Horrified Coles shopper finds deadly redback spider on broccoli

A Brisbane man has been left horrified after he claims he found a deadly redback spider crawling around on a piece of broccoli he purchased from Coles. 

Matt Luxford shared an image to the supermarket chain’s public Facebook page, something he said he doesn’t normally do, but felt “unhappy” with Coles’ response. 

“I don’t write these publicly as I understand things can happen and don’t like to bring it into the public’s view, which is why I tried to resolve this privately. But so far I’ve been unhappy with your response,” he wrote. 

In the image a small spider with a red stripe down it’s back can be see sitting at the bottom of the vegetables’ head. 

He explained he’d bought the product and found the deadly spider as he was about to make dinner and had to spray the redback to keep it from escaping. 

Read more: What to do when you wake up to a snake in your bedroom

He wrote: “I then called your Chadstone store immediately to let them know, so they could check their fresh food produce to make sure there are no others around. They thanked me for letting them know and hung up before I could ask for some more broccoli as I no longer had any I could eat.”

He said he then attempted to contact the company in a private message to see if he could pick up some more broccoli next time he was in store, but claims he hadn’t heard back at the time he wrote the post.

“Your website says that you’ll provide a replacement or refund if I contact your online team, which I have done and was promised… but still haven’t received anything,” he said.

“I’m pretty easy going, I’m not kicking up a stink – but I feel like my matter wasn’t taken very seriously, otherwise it would have been resolved by now. I feel like I did the right thing by you by calling up your store immediately and letting them know, I feel like you are yet to do the right thing by me.”

A company representative responded to his post 14 hours later and said: “Hi Matt, thanks for getting in touch and we’re very sorry to hear about this disappointing experience. So we can look into this for you, could you please private message us with your best postal address?”

The redback spider is a highly venomous spider found throughout Australia. Only female redbacks are dangerous and their bite can cause serious illness, and even death in extreme cases. 

What do you think? Would this annoy you?