Beware Buy 3 for 2 deals at Co-op

ric-the-vic

On 25th June at my local Co-op I saw the 3 for 2 deals (cheapest item free) on toiletries and bought 3 Shave Gel @ £1.49, 3 Colgate toothpaste (1 x £3.09, 2 X £3.90) and 3 Vaseline Lotion @ £3.29. My savings were calculated at 3x £1.49. I anticipated savings of 1x £1.49, 1x £3.09 and 1x £3.29, which is what I would have received had I gone through the till three times with each group of items. Querying this with the Co-op they said that the till will deduct the cheapest item collectively, and not per batch of 3. They also claim "This method of applying a multi-buy discount does work effectively in this way across the retail sector however, and you will find the same process in place at Boots, Marks & Spencer, and WH Smith for example." So beware - go through the till separately for each batch of 3 items to gain full discount.

candyfliss

That is not the case at boots, or at least it wasn't the last time i did a big order.

Boots order the items by price, and then every third item is free, so you get the same deal you would if you did a separate transaction for each batch of 3.

mrcow

It isn't the case at Marks either.

I know - I shop there enough! Especially on their uniform 3 for 2 every year.

Co Op are lying about the other stores.

dlusman

WHSmith also works on an "always favour the customer" algorithm - or at lest they did a few years ago when my job was heavily involved in interprating the data that was produced by their tills. No reason to presume they have changed recently.

alanq

I found this problem with Ocado. It was reported that Waitrose did likewise.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4942018

JIL

Its crazy. Many times I have asked for separate transactions to ensure I made the best of the 3 for 2 offers.

terra_ferma

alanq wrote: »

I found this problem with Ocado. It was reported that Waitrose did likewise.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4942018

yes waitrose do that, when I bought lots of jam I had some scanned separately

Nada666

The ethical Co-op lying through their teeth. Whodathunk?

It is simply untenable for a supermarket to claim to or to operate in such a manner with the extensive systemic adoption of multi-buys. The Co-op (and Waitrose) ought to be reported to and sanctioned by Trading Standards.

Cornucopia

As a minimum, the tills ought to identify when three identical items are purchased, and apply the discount to those items first, before considering other combinations.

But it's not just high street retailers falling foul of the need for more sophistication in their till systems.

I went to Harvester a couple of months ago. They were running an offer of 2 Courses + soft drink for £9.99. We ordered off that offer menu, but one person had a more expensive drink. So the till system decided that that person would pay separately for her other items, which worked out more than £9.99.

So, that's another rule that probably ought to apply there (maybe not in high street shops?) which is: if an offer would apply (and benefit the customer) for want of ordering an extra item, pretend that that item has been ordered.

alanq

I have been caught out in M&S. The shelves were full of buy 3 for £6 labelled quiches. I did not notice that amongst all the different quiches from the same range one was not part of the deal. That type was cheaper than items that were in the deal so I got charged a higher price for buying a cheaper item.

Cornucopia wrote: »

So, that's another rule that probably ought to apply there (maybe not in high street shops?) which is: if an offer would apply (and benefit the customer) for want of ordering an extra item, pretend that that item has been ordered.

I ordered a Meal Deal from Tesco. Four items for £10. One item was out of stock and they substituted one not in the bundle (worth 50p less than what I had ordered). Because, through no fault of my own, I had not bought the required bundle, I was billed for the cost of the individual items which came to over £18 so I returned them all. If they had honoured the £10 price I would have accepted the substitution. By implementing a daft policy Tesco had the admin of returning the items to stock and refunding me. It also lost a lot of my goodwill.

Cornucopia

That's just dumb programming. It's obvious that if the order and the delivery list are different, the system should consider whether any offers were missed as a consequence of substitution and either apply them as best it can, or flag it for a person to deal with.

Not only that, but an increase of £8 also ought to flag an overall sanity-check.