MSE News: Waitrose to scrap "confusing" offer

I had a wonderful 1st year when our store opened as multi buys worked at whole amount on reduced items. One day I had a basketful and had to quickly buy some washing powder to avoid a negative total.
Nowadays not so good. I find most of the staff quite snooty and they seem more interested in chatting about what they did last night than to serve you. I found Pick Your Own to be brilliant.
The only shining light in mine is the butcher who I know by name and always gives me a good price.
Goodbye Waitrose Hello ALdi

bakerk wrote: »

I don't know if I'm being daft, but I hope someone can help me. I do a weekly on line order and the Pick Your Own has never been confusing at all! I have received my new vouchers in the post, but cannot see any code to enter online when I complete my order. There is a code for the money off a total bill, but on the vouchers for individual products there is just a bar code. Am I missing something, or does this mean I can only use these vouchers in store? Because if that's the case I'm going to be a bit annoyed! Can anyone help?

I would suggest phoning customer service tel 0800 188 884 or 01344 82 5232

Vote with your feet ?
I considered not using my card, but then my vouchers will likely become a lot more random and therefore useless. I did a back-of-postage-stamp calculation - if I get a set of vouchers as useful as the last lot within three months then I'm marginally better off under the new system, So we'll see...

As for the confusion. Very poor market research fed to very poor decision makers. I'm surprised that they've taken this retrograde step, maybe they're heading the way of M&S and panicking which is a shame as I always liked the idea of the shareholder staff model

PYO served me pretty well as I managed to add most items I buy every time I visit. Waitrose is my primary supermarket.

Vouchers won't be anywhere near my previous savings. £3 off Cat litter won't save me as much as 20% off when I buy at least 5 bags per month or more. Just ordered 10 online and will order another 10 before end of February. Also voucher can only be used in shop, there's no code on it to use it online.

I got my vouchers, put them in a bag and totaly forgot about them. But I never forget to use MyWaitrose card because I'm asked about it. So there's a big chance I will forget to use vouchers and Waitrose will stop losing money on my shopping.

Vouchers I got are pretty similar to what I buy in Waitrose:
£3 off cat litter
£2 off salads
£1.50 off soup but I was saving £0.79 on every soup box and was buying a few each time.
£3 off cat food
£2 off sea food, I was getting more with 20% off on just one item.

There's Morrison across the street from Waitrose, so I may get acquainted with their salad range, go back to ordering cat litter online or buy it while passing through Germany where it's much cheaper. I will certainly lose motivation to visit Waitrose. No other supermarkets nearby.

The 10% £4 off £40 vouchers are of little value when most of the things Waitrose sell (with a few honourable exceptions) are around 50% more expensive than their Aldi and Lidl equivalents!

More and more people have discovered that (and that the quality's much the same, very often identical and from the same supplier), and that's probably why they're dopping the scheme - they simply can't afford to run it any more because they've lost so much trade.

Which? has just named Aldi as Britain's top supermarket (M&S 2nd, Lidl 3rd) with the following very telling comments. Waitrose looks to be on a downward slide it will never recover from, and I doubt dropping schemes like this is going to help it, from the comments above:

"It’s a return to the top for Aldi as the nation’s favourite supermarket. The discounter has wowed customers with its value for money and pushed Waitrose off the top spot for the first time in three years.

Budget supermarkets are heaping pressure onto more traditional stores - Aldi and Lidl have both increased their market share over the past 12 months and shaken up the top of our table.

Waitrose, which has come top all but once since our survey first launched in 2007, slips down to fourth - its worst ever ranking. Despite gaining four and five-star ratings in other areas, it managed only two stars for value for money; in contrast to the five boasted by Aldi."