bargain hunters beware ASDA reduced BOGOFs

MarcD_2

The BOGOF reduced rule in ASDA is silly. Sainsburys and Tesco have managed to program their tills to still apply the BOGOF, but at the reduced price which is still better than nothing.

Other offers in my local Sainsburys such as buy 2 for £X or buy 2 save £X still take the original offer amount off even in they are reduced - you can end up being paid to take items away as the offer amount is more than the cost of the reduced items!

GWaites

The reason why it won't do any multibuy savings is that the tills are only programmed to deduct a certain amount if X quantity of a product is bought in one transaction.

When a product is being reduced on fresh products, it is given a different barcode. This barcode is only recognised as (department) reduced. For example, a fresh loaf would come through as "Bread Reduced." The system doesn't recognise this barcode as one of the barcodes that apply within the multibuy savings.

Another thing is the system is only programmed to deduct a certain amount for that multisave. So it wouldn't recognise that with it being a reduced product, it would mean the multisave to be lower.

In a way, it would be ideal that reduced products would be included within multibuys. That way they'd get rid of it quicker!

ben500

If the item states bogof on the packaging the offer must be applied whether reduced or not unless of course as in the poster aboves instance their is point of sale advising so and even in that case it's questionable that a case of misleading advertising/pricing may apply (If I'm right you are talking about sommerfield here) in Tesco for instance if this occurred it would fall within their refund and replace policy but they like others have said have sorted this issue.

If it bothers you that this is not happening you can remedy it by alerting local trading standards, or alternatively make a habit of selecting such items and then immediately returning them to the customer services desk requesting a refund as you felt you have been mislead by their point of sale, after a few weeks they will get the message. Or in some cases ban you!

Rave

If the products the OP was referring to had a BOGOF sticker on it that was not crossed out, then ASDA would be comitting an offence if they did not apply the BOGOF at the till because it had been reduced. I'm sure they would do their 'refund of the difference + £2 voucher' if you took them to the CS desk; however I agree that less savvy consumers are potentially being ripped off bigtime by this.

It's even IMO not legal for them to reduce the product and refuse to honour the BOGOF even if they have removed the BOGOF sticker unless they reduce the product to less than half the price it was originally. If you put a 'reduced', or 'sale' sticker on a product it must have been sold at a higher price previously- and the BOGOF would mean that this was not the case. Whether that's ever been tested in court, I don't know.

Contains_Mild_Peril

Morrisons are also bad for selling BOGOF goods at only slightly reduced prices, and since reduced items are excluded from BOGOF and other multisave offers, they often effectively charge more more "reduced" goods than for fresher ones! When I mentioned this anomaly to a shop assistant at my local brach, he admitted it was silly, but said they had a policy against reducing goods to less than half price before a certain time of day, regardless of BOGOF offers.
I've heard that Tesco and Sainsbury's have, sadly, corrected the anomaly which used to deduct the full price of one BOGOF item at the checkout, which meant that if they were reduced to half price you'd actually get them free, and if they were reduced to less than half price you'd get them free and save money on the rest of your shopping. I once used this ruse to purchase a big basket of shopping from Tesco for 16p! The reduced items were freezable, so nothing went to waste.
The good news is that BOGOF still applies to Tesco and Sainsbury's reduced items, but now only the actual price of one item is deducted. BOGOF also applies to reduced items in Iceland and Somerfield.
While Somerfield BOGOFs only save the price of one item (the lower priced if different), I did find a multisave offer (don't know if this works everywhere, it did in Dumfries) which got me some free sesame burger baps. They were originally priced at 75p per pack (6) or 2 for £1. They were reduced to 18p, and when I bought 2 packs, the till deducted the 50p which would be saved in the 2-for-£1 deal on full priced ones. Since the rolls only cost me 36p, I got them for free and saved 14p on my other shopping!

Ben, I'm not surprised you were disgusted by the very mouldy cheese. It's unlikely you'd find that much mould if most of it had grown after the cheese was reduced. However, cheese is one of those unpredictable foods which can go mouldy long before its BB date or stay tolerably fresh long afterwards.
I'd be wary of buying reduced chickens to freeze though. Goods are normally only reduced to such low prices shortly before closing time, which is normally late in the evening. If it is the chicken's use by date, that leaves probably only a couple hours after getting it home during which it can, theoretically, be consumed safely. Since defrosting a chicken in the fridge takes many hours, this means that a chicken which is bought late on its use-by date then frozen is, by the time it is thawed, effectively going to be at least half a day past its use-by date. This may be an insignificant amount of time for many other types of food, but is very significant in the case of uncooked meat/poultry. If I buy whole chicken reduced to clear on its UB date, I cook it the same evening, even if it's not for immediate consumption.

RAMBLER

I bought two ready meals the other day - reduced, but on special from Tesco - in the end only ended up saving 10p. What I should of done is left their badly reduced item alone and bought two good date meals, but you live and learn...