Grocer under fire for response to bread price-fixing scheme
Loblaw and its parent company were involved in a 14-yearlong bread price-fixing arrangement
Loblaw Companies Ltd.’s attempt to mitigate potential damage from an investigation into an alleged industry-wide bread pricefixing scheme through its admission of guilt and gift card offering has been met with backlash from skeptical consumers and indignant competitors alike.
Loblaw and its parent company George Weston Ltd. revealed Tuesday they alerted the Competition Bureau after discovering a 14-year-long bread pricefixing arrangement. As a gesture of good will, Loblaw is offering customers a $25 gift card that can be used at its grocery stores across Canada.
“This conduct should never have happened,” CEO Galen G. Weston said Tuesday.
“The gift card is a direct acknowledgment of that to our customers. We hope that they’ll see it as a meaningful amount that demonstrates our commitment to keeping their trust and confidence.”
However, some early visitors to the sign-up page have expressed concern that the bare bones site looks like a phishing attempt by savvy scammers.
The site, which went live Tuesday, did not initially include text about user privacy and the company’s use of the email addresses it collects. It has since been updated to “to make the limited use of the email addresses more explicit to users,” spokesman Kevin Groh said.
The addition came after several visitors expressed concern on social media over details — or lack thereof — available on the site.
The site displays a logo that simply says “Loblaw” rather than the company’s full name typically pictured in its logo. It has a banner photo of a piece of bread and several sentences of text with instructions on when registration will open. The page lacks any links or a copyright symbol that’s found on many other sites affiliated with the company.
“It just looks like a Wordpress site that in theory anyone could have done,” Cameron Kennedy of Toronto told The Canadian Press.
Kennedy remains concerned that scammers will try to purchase similar domains and could easily create knock-off versions to trick some unsuspecting consumers into first divulging their email addresses and then more sensitive things, like their credit card information, in a follow-up confirmation email.
It’s a definite possibility someone might attempt that, said Cavusoglu.
But Loblaw’s Groh said the company is taking proactive steps to prevent that, such as acquiring similar URLs and re-directing them to the correct site.
Still the corporate handout seems to have done little to stave off class-action lawsuits, one of which was launched two days after the company’s apology.