Asda's popular here right? I went and found it expensive...

BigBouncyBall

Hi

I'm usually a Sainsbury's shopper as i think the prices are really quite good, but for a change i tried Asda. I thought it was actually quite expensive, and poor quality food.

You may say Sainsbury's is expensive, but they always have offers on which makes it cheap - quality tuna reduced from £1 to 50p say, walking around Asda I found very few offers other than fizzy drinks, 2 for £3 (expensive) or some cereals. There were the £1 offers but only on Asda brand goods which i've been eating for the last couple of days and i have to say are extremely bad quality compared to even sainsbury's basics. There was also very little choice despite the shop being twice the size of Sainsburys in my area.

Yet people i know swear it's cheaper than anywhere else? Anybody else find Asda a strange phenomenon?

v8monkeyboy

I've never used Asda for the reasons you quote - and I totally agree that the food doesn't look like it's of good quality.

Incidentally, I use mysupermarket.co.uk, and compare the prices with Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Ocado. Everytime, Ocado come back as the cheapest, their quality is brilliant, and their delivery service excellent. Might be worth a look?

T x

geordie_joe

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

Yet people i know swear it's cheaper than anywhere else?

They may be meaning it's cheaper than anywhere else they can shop at. Very few people can actually shop at all the big supermarkets.

Or maybe they are just going by what the adverts tell them. On Watchdog the other day the supermarket voted the best for quality was voted for by people who had never shopped there.

geordie_joe

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

You may say Sainsbury's is expensive, but they always have offers on which makes it cheap -

Forgot to say, that's fine if you only buy stuff on offer. But when talking about which supermarket is cheapest most people refer to what they normally sell items at, not what they have on offer.

There's no point in comparing Tesco's normal priced bread with bread Sainsbury's need to sell today.

Swans1912

I used mySupermarket also, not as much as I should however! It is a great money saving tool!

I actually just gave mySupermarket a look..... Asda is 99% cheaper on the branded product we buy and 85% cheaper on general non-branded stuff.

We are on a big money saving drive this month and doing a full shop at asda tomorrow.... see what happens!

gunsandbanjos

I read in the paper that asda are stopping bogof offers and reducing prices instead. Might be a good thing, depends what they reduce the prices on, like the OP said asda tends to do offers on junk food and not much else.
Though there recent £1 offers were good on toiletries.

Olliebeak

Our local shopping centre only has a HUGE Asda (plus an Iceland), there's a Tesco about 2 miles in one direction and a Sainsbury's about 3 miles in the opposite direction. There's a Lidl and a Farmfoods about a mile away and an Aldi just before you get to Sainsbury's. I use Asda because it's the closest and also because I find Tesco's is more expensive for what I want to buy.

I think it does all depend on what the individual shopper's buying habits are.

I find that with Lidl and Aldi, you need to get there very early in the day to be able to take advantage of any cheap offers on fruit/veg and that there isn't such a wide range of products on the shelves as the bigger supermarkets. I can never do a 'big shop' in them.

ALIBOBSY

I noticed the same thing about Asda, even when I worked there a few years ago lol.
I found compared to aldi/lidl and morrisons on the items we buy they were either the same price or slightly cheaper (at most only by a couple of p) but the quality was much lower, to the point where we struggled to eat some of it. Plus for me the Asda is the furthest away so the extra petrol wipes out any savings.

ali x

Lucyxx

I agree with you about the quality of the food - well, veg more than anything. Always found that to not have any life left in it at all. We actually have a greengrocers in my little town, so I am getting into the habit of using them, sooooooo much cheaper and fresher!!

Their own brand food is pretty good though in the fact they label clearly that they have taken out MSG, and other baddies. I was quite impressed with that.

Another thing I notice, is if I go to a different supermarket for a change to see if I can save anymore money, I always end up spending more as I try different products, go for the offers (that I didn't necessarily need) or pick up the odd thing and think "that will be nice for a treat" and before I know it I've spent more and it's my own fault!

ALIBOBSY

We do most of our veg shop in a local farm shop who also do local cheese and eggs. On the whole the prices are better than the supermarkets (especially the eggs), or around the same, we are supporting local business and the quality is miles better.
We also now do meat shopping at a farm shop, they do their own beef and lamb (you can see the animals in the fields and last week the farmer let us take the kids in to see the new lambs awww) they sell bacon sausages and pork from a farm up the road again with outdoor reared animals, they eve smoke their own bacon and it is yummy. They also do freerange eggs and chickens (again local). The meat is slightly more than the supermarket but the quality is streets ahead. My son said the other day that he couldn't understand why people buy "those cheap sausages that are horrid and chewy when they can get yummy ones like we get from the farm".
We then get any other bits from either lidl/aldi or morrisons (we swap week to week just to change and look for any offers).

ali x

PS if I get the nice local cheeses the kids wolf it down, but they hate supermarket "plastic" cheeses as they call them.

VfM4meplse

Lucyxx wrote: »

I agree with you about the quality of the food - well, veg more than anything.

I don't think Asda buyers could recognise - let alone price - quality fresh produce. Their specialist area is additive-laden processed food. Anything blue and fizzy is their forte.