The bananas that won't ripen

I bought a bunch of bananas from Woolworths on Saturday morning when I did the weekly shopping. They looked like the ones in the picture. I can't be bothered running around to lots of different shops to get meat, fruit/vegies and groceries so we just get everything at the one place for convenience. Most of the time we're happy enough with what we get from there.

But these bananas are dodgy. Five days on from the day of purchase, they still look like the ones in the picture. There hasn't been any ripening or change in their outward appearance at all.

I got sick of it today and cut one open to see if I could find out what was going on. Peeling the skin off was a struggle. And then it didn't even taste like a banana. Some weird woody kind of taste that wasn't even close.

This has happened to us once before with Woolies bananas. We ended up having to throw them out. And of course we have now thrown away the shopping docket so I can't take these ones back to complain about them. Once is okay, but I'm not happy that it's happened again. At least their price has come down so they were cheap ones.

But why does this failure to ripen happen in the first place? Are they picked too early or are there just dodgy bunches out there?