Tesco's "4 for 3" offer on ALL frozen products - TAKE CARE!!

pumpkin89

sarah1972 said:

Never seen that before. It’s always been the lowest item is free in all my years of shopping. It always says that on the t&c’s to. 

What I've described is the lowest item free, from each group of 4 items.  What OP described is the customer is being penalised when they buy more than 4 items.

sarah1972

pumpkin89 said:

sarah1972 said:

Never seen that before. It’s always been the lowest item is free in all my years of shopping. It always says that on the t&c’s to. 

What I've described is the lowest item free, from each group of 4 items.  What OP described is the customer is being penalised when they buy more than 4 items.

No, you said. “If you bought 12 items on 4 for 3, you would get the 4th, 8th and 12th free.”

Thats not the case, if you bought 12 items you would get the 3 lowest costing ones free, not the 4th, 8th and 12th item that has been scanned, 

jon81uk

pumpkin89 said:

sarah1972 said:

MarzipanCrumble said:

LOL - why s anyone surprised by this? 

I agree. It’s always been like this since these type of deals came out. 

It has always stated that the cheapest item is free so I am amazed that people are surprised by this. 

In most retailers the till works it out so that you can't get a better deal by splitting the transaction.  If you bought 12 items on 4 for 3, you would get the 4th, 8th and 12th free.

I've only known Boots do this with the Christmas gift offers where they rank them by price and give every third one free.
Pretty much every other standard offer where it just states cheapest free like this just gives all the cheapest ones for free.

vacheron

The OP makes a very important point which it seems a lot (not all) responders are missing.

If you buy 16 items, all on "4 for 3" offers" and 12 items cost £10 and 4 cost £1, the checkout will automatically give the 4 lowest items free so you would save a total of £4.

However, if you ran the 4 x £1 items through first, paid, and then ran the 12 x £10 items through on a separate transaction, you would save a total of £31. 

Hardly fair that someone is saving an extra £27 over someone who is buying the exact same items, purely based on the way they choose to pay!

jon81uk

vacheron said:

The OP makes a very important point which it seems a lot (not all) responders are missing.

If you buy 16 items, all on "4 for 3" offers" and 12 items cost £10 and 4 cost £1, the checkout will automatically give the 4 lowest items free so you would save a total of £4.

However, if you ran the 4 x £1 items through first, paid, and then ran the 12 x £10 items through on a separate transaction, you would save a total of £31. 

Hardly fair that someone is saving an extra £27 over someone who is buying the exact same items, purely based on the way they choose to pay!

I don’t think people are missing the point, just that most people do understand that it’s the cheapest item(s) free and therefore when buying eight items it will be the cheapest two for free. That’s not news to me.

pumpkin89

jon81uk said:

I've only known Boots do this with the Christmas gift offers where they rank them by price and give every third one free.
Pretty much every other standard offer where it just states cheapest free like this just gives all the cheapest ones for free.

Waitrose and M&S both do it properly, as did Sainsbury's back in the days when they did more multibuy offers.  Clearly I'm out of touch with other retailers but good to know!

pumpkin89

sarah1972 said:

No, you said. “If you bought 12 items on 4 for 3, you would get the 4th, 8th and 12th free.”

Thats not the case, if you bought 12 items you would get the 3 lowest costing ones free, not the 4th, 8th and 12th item that has been scanned, 

I didn't mean the 4th, 8th and 12th in order of scanning.  I meant it takes the most expensive 4 items, groups them as one offer and gives you the 4th (cheapest from that group) free.  It then moves on to the next 4 most expensive items, gives you the cheapest of those (8th most expensive overall) free, and so on.  It doesn't just lump all 12 items together and pick the 3 cheapest.

saajan_12

I think the emphasis on "cheapest free" in the OP is misleading people. The point really is that its being grouped together as one JOINT 4 for 3 offer rather than individual offers on the same / similar products. 

As an example, there's been a fairly long running 3 for 2 on several cosmetics in Boots. It seems these work on each brand separately, so 3for2 on Maybelline is separate to 3for2 on L'Oreal. The downside is you can't mix and match with say 1 L'Oreal product and 2 from Maybelline and still benefit from the offer. The upside is if you bought 3 from each, with one brand being cheaper, then you'd still get a more proportionate discount. However this is made clear by the signs saying "3for2 L'Oreal" etc and besides you're less likely to buy cosmetics in large volume. 

With Tesco, you're more likely to buy in volume, and if the signs for frozen curries aren't near the signs for garlic bread, you wouldn't necessarily know its one joint offer. 

Miser1964

Particularly hard-hitting on online shoppers who could well have a mix of prices for frozen items and can't pay in batches. The maximum saving would seems to be 4 * Birds Eye 30 Cod Fish Fingers 840G at £7.75 each.

sarah1972

pumpkin89 said:

sarah1972 said:

No, you said. “If you bought 12 items on 4 for 3, you would get the 4th, 8th and 12th free.”

Thats not the case, if you bought 12 items you would get the 3 lowest costing ones free, not the 4th, 8th and 12th item that has been scanned, 

I didn't mean the 4th, 8th and 12th in order of scanning.  I meant it takes the most expensive 4 items, groups them as one offer and gives you the 4th (cheapest from that group) free.  It then moves on to the next 4 most expensive items, gives you the cheapest of those (8th most expensive overall) free, and so on.  It doesn't just lump all 12 items together and pick the 3 cheapest.

No it’s doesn’t, as others have said too. Let’s agree to disagree.