Great 'supermarket staff tell us your reduction policies' hunt

System

mrme wrote: »

[*]And any other useful tips …

At Sainsbury's...

The most important tip is this - If there a reduced items on a multi-buy you will still get the discount which means some amazing deals. Here is an example [/LIST]Hot cross buns are on offer @ 2 packs for £1 and 99% of the time they have stock that needs to be sold each night. They are usually sold at 69p each but are reduced to 20p each. If you were to buy 2 packs you would pay just 2p as you would still get your 38p discount So if you see items reduced that are on a multi-buy promotion stop & work out the real price. THIS WILL NOT WORK ON BOGOFS - ONLY THE 2 for £2.00 TYPE OF DEALS. BOGOF items will simply be BOGOF at the lower price.

This is a great way to save money on your other shopping, but make sure the normal barcode is replicated somewhere within the yellow sticker barcode, otherwise the additional reduction won't come off.

Eg, if the Hot X Buns are "2 for £1" and the buns have a regular barcode of 1234 0000 5678, ensure the yellow sticker also has this barcode somewhere within it.

Sometimes, the staff will scan a pack of Donuts or use a Misc code in order to print a reduced label and therefore the till won't realise you're actually buying Hot X Buns and won't deduct the automatic discount.

lordash

After working 3 years as a checkout supervisor for Waitrose, I have some tips. Waitrose as a company are undergoing an upgrade to their till systems, so I am not sure if some of these will work, but it is worth a try. Listen out for the noisy reciept printers to be certain.

• As mentioned before, look out for multibuy offers that are reduced. For the offer and the reduction to go through, the items have to have either a reprinted barcode or a rectangular label on them - the ones with the round labels will not work.
• Offers can end up with money being subtracted from the bill if the items are reduced as well. Works well on christmas eve, when all the seasonal multibuy stock is being reduced.
• Occasionally, multipacks of cigarettes get opened by mistake. These get reduced down and kept behind the cigarette counter.
• Waitrose do a long-term offer on bread rolls - buy 5 for £1.00. (23p ea.) These often get reduced down to 5p at the end of day, so 5 rolls cost 10p in total.
• Any coupon(s) can be used to pay for your shopping, even if you haven't purchased the item. It is theoretically possible to pay for your shopping every week with coupons downloaded from the internet. It is perfectly ok for someone to pay their shopping bill with just coupons, and have seen customers hand over 20+ at a time.

Also, if you work for John Lewis / Waitrose:

• Staff discount gets taken off on top of multibuy offers. So if you buy two 'buy one get one free' items, you will recieve discount on both items.
• Always pick up the Seasons magazine. They are free for partners and because the till sees it as a multibuy offer when it is registered, you get discount on top of it as well - 12% * £2.50 = 30p off.
• Items with 'dumping' (circular) labels also get discounted at the till.
• On the old tills it is possible to pay on a non-JL credit card, thus earning cashback. It is still against staff policy to do this however...

rogue_element

RE M&S Date Expired Food...

About a year ago we used to do reductions. However, since then the policy changed and staff are not allowed to give reductions to customers. You won't find any food reduced in M&S because it is out of date/damaged.

However at my store we do try and give it to charity. If a charity rings us and asks for food, we give them as much as they want! On several occasions I've sorted this out, especially around Christmas.

With the new PlanA system, we are not going to send any food waste to landfill within 5 years, so it will be used as waste to actually power our stores, creating energy. Interesting concept, I'd like to see them pull it off. You cannot get the food out of the skips where I work because of two reasons:

1.The skips are locked
2.The bins are emptied weekly not daily and nothing is put in them until the day they are due to be emptied.

Once you suss this out, you could go armed with a screwdriver, but as none of the waste is refridgerated (for up to a week)you might end up getting seriously ill.....

M&S staf get a LOT of reduced food, I buy all my food from the waste shop, its much cheaper than any other supermarket and tastes better!

I do know some secrets about the M&S Food Festivals, but I wouldnt want to deliberately release this because I don't want it traced back to me.

[Deleted User]

If you do not put the damaged food in the bin untill a weeks time when the bin is due to be emptied where do you store it all? Rotten food inside the store must be a health hazard.

rogue_element wrote: »

RE M&S Date Expired Food...

About a year ago we used to do reductions. However, since then the policy changed and staff are not allowed to give reductions to customers. You won't find any food reduced in M&S because it is out of date/damaged.

However at my store we do try and give it to charity. If a charity rings us and asks for food, we give them as much as they want! On several occasions I've sorted this out, especially around Christmas.

With the new PlanA system, we are not going to send any food waste to landfill within 5 years, so it will be used as waste to actually power our stores, creating energy. Interesting concept, I'd like to see them pull it off. You cannot get the food out of the skips where I work because of two reasons:

1.The skips are locked
2.The bins are emptied weekly not daily and nothing is put in them until the day they are due to be emptied.

Once you suss this out, you could go armed with a screwdriver, but as none of the waste is refridgerated (for up to a week)you might end up getting seriously ill.....

M&S staf get a LOT of reduced food, I buy all my food from the waste shop, its much cheaper than any other supermarket and tastes better!

I do know some secrets about the M&S Food Festivals, but I wouldnt want to deliberately release this because I don't want it traced back to me.

haughy1

hi, i work for the co-op and we have just changed the way we do our reductions, we used to mark down on the till itself for reduced items and the multisaves used to automatically come off, but we use pocket pc's now and put a reduced to clear barcode on now, so multisaves no longer come off . it is so funny watching custumers faces now when they realise that multisaves are not coming off and being stuck with 3 items.

MarkyMarkD

The Co-op thing varies hugely around the country, not least because many Co-op stores are owned by different individual Co-ops. Midlands Co-op still give full multi-buy discounts on reduced items (at least in our local store) where they don't use barcoded reduction stickers.

The only place I know which uses barcoded reduction stickers and still gives reductions (to an extent) is Sainsbury's, but as others have posted this works in a slightly complex way, so 2 x £1 BOGOF items reduced to 50p cost you 2 x 50p - 50p = 50p; 2 x £1 "Buy 2 for £1.50" (i.e. 50p reduction) items reduced to 50p cost you 2 x 50p - 50p = 50p.

cjabingham

Because those are the only days when they are not open on the Sunday (next day) so reduce greatly including items sell by Sunday (next day).

HarryG_2

Popped out to Sainsburys half-hour before it closed, and got huge bouquet of roses and arctic lilies .... reduced to 50p......!

keelykat

Got lots more very cheap things when we went in to asda wednesday evening (between 6-7pm)..... salad things ie cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce/salad bags - 10p! each. and mmm strawberries were 30p a container! oh and those fruit salad in plastic trays - 10p too! and jersey royal potatoes in a plastic container were 10p.

Had a gorgeous salad and smoothies that evening and following day! lol.

keely.

Skullcreature

I work in the produce department for Morrisons and am here to tell you's all a few home truths.

(1) Morrisons employees are only allowed to reduce items by 15% (so if you read this and you see a non management member of staff DO NOT ASK US TO REDUCE IT ANY MORE THAN 15% IT !!!!ES ME OFF OK .

(2) department Management get 25% off ok and duty manager's (ones with normal shirts on no uniform) they get 50%.

(3) But alot of the management give there numbers out late in the night near closing time so watch outf ro those bargains.

(4)if the stock does not sell in the prodcue department it gets re-wrapped (burst from original packaging and put in to packageing with out sel buy date)for tomorrow for us to sell at the full original price there you go.

(5) one more before I go watch out for cauliflowers dates being scraped off the packaging

cheers
Andy