Coventry City Household support fund voucher 2 April 2022 at 10:42AM in Praise, vent & warnings 3 replies 292 views

fangoose

mum received this last week in the post. Took a while for me to manage to get the voucher. Anyone heard of this before?
My thoughts are how complicated is this, I wonder how many will go unclaimed. AND
why ban alcohol, petrol, tobacco, stamps , lottery and phone top ups? if this is how someone chooses to spend their money, shouldn't they be allowed to - especially if they don't normally shop in these places because of the cost.

giraffe69

If households are being supported by taxpayers money it doesn't seem to me that not allowing it to be spent on fags and booze is unreasonable.

p00hsticks

fangoose said:

why ban alcohol, petrol, tobacco, stamps , lottery and phone top ups? if this is how someone chooses to spend their money, shouldn't they be allowed to - especially if they don't normally shop in these places because of the cost.

Those are pretty standard exclusions for supermarket vouchers - nothing to do with whether it's being funded by taxpayers or not.

I can't remember the reason for all of them, but I think alcohol is on there because in Scotland there are rules around the minimum price (which is why you often see Scotland getting different offers to England and Wales in shops like LIDL, for example). Stamps, phone top ups and possibly lottery tickets are excluded because they are considered as pseudo-cash transactions I think.

I'm not familiar with the eVouchers scheme, but I would imagine there is nothing to stop the recipient just using the voucher to buy basic groceries (or even towards their energy bills, which appears to be the motivation for issuing the voucher in the first place) and then using the money saved to buy extra booze and fags if they're that way inclined.

The words about looking a gift horse in the mouth spring to mind.....

Lip_Stick

p00hsticks said:

fangoose said:

why ban alcohol, petrol, tobacco, stamps , lottery and phone top ups? if this is how someone chooses to spend their money, shouldn't they be allowed to - especially if they don't normally shop in these places because of the cost.

Those are pretty standard exclusions for supermarket vouchers - nothing to do with whether it's being funded by taxpayers or not.

I can't remember the reason for all of them, but I think alcohol is on there because in Scotland there are rules around the minimum price (which is why you often see Scotland getting different offers to England and Wales in shops like LIDL, for example). Stamps, phone top ups and possibly lottery tickets are excluded because they are considered as pseudo-cash transactions I think.

I'm not familiar with the eVouchers scheme, but I would imagine there is nothing to stop the recipient just using the voucher to buy basic groceries (or even towards their energy bills, which appears to be the motivation for issuing the voucher in the first place) and then using the money saved to buy extra booze and fags if they're that way inclined.

The words about looking a gift horse in the mouth spring to mind.....

There's exclusions for offers in England too, something about the price not able to go lower than the duty.