Coles is slammed for dirty trick catching shoppers out: ‘Apparently they aren’t making enough money from us’
A Coles customer has lashed out at the supermarket giant, accusing it of defrauding customers by selling reconstituted meat.
The customer was left furious after claiming he had unknowingly purchased substandard beef in Cessnock, in the NSW Hunter Valley.
“I recently picked this up from Cessnock Coles and apparently they don’t make enough money from us so we now get reconstituted meat glued together instead of what’s labeled ‘not happy John’,” he wrote on Facebook.
The shopper shared a photo of his haul after paying $9 for the packaged meat.
Flanks of ‘thinly sliced oyster leaf’ Australian beef were seen with large holes in them.
In a blistering social media post, the customer took issue with Coles, claiming it sells reconstituted meat
The packaging states that the beef is ‘always sourced from Australian farms’.
Reconstituted meat is a liquid meat product that contains less fat, pigments and less myoglobin than unprocessed dark meat.
Social media users were mixed in their reactions, with many suggesting the man got exactly what he paid for.
“You paid for a lousy piece of steak and you got a lousy piece of steak…a lower quality piece of beef,” one person said.
A second added: ‘It’s not glued. It’s fat in the meat. It would be much more expensive to add glue meat to the process line and do this than to sell it as cut.
Coles says they work with Australian farmers and suppliers ‘who share our passion for meat, including where it comes from and how it is produced’
‘It mainly contains meat glue, such as ham or turkey bread.’
Others suggested the Coles customer should take his business elsewhere.
‘Support local. Go to the butcher shop and this will be avoided,” one person wrote.
“Why didn’t you take the meat back to Coles instead of complaining on Facebook?” another added.
In response to questions from Daily Mail Australia, Coles said: “We always strive to meet our customers’ expectations and the quality of our meat is very important. We never add binding ingredients to our fresh steaks. This pack of meat does not meet our high quality standards and should have been identified and assessed at production.”
‘As always, we encourage customers to return any item they are not 100% satisfied with to their nearest store for a full refund or replacement.’