MSE News: Morrisons to begin price matching Aldi and Lidl

hollie.weimeraner

Not sure if anyone has seen this yet but it makes interesting reading

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/nov/22/which-supermarket-cheapest-morrisons-aldi-asda

[Deleted User]

Cornucopia wrote: »

Another price match failure today:

NUME (Morrison's) Reduced Fat Houmous 99p didn't match with Aldi Reduced Fat Houmous at 55p.

This led to me asking politely at the CS desk what the process was for matching errors. Apparently, Morrison's have not given the Stores access to the price-matching data, so they have referred my query to HQ.

Will update when they get back to me.

Firstly you have to spend £15 before you get Match points, secondly, the comparison is based on basket spend, not individual products. If your whole basket was overall cheaper than anywhere else (not just one product being cheaper elsewhere) then you wouldn't get any match points.

I think gift cards, stamps, top ups, etc are excluded.

givememoney

Bought lovely poinsettia in Morrisons yesterday for £2.50 then has to go to sainsburys today in there for £5.......result!!

dlusman

Cornucopia wrote: »

I shop mostly at Aldi, but I also do the Morrison's fuelsaver scheme.

A single gift card will push the total over £15, and it's easy to add a single grocery item to test the price match.

From the T&Cs ( so buying a gift card means you are not spending the minimum qualifying £15 )


Our Price Match Guarantee does not apply to the following items:

• Items sold at M Local convenience stores, our Gibraltar Westside store or our Preston “M Discount” store.
• Our customer cafes
• Our pharmacies, including prescription medicines
• Our concessions including dry cleaning, photo processing
• Fuel
• Cash back
• Fireworks
• Lottery, online games and instant tickets
• Tobacco and tobacco related products
• Infant milk or formula
• Gift vouchers and gift cards,
• Mobile phone cards and e top-ups
• Postage stamps and bonus stamps
• Horticulture
• Newspapers, Magazines, Books
• Greetings and Christmas cards
• All electrical and battery operated goods
• All forms of media entertainment including software, games, music, DVDs and Bluerays
• Batteries and torches
• Stationary
• Motoring goods
• All homewares including bedding, home d!cor, tableware, bathroom accessories, glassware and home furnishings
• All kitchen equipment including tools, food storage, panware, bakeware, crockery and dinner sets, kitchen co-ordinates, ovenware, kitchen textiles
• Bulbs and electrical accessories
• All leisure, BBQ and gardening
• Toys
• Cleaning and laundry apparatus mops etc
• Wrap, tags and bows
• Festive non edible items - Christmas crackers
• All clothing and accessories
• Paint and decorating sundry
• Storage
• Stickers and trading cards
• Halloween
• Jewellery
• Candles
• Umbrellas
• Homebrew
• Keep fit equipment

Cornucopia

Thanks for these not entirely helpful comments. I thought I'd been reasonably clear on the What, Why and How of this exercise, but obviously wasn't clear enough.

What : making test purchases from Morrison's.

Why : to test the effectiveness of price matching.

How : by using Gift Cards to get to the £15 limit, and adding a small number of selected grocery items.

You'll also see that I have received Match points on previous transactions of this nature, as indeed I did on this one, though the amount was wrong.

BTW: Morrison's have not got back to me on this. I actually had two other grocery items on my bill, which complicates things (though I anticipated that neither of those items would price-match, and one of the two had not matched previously). I received 50 Matching points (5p) instead of the expected 440.

If I don't get an answer from M, I will go and repeat the exercise next week, and do it properly this time. I like the idea of having the much greater choice of M, but only if I am not paying over the odds compared to the Aldi down the road.

Cornucopia

Quick update on this.

Had a call last night from my local Morrison's manager (the one I spoke to in-store). He apologised for the delay in getting back to me, and asked if I could call the Customer Services line as they needed permission to access my account to check the issue.

I did this just a moment ago, and a very helpful chap checked the price match data (which in the case of Aldi was wrong) and updated my account with the 440 missing points.

Excellent service, and now I have the process for any future price match issues.

I will check the same product again in a few weeks to see if the data problem has been resolved.

dlusman

Cornucopia wrote: »

Thanks for these not entirely helpful comments. I thought I'd been reasonably clear on the What, Why and How of this exercise, but obviously wasn't clear enough.

What : making test purchases from Morrison's.

Why : to test the effectiveness of price matching.

How : by using Gift Cards to get to the £15 limit, and adding a small number of selected grocery items.

to repeat my #175 post - gift cards do not count towards your £15 minimum spend

Cornucopia

And if you read my posts, you'll see that they do.

There are two categories: products that price match, and products that contribute towards minimum spend.

[Deleted User]

What a load of palava.

StanTheMan_2

ALL supermarkets seem to try to SCAM their customers into buying more than they need. In a way, we try to scam them back or undermine their attempts with our moneysaving ideas.

I expect most regular shoppers "know" the rough market price for what they are buying and may, like me, just get annoyed at having to buy 2 x 1kg of satsumas, just to get them at the "right" price.
We are faced with a choice of buy 2 and watch them go off before we can eat them, or do without because there is no way we are going to pay the outlandish price asked for just 1kg bag.

Packages also seem to be getting bigger for many items like soft drinks and milk etc, so multiples of these are not a good offer for pensioners or small households.

they have ALL lost sight of looking after their customers.

Things they sell that they say "add value" and therefore cost more are often no such thing.

Things like: cooked meats cost more to produce than fillings and pastry, so why do we have to pay more when they "adulterate" foods by adding cheap stuffing to chicken/pork/turkey etc? They are charging us the "meat price" for the stuffing! good idea. The same reason that breaded items have thick coatings because the coating cost very little and is weighed in as a premium product.
They used to sell meat trimmings off cheaply but HEY, they can now shred it up quite small and call it "pulled" selling it at ridiculously high prices.
My mother would have laughed in the face of any butcher trying to pass of shredded meat scraps as some sort of delicacy. Same goes for those formed cereals and bars that are not much more than sweepings of cereal bays held together with binding.

All the great quality stuff that we USED to buy in the supermarkets is now re-packaged as "Premium" or "Specially Selected" or "Signature", "Taste the Difference", etc at inflated prices with INFERIOR quality items sold as "Standard" and almost identically as "Value" or "Essential" etc
Sainsbury's value self raising flour is around 55p and Standard is 80p for 1.5kg but "Taste the Difference" SR flour is around £1.10 for 1.5kg.
They create different classes of product to extract more money for what was probably their standard high quality product by introducing poorer quality at same price and jacking up the price on good stuff.

Aldi and Lidl will continue to gain market share as long as they stick to their winning formula of lower number of brands per product, few "special offers", providing majority of mainstream essentials of good/high quality at permanently good value prices and avoiding loyalty systems and loss making online deliveries.

My worry is that they will be tempted to cash in on all the above in the long run. Aldi have already started selling its superior range of items alongside standard offerings.

Good luck with all your saving ideas!