Supermarket tricks - watch out for these...

tvbox

Don't buy those prominently placed things in the middle of the aisles- always go to their respective aisles!
For example- some branded butter, £1.94 in the big bright stand
You could get a decent butter in the dairy aisle for less.

I've also seen

SAVE £1
£2 each

I bought loads of vimto after seeing this, then i looked at the receipt and :eek:
They shouldn't be allowed to do this.


Anyway, and this time i was correct, i bought a years supply of Nestle Condensed milk for... 50p A TIN a few weeks ago.
But the 50p was written as normal, no huge orange banners, no "reduced". It was just a normal price label. It was like 20 years ago's prices today!
Bought a couple of trays of it.
And yes, on the receipt, it came up correctly.
Went back today and it's back to over £1 (£1.50 or something?)

It's either a typing error or something put there for eagle-eyed shoppers, not displayed prominently to preserve stocks.

And some own-brand products and value products- their quality differs greatly from shop to shop.
So i have a scale, with worst quality own brand products first

• Asda Smartprice foam bath- so thin and runny, useless. Ready meals- not brilliant. Vanilla essence- just water, no aroma. You need to be extremely careful when choosing their longlife fruit juices. The big 1.5 litre cartons may seem like better value, but in small print it says something 'Pineapple Juice Drink, 50% Juice' Only realised when at home- it was all watered down. Also, the packaging was hopeless, not reclosable. You had to snip the end of the carton off.
• Tesco's own bakery jam doughnuts-Hard within hours of purchase-went straight in the bin. Couldn't even revive them in the micro or grill or oven or whatever.
  They had this stupid offer where you could get 2 bags for 1 or something. Impulse buy- i forgot to realise that we were NOT a 4,5,6,7 person family!
  Their value stuff has all sorts of rubbish written on it like 'Tried and tested by customers'. Really? I bought some wet wipes to use in the car- they made my windscreen dirtier than it was to start with- smearing, fogging it up, argh!
  
  But their value stuff isn't too bad. Foods- highly edible. The 1l E'day value longlife orange juice is decent and in a reclosable carton. And 49p! E'day value Diet Lemonade is good too, just 17p .
• Sainsbury's own brand stuff, and bakery stuff is good quality, but a bit more expensive.
• Morrisons' fishmongers and instore bakery are the best (Unlike Asda/Tesco), but the tinned foods and ready meals are about Tesco's standard.

Wantakitchen

Not sure if anybody has mentioned this but in Tesco often the stuff going out of date is only reduced by a tiny fraction and so a similar in date product may still be cheaper especially if on an offer.
Also, always remember the stuff at eye level is what they want you to buy and the cheaper/better value is often on the bottom shelf!

Honey_Bear

About 18 months ago I was shopping at the supermarket I've used for 20 years because I am a loyal soul, and went looking for H3inz Tomato Soup. I found loose tins at whatever price they were (45p from memory, but I could be wrong) and chucked a few in the trolley. A few asiles later, I found promotional packs of 4 on Special Offer. Good-oh, I thought, being a mug, and chucked in a couple of 4-packs. They got whipped out pretty quickly, I can tell you because the Special Offer price was £2 for 4! I have not felt the slightest scrap of loyalty to Sainsbobs since and now regularly shop at Morribunds, Leedle and the Co0p because I live in a city and I pass all of them on the various different routes I have to take. I haven't been into a Tesc0 for 15 years (since they declared their first £1 billion profit) and I would rather go hungry than put a penny piece into Waaaaaalmaaaaart's/A$da's coffers. Whenever I can I use the local butcher, fishmarket, indoor market and have a breadmaker.

Supermarkets are like the power companies, the banks, the insurance companies and mobile phone companies - if they can confuse you with their pricing structure into spending money and they can persuade you it was a bargain, they've done exactly what they set out to do, which is make a profit.

Incidentally, my personal belief is that the term Special Offer means the same as being told you are a special child by a !!!!!phile - you're getting shafted.

Honey_Bear

I know I've just posted, but I wanted this one to appear seperately. I was in M&$ last week buying two items of practical lingerie from a budget type range of theirs. The slightly more upmarket items are hung on the same racks, so I was extremely careful to choose the items I actually wanted. When I got to the counter, the staff member scanned the labels and then told me the price for two of the more expensive items. Fortunately I was fully aware of what I had chosen and challenged her, but my opinion of M&$ went right down in an instant. What is wrong with these organisations? Could it have been deliberate? I hope not, but that's the end of my thinking that I could trust even that particular name.