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

Garfield_The_Cat2

Please be careful that you aren't misled by this offer.

The problem with this offer is that in the smallprint (VERY small) it states that the free item - item number 4 then - applies to the "cheapest" one.
HOWEVER, a normal, reasonable shopper would expect this to apply to the same product, or same range of products, because each item in the frozen section is individually labelled "4 for 3". For example, if I buy 4 boxes of Magnum Classic Ice Cream Sticks for £5.75, I'm expecting to pay for only 3 boxes, a saving of £5.75 then. And this would indeed be the case IF I'm not buying any other frozen offer products.

The problems start - and this is where shoppers are being obviously misled IMO - when multiple frozen offer items are put into the shopper's trolly. So, continuing the above example, if I add, say, 4 frozen curries at, say, £4 each (thinking I'm getting the 4th one free), 4 boxes of frozen chicken wings at, say, £5 each ( because the 4th one is free, isn't it??), and then 4 packets of frozen peas at, say, 80p each. 

But at the till, Tesco's are not giving me discounts of £5.75, £4, £5 and 80p respectively....they are only discounting 4 x 80p for those 16 items - i.e. the "cheapest item is free" applies to ALL frozen products in your trolley, not the range of products (of which you have just bought 4 each)....and the 4 cheapest items of those 16 in the trolley are the 4 packets of frozen peas.

If you still aren't convinced that this offer is "misleading" - and therefore illegal btw under current Consumer Protection law - then please consider this:

In the above example, if I get to the till and tell the cashier that I want to pay for my trolley items in individual batches of 4, i.e pay & get a receipt, first for the 4 boxes of magnums. Then pay and get another receipt for the 4 curries. Then pay her for the 4 boxes of chicken wings & get another separate receipt. Then finally do the same with the peas. For the exact same trolley of shopping, I've now managed to increase my total savings from the £3.20 Tesco were giving me originally (i.e. 4 x 80p, for one payment and one receipt) to a whopping £15.55 (using 4 separate payments, 4 receipts). And it's the exact same trolley of items!! I've just paid in a different manner, which allowed me to get the "proper" discount that I was anticipating when I bought the items in the first place.

But how many shoppers are going to be canny (and awkward) enough to do that? Hardly anyone I reckon, because they were all expecting the £15.55 discount to be applied at the till anyway, not just a tiny £3.20 discount they ended up being given because of the offer smallprint. That cannot be right hey.

dealyboy

Garfield_The_Cat2 said:

Please be careful that you aren't misled by this offer.

The problem with this offer is that in the smallprint (VERY small) it states that the free item - item number 4 then - applies to the "cheapest" one.
HOWEVER, a normal, reasonable shopper would expect this to apply to the same product, or same range of products, because each item in the frozen section is individually labelled "4 for 3". For example, if I buy 4 boxes of Magnum Classic Ice Cream Sticks for £5.75, I'm expecting to pay for only 3 boxes, a saving of £5.75 then. And this would indeed be the case IF I'm not buying any other frozen offer products.

The problems start - and this is where shoppers are being obviously misled IMO - when multiple frozen offer items are put into the shopper's trolly. So, continuing the above example, if I add, say, 4 frozen curries at, say, £4 each (thinking I'm getting the 4th one free), 4 boxes of frozen chicken wings at, say, £5 each ( because the 4th one is free, isn't it??), and then 4 packets of frozen peas at, say, 80p each. 

But at the till, Tesco's are not giving me discounts of £5.75, £4, £5 and 80p respectively....they are only discounting 4 x 80p for those 16 items - i.e. the "cheapest item is free" applies to ALL frozen products in your trolley, not the range of products (of which you have just bought 4 each)....and the 4 cheapest items of those 16 in the trolley are the 4 packets of frozen peas.

If you still aren't convinced that this offer is "misleading" - and therefore illegal btw under current Consumer Protection law - then please consider this:

In the above example, if I get to the till and tell the cashier that I want to pay for my trolley items in individual batches of 4, i.e pay & get a receipt, first for the 4 boxes of magnums. Then pay and get another receipt for the 4 curries. Then pay her for the 4 boxes of chicken wings & get another separate receipt. Then finally do the same with the peas. For the exact same trolley of shopping, I've now managed to increase my total savings from the £3.20 Tesco were giving me originally (i.e. 4 x 80p, for one payment and one receipt) to a whopping £15.55 (using 4 separate payments, 4 receipts). And it's the exact same trolley of items!! I've just paid in a different manner, which allowed me to get the "proper" discount that I was anticipating when I bought the items in the first place.

But how many shoppers are going to be canny (and awkward) enough to do that? Hardly anyone I reckon, because they were all expecting the £15.55 discount to be applied at the till anyway, not just a tiny £3.20 discount they ended up being given because of the offer smallprint. That cannot be right hey.

Well me now ... thankyou for giving us a tip.

I think the cheapest item is normally the free one of four, but your point is well made when considering several different 'fours'.

la531983

Not really, if I bought four totally different bottles of wine (or any other type of product) where one is free I would always expect the cheapest to be free, its been pretty standard promo pricing for as long as I remember.

Tucosalamanca

Garfield_The_Cat2 said:

Please be careful that you aren't misled by this offer.

The problem with this offer is that in the smallprint (VERY small) it states that the free item - item number 4 then - applies to the "cheapest" one.
HOWEVER, a normal, reasonable shopper would expect this to apply to the same product, or same range of products, because each item in the frozen section is individually labelled "4 for 3". For example, if I buy 4 boxes of Magnum Classic Ice Cream Sticks for £5.75, I'm expecting to pay for only 3 boxes, a saving of £5.75 then. And this would indeed be the case IF I'm not buying any other frozen offer products.

The problems start - and this is where shoppers are being obviously misled IMO - when multiple frozen offer items are put into the shopper's trolly. So, continuing the above example, if I add, say, 4 frozen curries at, say, £4 each (thinking I'm getting the 4th one free), 4 boxes of frozen chicken wings at, say, £5 each ( because the 4th one is free, isn't it??), and then 4 packets of frozen peas at, say, 80p each. 

But at the till, Tesco's are not giving me discounts of £5.75, £4, £5 and 80p respectively....they are only discounting 4 x 80p for those 16 items - i.e. the "cheapest item is free" applies to ALL frozen products in your trolley, not the range of products (of which you have just bought 4 each)....and the 4 cheapest items of those 16 in the trolley are the 4 packets of frozen peas.

If you still aren't convinced that this offer is "misleading" - and therefore illegal btw under current Consumer Protection law - then please consider this:

In the above example, if I get to the till and tell the cashier that I want to pay for my trolley items in individual batches of 4, i.e pay & get a receipt, first for the 4 boxes of magnums. Then pay and get another receipt for the 4 curries. Then pay her for the 4 boxes of chicken wings & get another separate receipt. Then finally do the same with the peas. For the exact same trolley of shopping, I've now managed to increase my total savings from the £3.20 Tesco were giving me originally (i.e. 4 x 80p, for one payment and one receipt) to a whopping £15.55 (using 4 separate payments, 4 receipts). And it's the exact same trolley of items!! I've just paid in a different manner, which allowed me to get the "proper" discount that I was anticipating when I bought the items in the first place.

But how many shoppers are going to be canny (and awkward) enough to do that? Hardly anyone I reckon, because they were all expecting the £15.55 discount to be applied at the till anyway, not just a tiny £3.20 discount they ended up being given because of the offer smallprint. That cannot be right hey.

This applies to almost every multi-deal ever, it's nothing new. Cheapest items are always the 'free' ones.

I don't feel misled, if retailers had to honour the deal as you would like it, they would either not run the promotion or would severely limit the number of items per purchase.

Personally, I get two deliveries a week from Tesco.
Each shop will have frozen items of similar value, so that I can maximise the savings. 
Even then, it's not straightforward as some items have been inflated in price for the promotion.

You're gaming the system, the retailers will tolerate it but don't expect it to be easy.

Garfield_The_Cat2

Yeh, personally I think it's scandalous that Tesco can get away with offers like this - IMO it's blatantly been designed to ecourage shoppers to buy more of their produce, whilst at the same time not giving them the savings at the till that they were anticipating.

Say you stock up the freezer so buy 4 of your favourite frozen pizzas - Goodfella's Takeaway Chicken & Bacon BBQ, costing £5 each, thinking you're saving a whole fiver because they're on "4 for 3"... but then you think "ooo, I best get some garlic bread with that - 2 frozen baguettes for 89p - and, oh no!! you've inadvertently just cost yourself £4.11.

Unless you realise exactly how the offer works - in which case you'd first pay for the 4 pizzas separately, get a receipt. THEN pay for the garlic bread separately, get another receipt.
I'm telling you, there'll be thousands of shoppers caught out by this offer - once you start adding things like cheap frozen veg (or frozen garlic baguettes, for example) to your trolley, you could potentially decimate your potential savings on this offer....unless you're then canny enough to separately pay for the (more expensive) batches of 4 items you've bought.

molerat

I remember years ago that Boots used to stack the items and you would get number 4, number 8 etc free.  

I am certainly into gaming their system, they had similar a few weeks back on cleaning items and I made it work for me.

Garfield_The_Cat2

Considering they made around £2.5bn in profit last financial year, you betcha I'll be "gaming their system"

Paulis

This tends to apply to all the 3 for 2 type offers they do. It certainly applies to the cheapest one if buying the likes of vitamins or those mini toiletries for going on holiday

GrumpyDil

Have to be honest. I am that person who deliberately puts shopping through in batches when using this type of offer. 

YoungBlueEyes

I don't know if I would say it's illegal, but these offers (of whatever variety, in whichever supermarket) are never really designed with the customer in mind.

I would be the awkward s0d that buys them in batches to get the most out of the offer too. And if the person behind me was buying the 4 magnums and 4 curries etc I'd tell them to split them so they get the most out of it too. 

MattMattMattUK

Garfield_The_Cat2 said:

Considering they made around £2.5bn in profit last financial year, you betcha I'll be "gaming their system"

Their overall margin was 5.66% in the last year, although their margins on food retail are thought to be around 2.8%, with higher margins on clothing, electrical and non-retail products. Whilst £2.5 billion might seem a large amount the margins are not. This idea that retailers should make little little or no profit needs to go, we have some of the cheapest food in the EU (PPP), we are not being screwed over.