Tesco's PRICE CHECK is contrived and manipulated

Advocate

Tesco’s online Price Check system (https://www.tesco.com/pricecheck) allows Tesco to boldly advertise on TV and in the papers that on average, they are cheaper than their rivals.

But several marketing tricks are employed to achieve this illusion. At best, these tricks could be described as sharp practice, and at worst they are plain deceit.

Here’s an example of their most common trick...

Tesco, Asda and Morrisons all sell own brand Earl Grey tea bags at 76p for 50 bags.

Tesco then decide to repackage and rebrand their version of own label Earl Grey tea bags as “Finest” and double the size of the pack to 100 tea bags. The ingredients and quality remain exactly the same. But the price goes up by more than double - from 76p to £1.94. So in real terms the price has risen by 28% overnight.

By deleting the old pack from their range, they ensure this new “Finest” variant is the only own brand version of Earl Grey tea bags they sell.

The quality of the product has not actually been changed - Tesco have simply decided to classify it as a premium own brand by using the “Finest” branding.

Now we look at the Price Check comparison results on Tesco.com, for own label Earl Grey tea bags:

OL (own label) Premium Earl Grey 100 Teabags 250g
Tesco price - £1.94
Morrisons price - N/F
ASDA price - N/F

(N/F indicates that the competitor does not have an equivalent product)

Can you see the trick yet?

By putting the same product in a “Finest” box and changing the size of the product, they have created the illusion that Morrisons and Asda do not have a comparable product.

If they were to mention that Morrisons and Asda do sell the product in a smaller size, and compare the price per 100g, it would reveal that Tesco’s product is nearly 28% dearer than the Morrisons and Asda versions.

Repeat this trick hundreds of times across all the product lines and you begin to see why Tesco are so keen on rebranding so many products as “Finest” and meddling with the pack sizes. The “Finest” brand acts as a smokescreen to ensure Tesco's higher prices escape their own price comparison system.

Another trick is to deliberately omit information when a competitor has a cheaper own brand variant, or to choose the most expensive for comparison purposes when there are several different price tiers in the competitor’s range.

Example.

OL (own label) Cat Food Cuts 6 x 400g any variety
Tesco price - £1.88
Morrisons price - £1.88

But this simply isn’t true. Morrisons own brand cuts in jelly Cat Food, 6 x 400g, is £1.75, not £1.88.

How do I know? I’ve been buying it every week for the last two years.

Morrisons also have a £1.88 variant, but these are different flavours and a different recipe. The one Morrisons sell for £1.75 is the same in every way (flavours, ingredients, supplier code, pack size) as the one Tesco sell for £1.88.

But, if you’d never been to a branch of Morrisons and placed all your trust in Tesco Price Check, you’d never know that Morrisons sell exactly the same product 7% cheaper!

So, not only do Tesco choose to define their own products as “premium” when in reality they are only premium by virtue of their packaging, but they comapre their cheapest own brands with their competitors’ most expensive own brands, and claim to be making a direct comparison, when this is a complete fabrication!

Their Price Check system is also inherently flawed because it completely fails to take into account "Multibuy" offers, such as Buy One Get One Free. So potentially, while your Tesco trolley of shopping might cost a couple of pounds more than the same trolley in Morrisons (according to Price Check), you could in fact get the whole trolleyload all over again for free in Morrisons by taking advantage of their large number of BOGOFs.

In summary, Tesco’s Price Check can not be trusted as an accurate and honest price comarison of like-for-like products between the four major supermarkets.

They are not making like-for-like comparisons.

The system has been heavily manipulated to falsely portray Tesco’s products as being cheaper than its rivals’.

You can't trust Tesco. Next week: the Pope is rumoured to be catholic, and bears have been seen carrying toilet roll into the woods.

I thank you.

uktim29

I think your taking things a little too seriously. Most of us never use those things to shop anyway, we just go where we normally go, which we've noted as cheapest from experience.

I'm sorry but is this just some ego thing that you've one spotted one mistake and then a second, (well) this infact seems correct, where Tescos are the only one to stock tea bags at that size. I know you'll say the small version is about 5% cheaper but thats not what the price check thing is for (which is more of a maketing gimic than something people actually use before they shop).

Advocate

I might have known that you'd pipe up.

The examples I mention are not merely "mistakes" - they are deliberate attempts to mislead and deceive - I have spotted dozens of them, but have used the above as examples, otherwise we'd all be here all day.

lol @ "some ego thing"..... ego? And tell me how exactly is this building up my ego?

Get a grip.

This is about holding Tesco to account for yet another bit of dishonesty. But I understand that as a troll it's your job to attack anyone who criticises Tesco, regardless of the validity of their complaint.

kaya

if you have time to worry and investigate such trivial and blatantly obvious points then may i suggest you need to get out a little more often, or are you in some kind of "shock" that advertising in general isnt honest?, none of the above is news to me

pulliptears

Tesco then decide to repackage and rebrand their version of own label Earl Grey tea bags as “Finest” and double the size of the pack to 100 tea bags. The ingredients and quality remain exactly the same. But the price goes up by more than double - from 76p to £1.94. So in real terms the price has risen by 28% overnight.

Question, bear in mind its early and Ive been awake all night ugh

Arent you getting twice as much for 28% more though if they have doubled the size?

uktim29

Advocate wrote: »

I might have known that you'd pipe up.

The examples I mention are not merely "mistakes" - they are deliberate attempts to mislead and deceive

Put your money where your mouth is then, Prove it!

All the times you've seen this although you can only find 2 it seems are not proof, 1 of them isn't even wrong. Even if you quote 10 thats not proof that it's not mistakes.

Supermarkets hardly staff things so everything can be double checked. Perhaps your fortunate enough to never have had to do a job where you have to get so much done that theres no time for checking it, where you don't have to work to 100% efficiency rates.

It's the typical "Victor Meldrew" style post you get on here.

As I said anyway, it's a marketing gimic. Who actually checks the price of everything before they go and shop, no-one, we've all got to much else to do. We go by our experience. Everyone knows Asda works out cheapest with Sainsburys, Morrisons & Tescos more or less being the same with perhaps Sainsburys taking the lead on being most expensive.

You've posted this just for the sake of compaining and you want a halo for finding it.

hollydays

How can you be sure the quality of the product has not changed.On a thread on here i read for example,one manufacturer adds more of one particular ingrediant when manufacturing a food product for a particular upmarket food shop. How do you know the quantities of the blend has not changed? Presumably if they asked the manufacturer to add 5% less dust,for example ,(memories of tasting Asda smartprice teabags) the product would be deemed to be finer/finest.
In fairness to uktim,if he was a defender of tesco we might expect to have seen him on the tesco thread.

lidlest

My friend actually works for Tesco price checking, and yes it is all data manipulation. Tesco employ loads of tricks to make you think you are getting a bargain. Overall tesco is cheaper than Sainsbury's but more expensive than Asda and Morrisons. On a budget weekly shop (own brands etc) Asda are cheaper, is you like a bit of luxury alongside budget brands as i (and the majority of snoppers ) do, Morrisons is best.

Timmne

You can't trust Tesco. Next week: the Pope is rumoured to be catholic, and bears have been seen carrying toilet roll into the woods.

I thank you.

Thank me for what? Listening to your one-man-army attack on Tesco?

I have to say it was exceptionally unexciting reading, so much so that I'm going to go and make a coffee so I'm able to concentrate again on my work.

Why don't you send your little exercise in to the "we couldn't give a shiney sh!te what little man launching a silly crusade against us thinks" department at Tesco?

uktim29

hollydays wrote: »

In fairness to uktim,if he was a defender of tesco we might expect to have seen him on the tesco thread.

I'm not a defender of Tesco's nor anti Tesco's so I don't see why I should have been expected to participate in any particular thread. I just don't see what the op is trying to achieve?

Price checks are just marketing gimics anyway, of course their going to make a song and dance about things that their cheaper with rather than ones their more expensive for. Is really new information for people?

Dave_Brooker

Advocate wrote: »

You can't trust Tesco.

I trust tescos.

Perhaps if cheepo prices are your thing you should shop at Netto?