'You should be ashamed': Coles Little Shop craze hijacked by greedy shoppers
Coles’ latest Little Shop edition has taken Australia by storm once again – but fed up parents and grandparents saying their kids are losing out to money hungry shoppers who are cashing in on the popular campaign.
After Yahoo News last month revealed the supermarket giant would be releasing a Christmas edition of the Little Shop collectables, shoppers wasted no time trying to pick up the five festive miniatures and the seemingly unattainable collectors case.
Just four days have passed since the campaign launched, but Coles supermarkets have already sold out of the cases, leaving those desperate enough to “build their own collector cases” printing a design off the website.
One grandmother recently posted in a Facebook group where shoppers swap and sell collectables: “You should be ashamed of yourselves. All I wanted was one folder for my granddaughter… what in the hell is going on?”.
“Now I see selfish money-hungry people selling them for $40. Wise up you stupid people.”
She became more aggrieved when she and the girl’s mother weren’t given a Little Shop collectable, despite spending $50 between them. The promotion dictates that a collectable will be distributed for every $30 spent in one transaction.
A Coles spokesperson told Yahoo News that they had limited case sales to three per customer, as many of their shoppers are families with several children.
Much like the first release, those cases are now selling on eBay for upwards of $40, leaving those who went home empty handed outraged over the “pathetic” distribution measures put in place by the supermarket.
She was far from the only Coles customer to be let down by the Christmas promotion.
Another mother said she went to three different supermarkets on the morning of the launch and still couldn’t pick up a case.
“I’m over it,” she wrote in Coles Little Shop Facebook group.
“Wrecking kids fun. Go get real jobs people, I bet you sell baby formula too.”
The Coles spokesperson refused to comment on customer reports that supermarket employees had been fired for taking and selling the folders before they were made available to the public.
