MSE News: Sainsbury's to launch 'Brand Match' scheme. Is it any good?

Andieu

Well it's made at least one person very happy. There was a chap infront of me in the checkout line and he did a shop and was given a voucher for £9 something. he was very, very pleased indeed, especially as he wasn't expecting it.

mhoc

Ideally I suppose if you buy only branded items you have a matching MOC for so you can say bring a £20 shop down to say £15 and then hopefully get as big a "brand match" till spit back as possible

PaulHUK

Hi all you money savers

I've tried the Sainsbury Brand Match scheme this week and this is what I found:

1) It's dreadful - it did not work for me. Sainsbury lied to me in their advertising.

2) You can make money out of it, but it is hard work.

So, "What actually happened?" I hear you asking.

I went shopping and I was near a Sainsbo's place. I saw their advert for Brand Match and thought it sounded good but REALLY hard to do. I mean, checking all the prices accurately on the web, and giving me a voucher that is correct? They are making a huge priomise and they claim "It's simple" on their little leaflet which the staff are giving out and on their audio announcements.

I have been working for Asda a while now so I probably shouldn't even be posting my findings here and I could get into trouble. So maybe I am biased but I gave them a genuine chance to show how good their scheme is versus our Asda Price Guarantee.

They claim this thing at Sainsbo's takes all the hard work out of it for their customers, because they do the checks and produce the voucher there and then.

BUT how do I know it is right? And who can check it for me?

I bought £26 of goods, all branded items. I got my voucher for nearly £6. Felt good! Then I went and checked the MySupermarket site for the items and I should have had nearly £4 MORE than the voucher said. £4. Not exactly "pence" is it?

So, could the lady at the till help? No.

Could the Customer Service lady help? No.

Could the first manager who came over help? No.

Could the Customer Service Manager help? No.

Could the man with the bundle of leaflets help? No. Even with his "Ask Me About Brand Match" T-shirt on, he could not check the reason they robbed me of nearly £4.

So they gave me another leaflet. Not the short one with the "It's Simple" message, oh no!! This was 4 sided and 3 of them crammed with small print. Amongst the small print was their Care Line number.

I really felt quite sorry for the people in the store. The best the main manager could do was declare how they had tested the scheme (in Ireland I think he said).

They were properly put on the spot when I demonstrated how I had been fraudulently deprived of the offer they had so boldly promissed me, yet they were not allowed to sort it out. The customer service manager explained they are not allowed to do it because they are not allowed to print off the prices list they check against.

So I headed home and called their Care Line. A ten minute free call which included me reading out numbers off the till receipt. It was just like doing the Asda Price Guarantee web site, only slower and we had the usual mis-spoken/mis-heard numbers to re-do. Then the chap said he could not check the receipt anyway until tomorrow after 9am.

So, next day, 9:10am. Call the care line again, but this time forced to do it from my mobile at work, so the free number is no longer free. Nearly a quarter of an hour on the phone and we got nowhere. The lady had to go away, find out what to do and then call me back.

We had to go through the receipt numbers again, yawn...!

We had 3, maybe 4 or 5 conversations that day in total.

One of the calls involved going through the receipt details line by line (at my insistance of course) because they claimed their Brand Match was amazing and correct.

The second to last call was where it went very weird. They said one of the items I bought was "not comparable". When I asked why they said Asda does not sell it. I argued but they were sticking to their position. I said I did not accept it, and she had to call me back later. Meanwhile I checked the Asda website and there it was, exact same product, at a lower price, on a "2 for" deal too and it was ready to "add to my basket" if I so wished.

She called me back, "It's not on their website today". Pardon me for being so simple, but "Today is not yesterday is it?" How they can justify a failure to give me the money they promissed based on what is on a website "the day after their promise" is weird.

Anyway, it was there, they were just not looking. So I helped her how to use the "Search Box" to find an item.

"Oh, it's there now".... Hillarious. Absolutely hillarious.

Ok, so now Sainsbury agreed. They did need to give me the money they owed me. They had failed to operate their Brand Match correctly as promissed.

I also asked for the quarter hour of my phone bill to be paid, no problem, it was.

I also pointed out I had spent OVER 1 HOUR trying to get them to prove their Brand Match worked when it did not.

The system is so un-transparent. How are we suppposed to know if their numbers are right or not? Where is the list of comparrisons they are making in my transaction?

So, one hour, we agreed on £15 for that.

In total I was now going to get a gift card for £22 and I have my £6 coupon printed from the till. £28 in total and a bag of shopping that cost £26 for free... Which is even better than costing the £17 it would have cost at my Asda!!

So Brand Match CAN work, but I've only used it once and it failed completely at the checkout. Ask about it when you do it and don't trust their answer. Do your own research - My Supermarket website was my friend (but I guess you could easily just check the Tesco and Asda websites)

Others have said here, there is little point in using the Sainsbo scheme becaus eit only "matches" the price (if it works) and that's all, no better. You don't get 10% extra like the Asda PG or dead Tesco DTD did.

However, if you have some time on your hands, if you are at home with spare time or between shifts at work like I was, go try it out but do your research and if you then get stuck in a loop of calls to their "Care Line", be sure to charge for your time. After all, it's not legal to make a bold claim and promise like they are doing without standing up to it.

~£26 Shop
~£6 store printed coupon
~£4 SHORT CHANGED

~£3 Credit for phone bill
~£4 Credit (they tried to avoid but legally owed me)
~£15 "Charge for my time"
=£22 gift card

£26 Spent
£6 Coupon + £22 Gift Card = £28 to spend

£2 up. Do your research and go get it!

Paul

spikejrt

Sounds like a right load of hassle and I have to admit I wouldn't have bothered.

Anyway I tried it today as I was doing some shopping today, and out of interest I saw on mysupermarket that Ribena 2L was £2 cheaper in ASDA than Sainsbury's, so got a bottle of this. Also got some Cathedral City cheese that was 20p cheaper, so was expecting a voucher for £2.20.

Then I impulsed bought some tracker bars (yum!) which are 90p cheaper in Sainsbury's than ASDA/Tesco so in the end my voucher was £1.30 - moral of this story? Stick to what you know will work!

Anyway as I'm incredibly loyal to Sainsbury's, the system is money for old rope in my view as I only shop there and I can also walk to my branch in 2 minutes so I save all round.

PaulHUK

Has anyone done better than I did on this? It's a bit of lie or illegal when it does not work (like in my huge story above) and a bit of a damp squib if it does.

Lynsey

spikejrt wrote: »

Sounds like a right load of hassle and I have to admit I wouldn't have bothered.

Anyway I tried it today as I was doing some shopping today, and out of interest I saw on mysupermarket that Ribena 2L was £2 cheaper in ASDA than Sainsbury's, so got a bottle of this. Also got some Cathedral City cheese that was 20p cheaper, so was expecting a voucher for £2.20.

Then I impulsed bought some tracker bars (yum!) which are 90p cheaper in Sainsbury's than ASDA/Tesco so in the end my voucher was £1.30 - moral of this story? Stick to what you know will work!

Anyway as I'm incredibly loyal to Sainsbury's, the system is money for old rope in my view as I only shop there and I can also walk to my branch in 2 minutes so I save all round.

So to beat the system you would be better splitting your shop??
Put through all the more comparable expensive things first, get your coupon and then put through the cheaper stuff/non-comparable stuff through as another transaction and use you coupon. Pointless devaluing, you need to maximise. :money:

Lynsey

spikejrt

I could have split the shopping yes, but I never spend anymore than 20 quid at a time as quite often away from home so there isn't any point. Still, it was an interesting exercise and I think I could do better next time.

Froggitt

Mrs frog shopped there today, and the ticket came out saying "you saved £20 by shopping at Sainsburys". Now, the whole shop was only £70, and only half of it was branded, so Im not sure where they got the £20 saving from. Wheres the transparency as to how they calculated £20? Especially as Asda have 1,700 products cheaper!!!

PaulHUK

Froggitt wrote: »

Wheres the transparency as to how they calculated £20?

Exactly. I think you have hit the nail right on the head there Froggitt. It smells. They make it hard to check. It's not transparent at all, it's quite the opposite.

in those many coversations I had with the lady from Sainsbury, there was a definite reluctance to compare the prices on my receipt to Asda. I had to promo, "and Asda?" each time. It was very hard going.

The more I think about it, the more I think: this Brand Match (mis-match?) scheme is about stopping those of us who do some shopping with them from going to Tesco and Asda. It's not a scheme to win them more cutom.

But the worst bit about it is the dishonesty of it. It's a very clear promise and they say "It's simple." It is not simple because how do I know it is right? I proved beyond doubt this week that it is not brilliant and they miss items out of their comparrison.

Heck, if they cannot even find an item on a web page using the search box as a human, how can I ever trust their automated process. If I have to ring up and spend over an hour getting what they advertised then what is it really worth!

PaulHUK

And another thing (so sorry if this sounds like a rant!)

How bad is it that you pay, then you get a coupon... If they can do it "at the point of checkout" why not just give the cash? Or better still put the price down on the shelf edge? That would save printing vouchers. It's a very odd scheme for them to run. Why highlight, "We charged you more than someone else would but we are not going to give you what we overcharged you for the exact same item until you come back to us to be overcharged again on something else".

And if they are recognising they are charging us more on branded items, are we to assume their own brand items are likewise more expensive than they need to be?

Just weird :-/