Australia’s two biggest supermarkets have tied for an unwelcome public opinion booby prize, as a survey reveals they are still getting trounced at the checkout.

For the third straight quarter, Coles and Woolworths have shared equal top spot in a survey of Australia’s most distrusted brands.

At the other end of public opinion, our most trusted brands in Roy Morgan’s June quarterly survey remained rival supermarket chain Aldi and hardware giant Bunnings.

It came as consumer group Choice released its latest grocery survey, showing Aldi was significantly cheaper for a basket of home-brand goods than either Woolies or Coles.

“While we know people typically buy a mix of branded and home-brand products at the supermarket – you might be a dedicated Weetbix fan, but have no issue buying a pack of home-brand pasta – we often get asked how much money you can save by buying exclusively the cheapest products. So, this quarter, we assessed the price of eight home-brand products at Aldi, Coles, IGA, and Woolworths,” Choice editorial director Mark Serrels said.

“Our basket of eight home-brand items included a mix of fridge, freezer, and shelf products from each of the supermarket’s own brand range.

“When we compared home-brand baskets without specials, Aldi was the cheapest at $20.08. They were followed by Coles at $21.30, Woolworths at $21.40, and IGA at $23.89. When including specials, prices stayed the same everywhere except IGA, where it fell by five cents to $23.84.”

The Choice survey came a day after data showed inflation had jumped back up to 3 per cent – largely driven by rising costs for food, alcohol, tobacco and housing.

The big chains did better in Choice’s study of fresh strawberry quality. Shoppers were asked to assess the state of strawberries on day one, and again on day five, after storing them in their original packaging in their fridge’s crisper drawer.

“Coles was the winner, with 100 per cent of punnets showing no signs of decay on day one. Woolworths came in next with 92 per cent, followed by Aldi at 75 per cent, and IGA at 50 per cent,” Serrels said.

“By day five, Coles was still in front when it came to strawberry freshness, with 58 per cent of punnets containing fruit with no signs of decay. 44 per cent of Woolworths punnets contained fruit without signs of decay, and Aldi was fairly evenly matched at 45 per cent. Of punnets purchased from IGA, only 25 per cent had no signs of decay after five days.”

The big supermarkets’ checkout woes come as they continue to try to restore battered reputations from the pandemic. Roy Morgan said they were “showing green shoots of recovery, albeit with a very long way to go”.

“Woolworths, Coles and Qantas – three of Australia’s biggest brands – have all experienced reputational crises in recent years, but there are positive signs for all of them in the latest trust data,” chief executive Michele Levine said.

Other big brands in the list of those most distrusted by Australians were telcos Optus – which has been at the centre of a damaging fallout from a deadly triple-zero outage this week – and Telstra, social media giants Meta and X, media company News Corp, Elon Musk’s Tesla and Chinese mega-retailer Temu.

Another Chinese online retailer, Shein, took out 12th spot.

“Shein and Temu have continued to dramatically deteriorate. As more Australians buy from Chinese brands, they become more concerned about the quality of the products and the ethics surrounding their business practices,” Levine said.

“In contrast, Amazon’s reputation, which declined during the Covid-19 pandemic and reached its lowest point in April 2022, has begun to bounce back, but still has a long way to go.”

There was little shift in our most trusted brands. Beyond Bunnings and Aldi were more retailers – Kmart, Myer, Big W and JB Hi-Fi – as well as Apple, Toyota, the Commonwealth Bank and Australia Post.

“Bunnings continues its reign as Australia’s most trusted brand in mid-2025 – now on top for a seventh straight quarter,” Levine said.

The biggest change in trust was among the banks. CBA jumped five places in the quarter, while smaller river Bendigo Bank took out 14th.

“All four of the big banks have improved their rankings in both quarters of 2025 so far – a period which included the first cuts to official interest rates for nearly five years after a sustained period of interest rate increases,” Levine said.