An Official Information Act request to the NZ Commerce Commission has revealed the ten most complained-about businesses and the country’s three supermarket brands are all on the list. The figures cover the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2024.
Taking out top honours with 416 of 1,817 total complaints is the Australian-owned supermarket, Woolworths.
Its major rival, Pak‘nSave, is in second place, with 219 complaints. The North and South Island operations of Pak’nSave are owned by two separate cooperatives, but the Commission said it wasn’t possible to distinguish between them as the complaints are made at store level.
Third, with 207 complaints, is One New Zealand, which until early 2023 was known as Vodafone NZ.
New Zealand’s national air carrier—once a source of pride for most New Zealanders, but which has recently faced engine maintenance issues, aircraft groundings, and a resulting decline in profits—is fourth with 199 complaints.
It’s not expected to leave the top ten list anytime soon after its CEO, Greg Foran, recently warned that the airline is facing another two to three years of disruption waiting for new aircraft and maintenance.
All Telcos Make the List
Another telco, Spark (which for many years was known as Telecom, both when government- and privately-owned) is sixth on the list with 132 complaints.It has had problems with service outages, and last year it was forced to admit that 167 calls to the 111 emergency number didn’t go through to the appropriate emergency service during a 17-hour system failure in August.
The country’s third major telco, Two Degrees, fared little better with 124 complaints.
A curious entry on the list, at eighth place, is the local equivalent to eBay and Gumtree, TradeMe.
Initially beloved as a plucky little start-up that took on the big overseas sites like Amazon and eBay when it was started in 1999, it quickly developed a dominant market position and was sold by the founder to Australian firm Fairfax for NZ$700 million in 2006 (approximately A$623 million).
Five years later, it was listed on the NZ and Australian stock exchanges, but in 2019 it was bought by Apax, a British private equity firm, for $2.56 billion and subsequently delisted.
The Commerce Commission explained the 122 complaints received were not about sellers, or goods bought on the platform, but about the platform itself.
Users of the online forum Reddit regularly complain about the fact that TradeMe has no telephone support, and the online help chat can only be accessed by giving certain answers in a questionnaire.
The recent decision to relax certain rules, which has resulted in overseas dropshippers incorrectly listing their goods as used and situated in the country, thereby flooding the listings—often in the wrong category—has also angered users.
The penultimate position on the list went to Sky Network Television, with New Zealand Post—forced to scale back its services as it’s pinched between falling demand and rising costs—tenth.
