MSE News: Asda offers price match refund guarantee

Premier_2

Full terms & conditions are here:

http://www.asdapriceguarantee.co.uk/Administration/Terms-And-Conditions.aspx

The terms do say that they compare against Morrisons (although Morrisons prices are only updated twice per week unlike Tesco & Sainsburys which are updated daily), so perhaps they are sending spys into Morrisons stores?

To clarify, the guarantee only applies where you buy at least 8 different & comparable items in one transaction. (Of course you won't know for sure if they are comparable until you've bought them and checked )

Multiple buys of the same item are limited to a maximum of 10 for price guarantee purposes (but you still need to buy at least 8 different, comparable items)

Maximum reclaim is limited to £25 per month (within maximum of 10 claims) per household

Asda staff discount where applicable (and I know many MSE'ers benefit from this) will be applied before any comparison is made.
(Would be interesting to see if anyone with staff discount gets any benefit from this scheme)

SIMONSHOPSAROUND

Read the small print and you will see how disingenious this scheme really is, it excludes thousands of cheaper shops not in the hands of the big 4 and excludes so many products it hardly represents a normal shop comparison. Be savvy and shop around, just on a few basics, and I will show you how to save £150 a year!

Despite the press release quoting Andy Bond "From today, ASDA cannot, and will not, be beaten on price. Plain and simple, our Price Guarantee is our cast iron promise that your basket of shopping will always be cheapest at ASDA", what it really means is the continuation of too cosy a control over grocery bills by the big 4 supermarkets as we are not going to commit to be more competitive than the rest, bar a penny! A penny on a £100 family shop - wow, that's ASDA price, what a big commitment!

ASDA was significantly cheaper but not any more. Go shopping at Iceland for a top-up shop and what do you always find - 4pts of milk at a £1 (53% more at ASDA), 6 large free range eggs for a £1 (63% more at ASDA) or you can buy 6 smartprice eggs for 91p or 12 at Iceland for a £1 (82% more at ASDA), mature cheddar that's 72p a kilo cheaper. Carry on through fresh foods and the same pattern emerges - if Iceland (and lots of others too) can make money at these prices what's going on with the big 4? How can you claim to not be beaten on price when on simple everyday basics you are? It is wrong to claim ASDA is the cheapest when on things people buy most often they are not - looks like the phoney price war is just continuing so shop around instead.

How do I save £200? An average family gets through 3 4pints a week (£1.59 saving), a 500g block of cheddar (36p saving) and a dozen eggs (82p saving), add it all up that's £2.77 a week, so over a year it is nearly £150 on 3 simple things if you shop around at Iceland.

VoucherMan

So let's get this right -

Do all my shopping in one go & I'll probably not benefit as prices will average out.

Spend ages going through Mysupermarket, work out which items are more expensive & buy them seperately. Assuming I had 10 such items I'd save 10p on the price I'd pay by shopping at another supermarket.

Do this every week & I can save 40p a month_party_.

Nice gimmick Asda. Almost as devious as Tesco.

Premier_2

VoucherMan wrote: »

So let's get this right -

Do all my shopping in one go & I'll probably not benefit as prices will average out.

Spend ages going through Mysupermarket, work out which items are more expensive & buy them seperately. Assuming I had 10 such items I'd save 10p on the price I'd pay by shopping at another supermarket.

Do this every week & I can save 40p a month_party_.

Nice gimmick Asda. Almost as devious as Tesco.

No, not quite.

You have to buy at least 8 different & comparable items in each transaction ... so lets say you buy all 10 in that 1 separate transaction.

You'll then get a voucher for the difference between the higher price you paid at Asda and the lower price available elsewhere plus a penny.

So do that 4 times in a month and you'll be 4p up compared to if you shopped elsewhere (but you won't get the reward points that you'd get elsewhere that would probably be worth 40p - 80p based on the average price per item being £1.00)

VoucherMan

Silly me!

I was thinking it was 1p per item, but as you say it's 1p per shop.

Never mind - I can still save enough for a free (very small) bar of chocolate by Christmas.

Cheers Asda :beer:

lucyj_2

I regulary shop at Asda, mainly because it's the nearest supermarket to me - Tesco, Morrisons etc are all too far away.. I will definitely be checking my receipts every week because there's always the chance I'll get some pennies back.
However, if Tesco (for example) started offering the same price guarantee, it wouldn't make me start shopping there instead, I'd still shop at Asda. People's supermarket of choice isn't normally down to the price of the items as they all seem to average out anyway, it's down to convenience. I go to Asda because it's 2 miles away. My in-laws shop at Morrisons because it's on the way home from work, my mum shops at Sainsburys or Tesco because its closer than Asda (plus she hates the big shops, but that's beside the point...)...
This price guarantee is a nice little bonus for people like me who shop there anyway, I don't really see how it's going to bring in new customers. People like what they know.

muffin_man

Yes, this is a very clever marketing gimmick for those who don't take the effort to read between the lines, and no, it is not likely to bring in new customers from that group who do bother to investigate it properly (MSEs).

However, if you normally shop at ASDA anyway, it could be a nice bonus, but you would have to work the system to get it.

As ASDA use mysupermarket for their comparisons, the information they use is there for us to see before doing a shop (except Morissons unfortunately). It will show you whether an item is comparable between the different supermarkets when you open a product page - if it says n/a next to one of the supermarkets, then that exact product is supposedly not available, so won't count towards your 8 item minimum (no, I don't know what the difference between ASDA 3-pack onions and anywhere else's is either).

A useful feature of mysupermarket is it allows you to print your shopping list (link is top RH side of page) and split it between two supermarkets, showing which supermarket is cheaper for each item. So, put your shopping in, split it between ASDA and whichever shop it says would give the biggest saving, then check that the list for the other shop has at least 8 different and comparable items. Then just get two different transactions for each list.

Like I said, long winded, but if you are someone who, like me, goes to ASDA because it is closest, most convenient and generally cheapest, a nice way of benefiting from special offers at other supermarkets without actually going there.

muffin_man

Or, to reduce effort, view it this way (again assuming you shop in ASDA normally anyway, otherwise not worth the effort probably):

The maximum you can save a month under the guarantee is £25, so make up one or two shops that would be a total of £25 cheaper in Tesco (mysupermarket has the basket totals for each supermarket on tabs at the top of the page, quick subtraction), make sure there are the requisite 8 comparable items, then do that shop in ASDA and, all being well, get your £25 voucher the next day (if you're unlikely to spend £25 again in a single shop, then just split your original 'Tesco' shop into two ASDA shops so you get e.g. a £10 and £15 voucher).

Spend the voucher(s) when you're next in ASDA and then for the rest of the month carry on as normal, checking prices and shopping around when you have time, and rushing through the most convenient shop when you don't, safe in the knowledge that your effort at the start of the month will cancel out any occasions when you're in a rush and buy an item in ASDA that would have been cheaper on its own in Tesco, but doesn't qualify under the intricate terms of the guarantee.

(I'll let you know 9am tomorrow if it goes according to plan )

cheekychappy

Well I drive past Tesco to get to my ASDA, as the prices are better and the staff at ASDA are always "Happy to Help" unlike Tesco who are happy to be ignorant.

judithr_2

I've shopped on line for the first time this week at Asda.com. I have used the price guarantee website they guide you to, to check competitors prices as instructed and they have no record of my order!?! When I called Asda the only explanation they could give was that they didn't know of any problems and if I REALLY wanted the receipt checking I could send it into them at my expense!!! No impressed.