MSE News: Top ten supermarket pricing blunders

Former_MSE_Helen

"Supermarkets can come out with top-notch deals, but they sometimes get it spectacularly wrong which can cost you large..."

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Top ten supermarket pricing blunders



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qwiksave

I don't use Twitter so I hope you don't mind me adding my own here, spotted in Iceland last week:

jobdone1

qwiksave wrote: »

I don't use Twitter so I hope you don't mind me adding my own here, spotted in Iceland last week:

That is shocking

dlusman

qwiksave wrote: »

I don't use Twitter so I hope you don't mind me adding my own here, spotted in Iceland last week:

sorry - cannot see anything wrong here .They are different products :
one is "beef burgers" the other is "100% beef burgers" - different beef content - so different prices ?

jobdone1

dlusman wrote: »

sorry - cannot see anything wrong here .They are different products :
one is "beef burgers" the other is "100% beef burgers" - different beef content - so different prices ?

Wrong look at the pound box it has the mark 100% british beef as does the two pound box. Same burgers.

dlusman

jobdone1 wrote: »

Wrong look at the pound box it has the mark 100% british beef as does the two pound box. Same burgers.

Yes - the beef is 100% british - doesnt mean the meat content is the same ?
One may be 50% beef and 50% "padding" , but the beef may still be 100% british.

The only way you would know for sure would be to look at the ingredients list

jobdone1

Turn the box bring it on. People power

JasonLVC

You'd have to be a right lemon to go for this offer.

I don't believe these pricing errors are actually errors, I believe they are just an extension of the trickery played out everyday in the supermarkets.

Whether it is 2-4-1 offers where the individual price of one item is over-inflated to make buying two justified, the subtle reduction in packaging size/weight, own brand products designed to look identical to top branded products, big word showing "sale" and £5 and then in tiny writing you see that £5 is off the selling price of £15 so actually costs you £10 not the £5 as the big type face implies and the other raft of gimmicks and deals are all there to confuse the buyer.

The above example, joking aside, means if you bought one lime it would cost you 30p but if you bought two it would cost you 80p, so the customer might see the 30p price and grab two only for it to cost them more, they should have just bought one lime to make the saving, a sort of buy less get it cheaper sort of deal.

qwiksave

dlusman wrote: »

Yes - the beef is 100% british - doesnt mean the meat content is the same ?
One may be 50% beef and 50% "padding" , but the beef may still be 100% british.

The only way you would know for sure would be to look at the ingredients list

I'm thinking you could be right there dlusman, in which case Iceland are being sneaky (but clever) in the way they are marketing it.

weegie.geek

JasonLVC wrote: »

You'd have to be a right lemon to go for this offer.

I don't believe these pricing errors are actually errors, I believe they are just an extension of the trickery played out everyday in the supermarkets.

Whether it is 2-4-1 offers where the individual price of one item is over-inflated to make buying two justified, the subtle reduction in packaging size/weight, own brand products designed to look identical to top branded products, big word showing "sale" and £5 and then in tiny writing you see that £5 is off the selling price of £15 so actually costs you £10 not the £5 as the big type face implies and the other raft of gimmicks and deals are all there to confuse the buyer.

The above example, joking aside, means if you bought one lime it would cost you 30p but if you bought two it would cost you 80p, so the customer might see the 30p price and grab two only for it to cost them more, they should have just bought one lime to make the saving, a sort of buy less get it cheaper sort of deal.

I'd be interested to know what would happen at the checkout. Would the customer be charged 60p or 80p?

The cynic in me thinks it'd be 80p, and assuming you're buying more than just lemons you probably wouldn't notice it.

Should we really have to check our receipts before leaving the shop to make sure we haven't been ripped off?

I can't imagine this being anything other than a ploy to confuse and rip people off, btw. It'd be trivial for the pricing software to spot these inconsistencies and correct them. People have been complaining about this stuff for years, so the fact that they haven't fixed it yet...

zennith