Elite 11+ shopping and chat thread part 2½

Marmiter

locarr wrote: »

Thanks me and my "friend" both got a bottle

Been round and round in circles, can't see where to put the details in! Have they run out?

gocat

Tinyshoes wrote: »

Did anyone do the Bombardier Beer freebie, not sure who to thank think it might be TM? :beer:

Mr TS hasn't had his arrive yet but I put DD2 down as his friend and hers arrived Monday.

Look out for a long brown box, it's a bottle of beer in a nice Bombardier gift box inside. :cool:

Did it arrive via royal mail. I been out this morning and come back to a "sorry we have missed you" card from royal mail.

Managed to pop into local T's today. No robins

Freewheeling

gocat wrote: »

Did it arrive via royal mail. I been out this morning and come back to a "sorry we have missed you" card from royal mail.

Managed to pop into local T's today. No robins

Yes it did. I had to go to the PO to pick mine up.

tbw

Amanda4242 wrote: »

If you log in to Sainsburys.co.uk and click on your account at the top, then go to Preferences at the bottom you click on each part you want to hear from. Hope that helps.

I have just clicked on the sainsbury groceries one, argos, bank and clothing I have left. Is that the one you mean ? I am having a very senior moment type of day ! Thanks for the advice.

Dizzy_Ditzy

I am sure that I have mentioned this before but if anyone banks with Santander and uses the app, make sure to check out "retailer offers" as you can get 5-10% back in various shops - i have them for co-op, waitrose and sainsburys but I think they probably tailor the offers to your spending

tbw

Ok, I seem to be on the way to sorting out my Nectar. I will have to wait and see what happens with mailings from Sainsbury but at least I now have a list of offers on the Nectar site.

Its too late now to do anything about the train journeys but they are showing up on my account. Is there anything I need to be aware of (ready for next time they appear) - the Virgin one looks a bit more straightfoward but how do I find the cheap child journeys please. Sorry to keep asking questions but I'm still in brain fog after sorting the double up offer !

ROCKINGHAM

Decluttering house - took 40 kilos of clothes to one of those cash places as flyer through the door stating 50p paid. Unloaded car with the stash and get it weighed to find that its now 25p a kilo.

What a con flood the area with flyers - then lower the price knowing full well that most people would just accept it after making the effort to take there in the first place.

Stuffed it all back in the car and will take it to one of the charity shops some of it still had tags on.

michaels

Savvybuyer wrote: »

• I'm just looking at this page - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46191729 - and the picture of Premier Foods products and I am thinking there's nothing in the basket, or spilling out of it, that can't be replaced by some value range item, so why buy any Premier Foods branded item at all?
  
  Therefore, obviously - one thing leads to another - and I do an internet for "Why do people buy brands?" and it leads me onto this: https://proformasi.com/blog/why-do-people-buy-name-brands/
  
  And prepare for Savvy's commentary.
  
  Apparently, it's because of the psychology of brand names (and I notice they have emphasised the word "names" - so it's all about words, the name of something rather than any intrinsic quality of a product and superficial feeling rather than any actual worth) and about the messages already in the brands - in other words what people are being told rather than anything that actually exists.
  
  The link continues about "...a successful brand image" [my emphasis] - so it's all about image, about appearance rather than reality - being built on consistency (nothing that exercises me more than things that are inconsistently applied or done) of messages (again) - but of course once again I turn everything around and find fault or criticism and my criticism to consistency of message is that it is therefore a boring on-message predictability that says nothing at all but clearly doesn't reflect company representatives' true personal opinions but is merely said as an exercise of conformity to what their emploer company wants to portray. Don't expect any rebellion therefore - or any relly revealing or true opinions.
  
  So, it's all about messages and about people being "guided by needs and emotions", to which I groan and think I am guided, certainly by something I need - I don't need brands - but thankfully not much by emotion.
  
  "A brand is a person's gut feeling..." I have none.
  
  The article then asks us to consider the psychology of brands.
  
  "Relying on a brand name is efficient." No, it's not, it costs more money (unless there happens to be a glitch on a branded item somewhere). I would therefore dispute this claim and say I think relying on a brand name is inefficient not efficient.
  
  "People want to fit in. For that reason, they sometimes buy brands because those brands will lead to social acceptance." I have no wish or need to fit in anymore and I am not going to attempt to do so. As for the useless and boring concept of "social acceptance", I am not here to gain social acceptance.
  
  "Some people will buy a certain brand to support their personal or professional image. It makes them feel important." In other words, an exaggerated sense of their own self-importance that does not exist but merely serves to make them feel good being wrapped in a lie over the truth of their own lack of any importance. An attempt to pass themselves off as having an importance that they do not have but which other people fall for by perceiving them as worth soemthing just because of a brand.
  
  "A well-known brand comes with a packet of features you expect to get: quality, value, a feeling about yourself."
  
  Quality - except that, time after time, value-range items turn out to be healthier and therefore arguably better quality than any of the brands.
  
  Value - except that brands are not, as they generally cost much more money, therefore offer poor value and are subject in effect to a "brand tax", where people pay more simply because it is the brand. In fact, cheaper alternatives are often equivalent or can be better and all of the cheaper alternatives, by definition, are therefore better value (for money).
  
  A "feeling about yourself" - yawn. I am not into feelings.
  
  "It’s pre-programmed, built-in, ready-to-go."
  
  Pre-programmed. A bit like people who buy them?
  
  "The work has already been done to script what’s being said when that brand speaks. The messages are largely already resident in the consumer’s brain." So, nothing challenging at all. It's also a "script" - an acting, a pretence, a useless way of conformity and the way things are done just because they are done.
  
  "A recognizable brand represents to the consumer what he or she has already absorbed, probably over years of impressions about the company." Years of impressions - gives the game away: it's all about impressions again and not about reality of what is.
  
  "Generally speaking, consumers are prepared to pay more for a brand they recognize because they have come to trust that it provides value."
  
  Why would you be prepared to pay more? To me, rationally it makes no sense, but then people are generally irrational, as a cheaper alternative will always work just as or nearly as well or acceptably enough - after all, some people do buy those alternatives so the generally cheaper alternative products can't be completely wrong and are subject to food safety etc. regulations just like the brands - and if truth be known some or many own-label products are made by the very same people that make the brands, sometimes in the same factories or on the same production lines, though doubtless there are subtle differences in ingredients so we can't say they are the same - indeed, for me, the own-labels are often better - and raw ingredients are the same no matter who makes something. Of course it would undermine trust in Premier Foods brands if Premier Foods were to be revealed as making any of the own labels or which products (I have no idea, they may or may not make any but surely, if not, somewhere else would be no less good?). Consumers are prepared to pay more, bizarrely to me,
  "because they have come to trust that it provides value" - again, to me, a trust placed in something that does not exist as, to me, they don't provide value at all if they cost more. However, it is all about impressions and perception, in other words it doesn't matter whether they have value or not.
  
  "The world’s most successful brands have, for the most part, distinguished themselves based on undertones of value. Mercedes, Rolex, Apple, Under Armour have, over time, all created a perception of consistency, quality, and value." Indeed, precisely the case: a perception. "And beneath it all, emotions are being evoked".
  
  This isn't to say that the brands are no good: indeed the contrary, as great efforts are made to maintain brand goodwill and, with consistent service and experience generally delivered, you won't really go wrong with a brand. It's just that there may be way better and cheaper alternatives that people would be better buying. However, that's no good as people will still buy the brands (although my perception is that there has been at least some shift towards own-labels as people look to save money, but even then that's not always the 'correct' choice).
  
  It speaks volumes that brand owners know how to influence people and appeal to their emotions in buying and generally persuading them to spend more for paying for the advertising that influences them. It doesn't always lead to the 'best' products winning or technological advances actually always being made. My favourite example of this is the "Programme Delivery Control" or PDC method of the early 90s. "What?" I hear people ask. Exactly. It was an efficient and technically better method of videoing (back in the old days when we had video recorders) television programmes and playing them back conveniently. It lost out to a system called "Videoplus". The 'problem' was that no-one understood what PDC meant and the full name was cumbersome and not understood too. With the name - once more, it's all about name and words - "Videoplus", people knew what it was. Again, the word plus - which makes me believe that people thought that it was video and that they were getting some extra, something plus, even though the truth probably is that they weren't and weren't getting as much as PDC (what's that? and then most people yawn). So few people bought the technically superior PDC and it lost out to what was arguably a worse option, Videoplus.
  

What amuses me is that people can be so taken in - rest of Europe sees VW as being equivalent to Peugeot, Fiat, Kia eta but in the UK they have marketed exactly the same cars as being 'a cut above' and how ever much reviews point out that the quality is the same and the reliability no better the British have bought into the branding and are willing to pay a premium :rotfl:

Enterprise_1701C

ROCKINGHAM wrote: »

Decluttering house - took 40 kilos of clothes to one of those cash places as flyer through the door stating 50p paid. Unloaded car with the stash and get it weighed to find that its now 25p a kilo.

What a con flood the area with flyers - then lower the price knowing full well that most people would just accept it after making the effort to take there in the first place.

Stuffed it all back in the car and will take it to one of the charity shops some of it still had tags on.

That is naughty :mad:

What annoys me more though is those "charity" bags you get through the door, read the smallprint and the majority are from limited companies that give a tiny amount to that charity.

pandoraskids

Marmiter wrote: »

Also.... I had an email from Sains about a points boost - spend 2000 points between 1st and 24th Dec (which I now don't have following Double up!) and then collect 300 points for every day that you shop in January.

There doesn't appear to be a minimum spend to qualify for the 300 points, so I might be buying 31 Freddos in January!

bcw123 wrote: »

After noon re virgin train offer 1000 nectar points which finish today can you book 2 journeys on 2 transactions and get 2x1000 points

One trip on Virgin and one trip on Lner - will give you the 2000 points if they pay out on time