False weight costs in Morrisons

gozila

Hi all, I often use the price per weight/volume on price labels in supermarkets to see the actual cost of something compared to a different size package, as I assume alot of you may do. But today I saw that the price on a label was very wrong and misleading. It was for a 6pack of full fat Coke cans which was shown at a lower price than an 18 pack of coke zero nearby. I thought this couldn't be true so I checked the maths and it was wrong on the label. This has now meant I have lost faith in all of their labels. I'm generally a fan of what Morrisons offer but this has really made me lose faith. I thought some of you might also want to know that the £/ml can't necessarily be trusted

Bacman

Indeed, that is 19p/100ml

avoidtheupsidedownbottles

See this sort of error a lot in M&S.  They must leave the maths up to the individual shelf-stacker rather than have it done centrally.  Best to get your mobile out and calculate it yourself.

jackieblack

gozila said:

Hi all, I often use the price per weight/volume on price labels in supermarkets to see the actual cost of something compared to a different size package, as I assume alot of you may do. But today I saw that the price on a label was very wrong and misleading. It was for a 6pack of full fat Coke cans which was shown at a lower price than an 18 pack of coke zero nearby. I thought this couldn't be true so I checked the maths and it was wrong on the label. This has now meant I have lost faith in all of their labels. I'm generally a fan of what Morrisons offer but this has really made me lose faith. I thought some of you might also want to know that the £/ml can't necessarily be trusted

Did you mean to post two identical photos?

General_Grant

Bacman said:

Indeed, that is 19p/100ml

or even, to use Morrisons 1 decimal place system, 19.2p/100ml (conventionally rounded from 19.191919191919191 recurring)

Steve_L

You see this all the time. It's probably due to a simple human error. These happpen.

Some 'number crunching' reveals that a price of £2.85, pack size of 8 or can size of 440ml would give 14.4p per 100ml.

maisie_cat

I spend a lot of time in the supermarkets mentally checking their maths, but people make mistakes and it isn't necessarily designed to mislead the public. Quite often shop staff have problems with units of measure and it's not helped by shrinkflation constantly changing pack sizes.

gozila

No I didn't mean to put two pictures in at all. 
Yes I agree it's probably a human error, either with the calculation or not updating the volume cost with the main ticket price. Although you'd assume this would be calculated my machine when their system decides what the prices should be anyway. 
I was more surprised by the fact that they are displaying a lower price for a product which had led to me buying this product in the past after comparing it to a pepsi multipack.

Rosa_Damascena

maisie_cat said:

I spend a lot of time in the supermarkets mentally checking their maths, but people make mistakes and it isn't necessarily designed to mislead the public. Quite often shop staff have problems with units of measure and it's not helped by shrinkflation constantly changing pack sizes.

I don't see this as an excuse, and nor would you if you knew the amount of data science the supermarkets plough into making us part with our cash. If the shelf-talker labels were created by a minimum-wage shelf-stacker I would have sympathy, but what you see is down to a skilled and expensive marketing team with spreadsheets left, right and centre and the calculations are largely automated.

Steve_L

Even the most expensive & sophisticated systems have to be programmed by humans and then double-checked by more equally fallible humans.

Mars Climate Orbiter. Ariane 5 flight 501. Child support system. Soviet gas pipeline explosion. Heathrow terminal 5 luggage handling system. Mariner 1.

Rosa_Damascena

Steve_L said:

Even the most expensive & sophisticated systems have to be programmed by humans and then double-checked by more equally fallible humans.

Mars Climate Orbiter. Ariane 5 flight 501. Child support system. Soviet gas pipeline explosion. Heathrow terminal 5 luggage handling system. Mariner 1.

The Home Office, UK Border Force, Post Office.....the list goes on. The point is that accuracy is part of their job and they are not on NMW.