Do you think that Tesco "engineer" stock?

valk_scot

prowla wrote: »

"Do you think that Tesco "engineer" stock?"

Absolutely, yes I do think so.

But it's up to you whether you buy it.

Yes, absolutely. Buyer beware and all that.

jfh7gwa

elljay wrote: »

There's another thread somewhere today about Asda running out of stuff, particularly value things.

I'm the OP of that thread - and yes i've come to the conclusion that it's partly deliberate on the part of the stores.

The reason I say this is because many of the items they're consistently out of stock in (as in > 50% of shopping trips the shelves are empty apart from the branded goods) tend to be:

• The cheapest in the range (smart price)
• locally available, not just from the UK, but within the area
• Not heavily processed (not complicated products)
• Out of stock for literally weeks at a time (so plenty of time to re-order)

Some examples - smartprice sardines in a tin. 4 weeks out of stock in my asda, and again for the last 3 weeks running i've been unable to choose anything but the John West or other premium brand sardines in a tin.

Another example - oats. Totally unprocessed, smartprice, cheap oats - out of stock 2 weeks ago, 1 week ago, and finally on Thursday I managed to get a bag of them.

I honestly, truly believe this is just one part of the supermarket's upselling process, because of the elements described above.

It's not as simple as "everyone's cutting down on their food bills, so there's more demand for the value items, hence they sell out faster" - it's much more obvious than that, to me...

Lost2

I also find that you have to look at the weight of items
as I've come across cornflakes being £2 a box and if you look very closely it will be for the 750 grm box's and yet the the shelf price is under the kilo box :mad:

blackandwhitebunny

I mainly shop at Mr S, occassionally I've gone over to Mr T, usually in search of a special offer or a voucher deal. I've noticed that the price label in MrT is often a little cheaper than MrS its generally things like basics/smartprice veggies that I look for, however MrT is nearly always out of stock by the time I get there (around 5pm) so I'm forced to buy the next brand up, whereas MrS might be 5p or 10p more to start with I can nearly always buy what I want.

valk_scot

I'll tell you another one I've noticed recently in my local big Tesco. They always put the current offers at the ends of the aisles ie today I went in looking for the 1/2 price Persil offer, £6.40->£3.20. (Non-bio 25 wash powder pack.) It was there and clearly labelled 1/2 price on the end of aisle shelves but on the main washing powder shelves it was still labelled at £6.40. They do this practically all the time in my experience. Why? Well, lots of people will think "washing powder", go to main shelves, do their sums on the prices shown there and miss the really good offer at the end of the aisle. Of course they should look at the end of the aisle offer area too but there's usually ten or twelve offers crammed into a rather messy space and if all the boxes of Persil there have been picked up already, you'd have to see the end aisle SEL to know about the offer. They do this all the time at my local. It's probably not illegal, but it is pretty devious.