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

Froggitt

They need to give you a code to type into your puter so you can see how they arrived at the £20. Or highlight it on the till receipt.

I just dont believe it.

lostinlost2

PaulHUK wrote: »

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

All over £4? You need to get out more!!!

henrik777

Asda don't even tell you which item is cheaper and they don't list anything. How do you check that ? Tesco list the items (or used to) even then there were plenty of non matches which were hotly disputed by MSE'ers. They generally said "go away".

Whilst what you say is correct it's not much of a different attitude to the asda and tesco attitude other than they admitted they were wrong and gave you extra for time etc.

PaulHUK

lostinlost2 wrote: »

All over £4? You need to get out more!!!

Yeah you might be right LIL2... I just thought Sainsbo are making such a big thing of this new initiative and the fact that it is easy for the customers. So I was passing and tried it, but it did not work on a small basket of items.

Yes it started at "You owe me 4 quid" but it was their fault it cost them more than my basket in total. I didn't ask for it to be so complicated. They made it that. I got my £4 and almost £20 on top of it. Not bad really.

They say "Live well for less" yet my experience was that you can only live well for less if you do more than the average Sainsbury shopper would do. I guess that's what they're banking on.

DeNeYeD

What was the item causing this controversy Paul?

PaulHUK

henrik777 wrote: »

Asda don't even tell you which item is cheaper and they don't list anything. How do you check that ? Tesco list the items (or used to) even then there were plenty of non matches which were hotly disputed by MSE'ers. They generally said "go away".

Whilst what you say is correct it's not much of a different attitude to the asda and tesco attitude other than they admitted they were wrong and gave you extra for time etc.

Well I sort of see your point but there is a difference Henrik. When I do the Asda Price Guarantee website it says they get their price checks from the independent site MySupermarket. And I can view MySupermarket today, right now. So I can check it. And Asda doesn't claim to make it simple and no effort but it is there to see.

Sainsbury on the other hand is different. First they use the actual words "It's simple." in their leaflet and it is not simple because they made a mistake and then argued and made it hard for me to get what they promised. As far as I know, it forms a contract when we shop. They cannot behave like that - they must know it. Over an hour to get a legal entitlement and I had to ask for reasonable recompense but they gave it because they knew they can't behave like that as it is plainly dishonest.

Secondly, Sainsbury use a non-visible list of prices. Their store manager said they are "Not allowed to print it or use it". Their Care Line man said it comes from Brand Line, or Brand View (he could not remember which it was). I think, Googling around, it is Brand View, but guess what... You or I cannot check that list at all.

Now I only spent £26. I am only one customer. How much are people missing out on, especially those spending more than I did?

DeNeYeD

Sorry Paul think you missed my post. What was the item causing this controversy..?

richardw

In Greenwich SE London, there's an Asda and Sainso's very close together, it'll be interesting how this promotion will work there and how some shoppers will react when their vouchers are capped at £10 and they may have not got the full price match.

PaulHUK

DeNeYeD wrote: »

Sorry Paul think you missed my post. What was the item causing this controversy..?

Thanks, I had missed your post Deneyed, sorry about that.

I had picked a refill for our air freshener (one of those plug in types). I forget what they call it, there's three scents on it. It was on offer at the Asda so I figured Sainsbury would include it in the coupon they print at the checkout. They didn't, but as you know, it's impossible to check until the next day and even then, to do the check is a phone call and basically you do the Sainsbury version of the Asda process, slowly, verbally - and you don't get 10% extra for your trouble (but you can argue to get payment for your time)

Are you thinking of giving it a go? Testing out yourself? If you do, the key to it seems to be check your facts, prompt the Care Line person to quote the lowest competitor price by item including multi/link saves. And if they say an item is not comparable, don't accept their word for it. Check the facts yourself. Good luck.

PaulHUK

richardw wrote: »

In Greenwich SE London, there's an Asda and Sainso's very close together, it'll be interesting how this promotion will work there and how some shoppers will react when their vouchers are capped at £10 and they may have not got the full price match.

One thing I know about Asda is that the prices are the same in all the stores, regardless of store size or location. Not sure about Sainsbury, but Brand Match should work the same (same fail rate to calculate the correct value of coupon!?)

Good point about the cap. Split your basket into multiple transactions?