though you seem the most upset by this.

  • Sinnerator on 17/07/2023 - 07:41
    -6

    Just scam them back at the self-checkouts, wink wink win

  • [Deactivated] on 17/07/2023 - 08:00
    +2

    I want to add the really important issue of Hungry Jacks not honouring the UNO freebies after the competition closed (31/06). When I went to Brookvale on 03/07 (redmeption closed 10/07) they said the comp was over and they weren't doing the redemption, but they sold me UNO branded food items.
    Where's the ACCC on that one?

  • kerfuffle on 17/07/2023 - 08:32
    +12

    The only scam is the OP's title.

    • Gunnar on 17/07/2023 - 10:49
      +3

      LOL - you know before opening the thread you're thinking "You probably deserved it"

      • lachhelix on 17/07/2023 - 11:28
        +2

        It's posts like these we're I'd LOVE to be able to pay for the ability to use more comment negs šŸ˜‚

        • [Deactivated] on 17/07/2023 - 16:49
          -3

          Incognito negs are kinda cowardly …. use your words to convey your disapproval

  • JimmyF on 17/07/2023 - 08:54
    +5

    Once again running out of stock well before the competition is over
    There is still 8 days left

    LOL the promo has been running for months….. claiming it is a scam that stock is limited in the last week is a bit much!

  • roguescholar on 17/07/2023 - 08:55
    +1

    No where does it even say the Masterchef thing is a competition.

    I think of these types of promotions as bonuses for groceries that I would have bought anyway, they don't make me want to go to Coles more.

    And if it was a competition, where you compete for limited supplies, then I guess you lost.

    • howsthat on 17/07/2023 - 21:29

      Agree, it wasn't a competition, it was a promotional offer. A bonus if can get one or two of the items on offer.

  • Gunther on 17/07/2023 - 09:12

    Isn't JV an ACCC executive?

    • MS Paint on 17/07/2023 - 09:17
      +1

      I thought he was Dan's PA

  • donaldlj on 17/07/2023 - 09:27

    I have got to say you are pretty niave with regards to this Masterchef promotion. 3 weeks ago when I had 30 credits, I realised that I would not have enough time to reach 60 credits to get what I really wanted. I also realised that if I waited till the last week, there would be a high chance of there being no stock. So I decided to cash out and get whatever I could with the 30 credits I had. At the time there was still plenty of stock. Common sense would tell you that as you reach the end of the promotion that stock would run out. If you couldn't figure that out then it really says a lot about you and your intelligence

    • AustriaBargain on 17/07/2023 - 11:40

      I remember a competition once where you could use the code to enter a draw, or use it and have a 1 in 10 chance to win a candy bar. But I noticed that every single one won a candy bar, I guess because it was nearing the last few weeks of the promotion and they had a lot of candy bars ready to ship out. So on the walk home from school I saw that there were hundreds of candy bar wrappers littered by other students on their way to or from school, most of them were the brand with the promotion. Would pick them up, enter the codes, and each one was a candy bar winner. Every day for the next few weeks the postman was delivering sackfuls of these addressed tubes with a candy bar price in each one.

      Competitions used to be hackable, like that Kitkat competition that gave one Android tablet per hour (or loads of $5 Google Play credit) and you could increase your odds by entering at 3am when most people were asleep, but these days junk food competitions ask you to upload a photo of your receipt to a website for a chance to win, like wth happened to codes in the packaging…

      • CodeXD on 17/07/2023 - 12:57

        Your comment reminded me of this deal. I bought 1 chocolate bar and every successive bar was a free one due to the hack. I had like 5 per day for a week.

      • Kenb0 on 17/07/2023 - 13:33

        on the walk home from school I saw that there were hundreds of candy bar wrappers littered by other students on their way to or from school

        Iā€™m annoyed about the fact that you found hundreds of littered candy wrappers. One or two maybe, but hundreds??

        • AustriaBargain on 17/07/2023 - 13:45

          Kids love candy. Hundreds of kids walking down the same path means hundreds of candy wrappers.

          • zonra on 17/07/2023 - 14:30

            @AustriaBargain: I think Ken is more annoyed by the fact that they were littered.

            • AustriaBargain on 17/07/2023 - 14:31

              @zonra: It's a good argument for candy bar wrappers to be made of paper, and perhaps shipped to stores in sealed wrapping which the store can dispose of responsibly.

            • Kenb0 on 17/07/2023 - 20:52

              @zonra: Bang on. I donā€™t care that hundreds of candy bars are being eaten by kids or whomever, I care that these kids find it acceptable to just litter them wherever. Have they never heard of a bin? What are their parents/teachers teaching them??

  • No on 17/07/2023 - 10:15
    +1

    Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

    Shop somewhere else if they keep doing this to you.

    • MS Paint on 17/07/2023 - 10:57

      if they keep doing this to you

      If you keep doing this to yourself

      FTFY.

      Op should shop at Aldi. No rewards programs to get sucked in to.

  • TheTinMan on 17/07/2023 - 11:00

    Well I have (had ?) over 100 points that I didn't use in time. AKA Stupid Tax - seems I Scammed myself.

  • altomic on 17/07/2023 - 11:11
    +3

    Old man yells at cloud.

  • Drakesy on 17/07/2023 - 11:18
    +1

    I'll start a fundraiser to send the OP to Ukraine and get a reality check on what real problems are.

    • [Deactivated] on 17/07/2023 - 11:24

      Maybe they'll let OP catch a free ride when Aus ships the 30 Bushwackers over there

      • ausdday on 17/07/2023 - 11:49

        filled with Tim Tams

    • franco cozzo on 17/07/2023 - 11:53

      well done on shoe horning the current thing into a coles thread! bravo!

      • CrowReally on 17/07/2023 - 12:03

        bookmarking this little comment for the next time you show up with an agenda ;)

        • franco cozzo on 17/07/2023 - 12:22
          -1

          bookmarking users comments? …..it might be time to take a break from ozbargain!

          • CrowReally on 17/07/2023 - 12:26

            @franco cozzo: it'll be fine, I won't be able to use it unless you do some shoe horning of your own :)

    • Lord Fart Bucket on 17/07/2023 - 13:36

      Where do i donate? Got some spare cookware credits.

      • Poor Ass on 17/07/2023 - 13:57

        lol that would require revealing your barcode and ya not gonna do that

        • yamahamoto on 17/07/2023 - 16:14

          Just say 2 different flyby accounts have 30 pts each, can you use the account to claim a 60pts item?

          • Poor Ass on 17/07/2023 - 16:36

            @yamahamoto: lol what ya talking about

            no way they can merge points

            besides there's nothing left

  • Deals For Days on 17/07/2023 - 14:58
    +4

    I'm with the OP here, at least as an online shopper. For several weeks I had plenty of credits to get the items I wanted. I made at least 4 different orders over these weeks, and every time the Masterchef item was not delivered with the order. Now, out of stock and I can't get it.

    • Craze on 17/07/2023 - 21:06
      +1

      Did you complain to CS for the incomplete order?

      I normally don't pay too much attention to these promos, but this time had enough credits to redeem a frypan but towards the end of the promo period (about a week prior to the end of credit accumulation period). What's misleading here is that Coles states you stop collecting credits on 11/7, but have up to 25/7 to redeem. In reality, most stores have run out a week prior to 11/7, so you're pretty much out of luck trying to redeem anything on the incorrect statement of possibly redeeming two weeks after it ends.

  • 2025 on 17/07/2023 - 16:12
    +2

    Waaaaa

  • Heaps for Cheaps on 17/07/2023 - 18:23
    +1

    They don't make money by giving stuff away. The carrot was dangled just out of reach, just as planned.

  • worrierwan on 17/07/2023 - 18:46
    +3

    OP makes a valid point though. It's credits you have earned but can no longer spend because it is not in your control.

    For people saying it's last week of the promo… Coles should know this and stock more for the last week so people can redeem their points.

    • scanuck on 17/07/2023 - 21:43
      +1

      And/or end the ā€œearnā€ period - at least stop the illusion there is a carrot at the end

  • gromit on 17/07/2023 - 20:08

    Its ok, the quality is crap anyway so you aren't missing much.

  • brendanm on 17/07/2023 - 20:26
    +2

    I got a few of these things. Wasn't hard, there were hundreds of them in the shop.

  • serpserpserp on 17/07/2023 - 20:55
    +1

    They are decent enough to get a whole set and sent it off with your kid when they are 18.

  • Cave Fire on 17/07/2023 - 21:31

    Had a good knife from first seasons giveaway. Did snap at some point, must have got too confident with it.

  • scanuck on 17/07/2023 - 21:40
    +3

    While not completely agreeing with the rant - I think we know how these things work; this did get me thinking.

    There is an endless amount of ā€œentriesā€ with a finite amount of redemptions - could possibly be done better if they wanted to stop the illusion (Iā€™m sure they donā€™t)

  • capslock janitor on 17/07/2023 - 21:47
    -1

    GOOD POST

  • try2bhelpful on 17/07/2023 - 23:10
    +5

    I agree with the poster. A lot of people would wait to get as many points as they can to get what they want. For Coles to not have any stock on anything you can redeem is unacceptable. If they have an end date they should have stock up until that end date. Frankly any non redeemable points should go towards the next promo.

  • jedimaster on 18/07/2023 - 10:50

    Buy from Aldi

  • Nedward on 18/07/2023 - 11:03

    another day another ragebait

  • bm2amb on 18/07/2023 - 11:33
    +1

    got a formal reply from Coles

    Thank you for contacting us about MasterChef Cookware availability. Unfortunately, due to popular demand, we are now out of stock. We have been overwhelmed by the popularity of our Masterchef Cookware campaign at Coles, with customer redemption accounting for all of the available cookware much faster than expected. As this was a ā€˜while stocks lastā€™ campaign we unfortunately have exhausted all stock and wonā€™t be able to assist further. We're sorry we couldn't be more helpful on this occasion. However, your feedback has been shared with the relevant teams for their info and consideration.

  • mauricem on 18/07/2023 - 13:01
    +5

    Agree with OP, its a scam. All this corp bullshit about how popular it was, FFS coles you know exactly how many points are out there and youve made the decision to fulfill some small portion of that but keep promoting knowing full well there will be 1000s of customers who find out they cant redeem their points when they finally have enough to get something.

    • franco cozzo on 19/07/2023 - 02:49

      its been going on for years. another reason our housefold no longer shops at coles

  • imurgod on 18/07/2023 - 16:32

    We got plenty of them. No issue.

  • crazyboy on 18/07/2023 - 16:38
    +4

    I agree with OP. Especially the products with lower credits are hard to get buy. Coles knows how much points does the members have and still decide to under stock. I wasted my credits last year but this year bought the non stick utensils.

    • Craze on 18/07/2023 - 19:35

      I hope you redeemed not bought!!

      • crazyboy on 19/07/2023 - 14:03

        Yes, redeemed/bought for $0

  • bdl on 18/07/2023 - 17:39
    +2

    Screenshot of Coles response: https://imgur.com/a/wmtz63O

    • try2bhelpful on 18/07/2023 - 19:19
      +1

      Is that indicating they have zero left in any of them.

    • franco cozzo on 19/07/2023 - 02:50
      +1

      down down customer satisfaction is down

  • Kraise on 19/07/2023 - 12:11
    +1

    it was a disappointing promotion, waited till i had 40 points so i can trade in for half price ($40) casserole pot only to find out they took away the promotion 3 weeks early because there's no stock.

  • samfisher5986 on 19/07/2023 - 13:10
    +2

    I don't have a big issue with this, predicting stock is impossible.

    My biggest issue is that you lose your points. They should either let you convert points to the next promotion, or at the very least let you hold out for next year when they run the same masterchef promotion with the same products anyway…

    The reason I only use Coles to abuse any free promotions is because the points system is too much of a gamble if I'll even get something I want.

    • Wilkshire13 on 25/07/2023 - 13:20
      +3

      Considering the earning process is the same for the same amount of points, they should stack across all Masterchef promotions. I'd be more likely to shop with them if they were to do this rather than if they expire, just for them to restart the promotion a month later for some other cheap shit they have slapped the MC brand on.

  • FocusRider on 19/07/2023 - 13:15

    So basically youā€™re upset that you didnā€™t get your free cookware from coles?

    • franco cozzo on 26/07/2023 - 13:31
      +1

      which he was 100% entitled to…OP doesnt dictate stock availabilty, coles do….

  • BurnZ on 19/07/2023 - 16:55
    -2

    OP = Karen.

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