Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker-Wilson
SuperGold Card holders are finding it difficult to cash-in on weekly supermarket discounts with a mish-mash of locations, leaving some regions missing out entirely with patchy coverage in others.
Age Concern chief executive Kevin Lamb called it an example of "grey washing".
For example, the SuperGold Card was accepted at grocery stores in most central business districts, but not in Gisborne, Marlborough Nelson, Tasman, West Coast districts nor the densely populated Auckland CBD, with a fast-growing resident senior population of more than 2000 people.
"It is portraying themselves as supporting older people, but doing what I would call the bare minimum in order to achieve that," Lamb said.
"If you're going to say that SuperGold Card gets a discount in our stores, why wouldn't you do that for every store? Not just cherry pick a handful of stores around the country and have such a lack of consistency about where those stores are located."
Monopoly concerns
Monopoly Watch analyst Tex Edwards said confusing or difficult to get information on the availability of SuperGold Card discounts at leading supermarkets was another example of unchecked monopolistic behaviour.
"What's being exhibited here with the leverage of the senior gold cards, is a concept called geographic monopolisation in several regions of the count
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