Signs of the Times

tiff

Thanks for the tip, I'm going to try and make a point of popping into co op in the evening and see what I can find.

h007

my local coop hardly ever reduces stuff and their normal prices are high.

the new little asda down the road from me (used to be netto) has been great though, i think they have not got their stock control right yet and there is always loads of reduced stuff.

personally i am one of the ones buying more and more value stuff.

however you still get people who will rigidly stick to brands in the belief value stuff is rubbish. my sister is like this despite having to feed a family of 4 on a small budget

Middy

I work for a supermarket. I have noticed both filling the shelves and scanning stuff through the checkouts that customers are turning to more supermarket own brand and basics. Only time that we sell more of the branded goods is when there is a good offer then customers stock up loads to keep them going until the same brand or another brand is on a similar offer.

I always go and bulk buy branded stuff such as laundry products, washing up liquid and Branston baked beans at all stages of the economy. I cannot understand why some people have only discovered this method.

Then there are people that probably only have enough stuff in their fridges and cupboards to last them a few days. I can last about 3 weeks without the need to visit a shop if push comes to shove, though the last 10 days, I would have no fresh f&v to go by.

ixia

i have started going my shopping later at night in the hope of getting some whoopsies but it is hit and miss. I definitely am trying different shops and brands now in the hope of reducing my shopping budget everything is just so expensive now.

emmamed

Middy wrote: »

I always go and bulk buy branded stuff such as laundry products, washing up liquid and Branston baked beans at all stages of the economy. I cannot understand why some people have only discovered this method.

its fine if you have the money to do this in the first place

mymerrywidow

rogerblack wrote: »

There is a way round this.
Order online!
If they can't find a value item, they substitute one they have in stock.

Ordering online does mean you can't get to the reduced shelves - but for tesco at least - not so much Asda - the occasional deep reduction can be awesome if you have the freezerspace.
For example - there was a buy one get two free on cheddar.
I'm ordering 3-4 weekly at the moment - I've just done a shop, so my fridge is completely packed with fruit. (mostly bananas and british plums that were sharply reduced, though also a couple of reduced pineapples)
This will ripen and be eaten over the next month.

bananas shouldnt be kept in the frigde as they go off quicker

Middy

mymerrywidow wrote: »

bananas shouldnt be kept in the frigde as they go off quicker

One of my friends has a special banana bag and she can keep bananas in there for about 3 weeks. She generally buys them when the prepacked bananas are in the reduced. They stay in the same condition as you put them in.

She let me borrow her bag once and I didn't like it as it took up too much room in my fridge and one banana was black inside.

miss_independent

By alot of standards, I would say we are fairly well off compared to many families at the moment but we have changed our shopping habits considerably in the past couple of months. We used Tesco and Morrissons for many years but have found quality has gone down and prices (drastically in Morrissons) have gone up. Now getting into the habit of shopping at Aldi (I am amazed at the quality and price - top notch for sometimes less than half the price) and topping up at the Co-op instead of Tesco Express whilst also using their reward card and looking out for their special offers. Not great with whoopsies in the major supermarkets myself. I can't quite believe how things have changed in supermarkets. In fact, we find Sainsbury better value than Morrissons now and their basics products are fine. We would never have bought value or basics products in the past but now we will at least try them. We have found that some of the value products have fewer nasties in them too but I can't see us ever buying only value products. Anyway, with Aldi you don't have to! God Bless Aldi!

she_who_can_not_cook

valk_scot wrote: »

Our Tesco accept coupons including ones printed from the web, but only for items you're actually buying. They also accept some conditional spend ones from their main competitors. What they don't much like are fistfulls of web coupons for a dozen of the same product and I've seen this get queried in other people's shopping. I'm fairly restrained in my coupon use and my local Tesco staff are an obliging lot but there's obviously some sort of upper limit in place. Maybe it's one of these things that's down to the individual manager's discretion?

my tesco refuses coupons from web as i could have photocopied them they said the bu88ers

emmamed

she_who_can_not_cook wrote: »

my tesco refuses coupons from web as i could have photocopied them they said the bu88ers

if they are couponnet coupons, say you have had a problem printing it and couponnet will then send you a voucher through the post, this voucher used to have watermarks throughout, so no way could it be photocopied. HTH