MSE News: Morrisons to begin price matching Aldi and Lidl

zzzt

This Match & More nonsense is the final straw for me, and has actually driven me away from shopping at Morrisons.

Previously I did all of my shopping there because there is a big one within 5 mins walking distance of where I live. I've actually had a number of issues with them over the years - I've had to get many refunds due to bad or mislabelled items, as well as being charged more at the checkout for things that were shown as on sale or priced differently on the shelf. They also seem to have issues with keeping things in stock. I would say virtually every visit something I want to buy isn't in stock, and sometimes things (especially herbs and spices) are out of stock for months at a time.

My main gripe with Match & More is that there is a minimum £15 spend. I don't do a weekly "big shop" or fill a trolley up. I buy small amounts of fresh produce every day or every other day, and cook it into meals. As such, my average bill is below £10. So despite doing all of my shopping at Morrisons and spending hundreds of pounds a month there, I earn 0 points. That's stupid. Why doesn't it just reward loyalty? If I scan the card every time then they know everything I've bought and the value of it. It doesn't matter whether I bought it spread out over a week or in a single visit.

I'm not going to change my shopping habits or purposefully buy more things just to earn points. The one time when I did spend £20 there, it said that I earned 0 points anyway because my shopping was apparently cheaper. I believe this is because I bought a couple of heavily reduced items that were past their use by date. I also used a voucher which claimed to give me 500 bonus points, and that apparently had no effect.

After months of shopping there and earning 0 points whilst the staff aggressively ask me every time at the self-service checkouts if I have a Match & More card, I'm sick of it. I even pointed out to the staff that I haven't spent enough to earn any points, and the woman apparently was ignorant of their own scheme because she assured me there was no minimum spend. Their scheme has been reminding me for so long now that I could save money by shopping at ALDI that I finally just decided to do so, even though it's more out of my way.

What I find interesting about shopping in ALDI is that as well as being full of foreigners and students it's also full of people like me - young single people who are just buying a small amount of food in a basket; very few people are buying enough to use a trolley. All the things Morrisons are doing will do nothing to get such people to shop at Morrisons. Morrisons are out of touch with modern Britain. They're acting like it's still the 90s, and this Match & More is really illustrative of an inflexible management who can't adapt. Maybe Match & More will convince a few families to do their big shop at Morrisons, but I doubt it will save them in the long term. It's the last act of desperation of a company that is panicking.

There is some irony that if they'd never introduced Match & More, I'd probably still be doing all my shopping there, but something intended to convince people to shop at Morrisons instead of ALDI has made me shop at ALDI.

Cornucopia

diceydeb wrote: »

I got my card but was dubious about picking up items that i know are way cheaper in Aldis in case I dont get the price match at till. Does it only work with products marked morrisons own.

I believe it works with both branded and own-brand goods.

I buy gift cards regularly in Morrison's for the Fuelsaver promotion, so I will be able to buy one or two additional grocery items each time and check whether they price match with Aldi, which is where I normally shop.

The issue for matching own-brand is what the equivalent level of quality is. Existing matching prices tend to equate Savers as the same as Aldi/Lidl own-brand, and I'm not sure that is accurate or fair.

[Deleted User]

Morrisons seem to by price matching Savers range with Aldi and Lidl, where I would class Aldi/Lidl products on par as Morrisons own brand.

They are obviously doing this so they give out less points, or they are just naive and don't have a clue about the quality of Aldi/Lidl. No wonder shoppers are deserting them.

TheBanker

I'm not impressed. I can't decide whether their "currency" of 5,000 points = £5 (i.e. each point is worth 0.1p) is a deliberate attempt to mislead. When shopping yesterday I saw some items announcing 200 extra points and had to keep reminding myself that 200 points is only worth 20p.

They say they've chosen this value because it was the same as their old petrol loyalty card - which was another poor deal. I worked out I'd have had to drive from Lands End to John O'Groats and back three times before I got a £5 voucher from that scheme (and in 2 years of using the card I didn't get a single voucher!)

deely

TheBanker wrote: »

They say they've chosen this value because it was the same as their old petrol loyalty card - which was another poor deal. I worked out I'd have had to drive from Lands End to John O'Groats and back three times before I got a £5 voucher from that scheme (and in 2 years of using the card I didn't get a single voucher!)

But wasn't their petrol card 1.5p per litre? Certainly was when I started to use it and considering it was the cheapest petrol in my area it was a great deal.
I am a bit of a petrol !!!!! as I tend to use whichever shop has given me the best money off coupon, like S's when they have the 10p/ litre off, or if I happened to have shopped at T's and got a few pennies off but I still have £85 of M's vouchers from the last 3 years and I only do around 6k miles a year so not bad for something I haven't gone out of my way for, so effectively 'free'.

Cornucopia

The Morrison's Miles scheme was 10 points per litre. So cost maybe 13 pence per point. Upon redemption you need 5000 points for a £5 voucher, so they are worth 0.1 pence per point.

So the ratio is about 130:1.

The only issue is that you need to buy 500 litres (10 fill-ups?) to get the voucher. In my car, that's about 6000 miles, so I'm only going to get a voucher every 6 months or so.

jenniewb

TheBanker wrote: »

I'm not impressed. I can't decide whether their "currency" of 5,000 points = £5 (i.e. each point is worth 0.1p) is a deliberate attempt to mislead. When shopping yesterday I saw some items announcing 200 extra points and had to keep reminding myself that 200 points is only worth 20p.

They say they've chosen this value because it was the same as their old petrol loyalty card - which was another poor deal. I worked out I'd have had to drive from Lands End to John O'Groats and back three times before I got a £5 voucher from that scheme (and in 2 years of using the card I didn't get a single voucher!)

It just makes me laugh! So many labels appearing on shelves reading something like 'buy this and get 500 points!!' And I'm looking at an item costing in excess of £10 and thinking; Really?? You want me to spend £10 for a 50p return?? Even Tesco can do better than that- can't get my head around why they've employed so much effort into trying to trick customers into thinking their points system is as generous as it proclaims to be. To be honest it just feels like Tesco in the early days all over again and puts me off using them.

Cornucopia

I made a test "Match" purchase today. I can confirm that Morrison's Own brand Peanut Butter (340g) does price match with Aldi Grandessa Peanut Butter, for a points credit of 40 points (4p).

diceydeb

The big problem here is not everything I buy cheap in aldis has a morrisons brand equivalent so if I pick up another obscure brand name will it price match or leave me out of pocket ?

Cornucopia

I was intending to make a number of test purchases over the next few weeks, so hopefully some patterns will start to emerge. I think this is a promising start, because Morrison's have a cheaper Saver brand peanut butter, which they might have matched Aldi to.