Misleading unit prices on Tesco’s website

Perhaps Tesco’s pricing irregularities are a distraction from something more sinister — they have sneaked a smaller diameter cardboard tube into their Luxury Soft own-brand toilet rolls! I made the mistake of buying a multi-pack of 9 only to find they would not fit my holder. I wonder if they tested them on their own-brand holder which they sell on Tesco Direct.

Sainsburys reduced their tube width two years ago but kindly marked the packaging to warn users.

If anyone from Andrex or Cushelle is reading this, please don’t ever change!

Usually, just considering diameter, the bigger the tube the fewer the sheets. However, for the ‘luxury’ or quilted tissues, a smaller diameter tube is required to carry a worthwhile number of individual sheets without making the whole roll too bulky to fit the holder or to fit between the holding bar and the wall. Toilet tissue width is a different issue and budget loo rolls – especially those sold in pound shops and other secondary retailers – often economise by having a narrower roll [as well as a bigger tube in most cases] so the cost-saving is deceptive. Personally, I regard Andrex as the brand standard and I judge all rivals against it in terms of sheet size, thickness and strength, tube and roll diameter, number of sheets per roll, absorbency performance, sheet perforation performance, and price. After a lifetime’s exhausting research and numerous unsatisfactory outcomes, I have yet to find a better product.

John, I have to take (t)issue with you regarding the reasons for smaller tube sizes. Tesco states in its website description that it reduces the cost of transporting the product and proffers no advantages for the user. Indeed. the thickness of the Tesco roll has shrunk in proportion to the new tube size so its ‘Luxury’ does not infer any extra cushioning or bulk.

However, I fully agree with you that Andrex sets the standard for quality and quantity, the Classic White proving to be much softer, more opaque and no thinner than Tesco’s Luxury Soft when comparing sheets laid side by side. It also meets all the requirements for width-to-wall space and fitting any holder as do other standard tube rolls, cushioned or otherwise.

To convince myself, I have just compared a roll of Andrex Classic White to the Tesco Luxury Soft and found that the latter has only 220 sheets (27.28m roll length) compared with Andrex’s 241 sheets (29.88m length). Admittedly, the Andrex is 6mm narrower but the total area of paper is still larger than that of its rival.

As ever, it’s down to price and practicality: if one prefers a cheaper, own-brand, toilet tissue then they should stick with it — and probably will.

Take a look at Aldi’s Saxon brand. Triple layers, Aloe Vera, £3.49 for 9 rolls, although it is 180 sheets per roll. It works out at 0.215p per sheet.

It feels better than any other toilet paper and is about the same price as most of the rest.

You have obviously have a degree in Business Studies, Stephen. Taking the same course, I took a look at the MySupermarket price comparison site and found that Waitrose have a special 2 for £7 offer on Andrex Classic White 9 roll packs. This equates to £3.50 /9 rolls/241 sheets = 0.16p per sheet.
Do you know if Aldi have followed Tesco and Sainsburys by reducing the tube diameter on their own-brand products? For me and many others, any savings made by buying cheaper paper would have to go towards buying a new holder, as I moaned about in my previous post.

Andrex toilet rolls were made narrower some time ago. At one time the roll would just fit into a wooden holder. Now it is comparatively easy to get a finger in beside the roll to push the spring fitting into the holder. I’d say they are around a centimetre narrower.

You don’t need to bother doing new tests, Matt — just copy and paste the above comments!

After discovering that the number of sheets on kitchen rolls is now less than it used to be – from 100 per roll down to 70 I now see that some shops are offering them with 50 sheets only. A sneaky way of raising prices ! I haven’t checked loo rolls but what’s the betting that they too are smaller in number of sheets?

I have an easy fix for them that requires no work on their part, stop shirking products! Or is that too simple?

The law you’re getting into here, is in my experience an ass.

I took similar offence with an Apple and Blueberry porridge due to the very small quantities of both and felt that the name was misleading and that it should be porridge with apple and blueberry.

Here is part of the reply I got from TS …

Under food labelling law, historically, flavour identifiers in the name of a food (or other description) refer to “characterising flavours, so yes you could use “apple and blueberry” in the manner you describe, in particular if the fruit content is from an extract. This is particularly the case in soft drinks. (but the flavours would still need to be the main characteristic!)

If it were a pie and there was more to the “characterisation” than the flavour or aroma then I would expect to find propper apples and blueberry!

Lastly the letters ed make a surprising difference – an “apple and blueberry flavour drink” need have NO apple or blueberry in at all, but only the characterising flavours, but an “apple and blueberry flavoured drink” MUST contain flavours from the real thing

lastly lastly (yes I KNOW) if there are equal amounts of apple and blueberry, then the blueberry flavour will dominate and it should be “blueberry and apple”

They even agreed that if only one molecule was enough to give the flavour they’d be quite within their rights to use that 🙁

So as I said , the law is an ass.

I was going to say they’re known for that tactic and they will have been an upto somewhere around the 30%. I remember during the Woolworths closing down sales huge 70% off signs with a very small upto, I only managed to spot greetings cards with a 70% discount everything else was no more than 30% most between 10% & 20%

And yes they were on Watchdog a few weeks ago. But I guess as they’re not doing anything illegal there’s very little that can be done, other than boycott then. Sadly they’re are no good laws about being underhand. They’re probably not even breaching the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Practices 2008, although they probably are breaking the spirit of it. 🙁

This is a practice that Tesco use a lot to con their customers,they frequently double the price then put it on “offer” at the usual price.better off shopping elsewhere.

I like that you tried, but the simple truth is Tesco just don’t care. I’ve picked them up on what I would consider to be dodgy practices several times and each time I just get corporate male cow droppings back.

Sometimes I wonder if the people that enter the data are just bored and having a laugh at the customers expense the number and type of inconsistencies and mistakes you can find.

Maybe their CEO should be asked to do his own convo to explain their contempt for the customer.

Just in the last two weeks I found another such example in my local store. 183g Tesco Finest Coleslaw sat next on the shelf to 300g Tesco Coleslaw in a container of almost identical size and shape, and at a temptingly similar price (74p to 67p as I recall). Just to add to the misleading impression, the price per 100g on the Finest Coleslaw label was given as 18p per 100g, cheaper than the alternative and less than half the true price per 100g.

Naturally the staff say they can do nothing about it, and the labels are still the same two weeks after first bringing it to their attention.

I have also been caught out by similar tactics in all the major supermarkets, despite considering myself a canny shopper. I think this is one possible reason for the increased popularity of budget supermarkets such as Aldi – they simply don’t do special offers of that type nor do they offer Buy One Get One Free. They just offer low prices for good quality products.

The image of the Sunny Raisins on the Tesco website gives the game away, it used to be 18 packets of 14g and is no only 14 packets.

They do seem rather incompetent .

Funnily enough mysupermarket is listing the correct unit prices.

@andrew, Do you think this could be another example of they’d sold a product at one weight then for whatever reason the weight was reduced, i.e. the product shrunk and no one picked up on it?

Regards

No, I don’t think so, they were out by a factor of three. Perhaps someone back at base had got confused by a three-for-the-price-of-whatever offer they were running.

I have lost count of the number of times that that has happened to me Steve. It is a favourite trick of theirs.

It pays to Be Prepared.

Joe, I think you’re worth more than £80 an hour – £80.027 would be more appropriate. I think, judging by Which?’s lack of confidence in British people’s ability to do maths, pricing something to four decimal places would defeat them. Presumable the bananas, carrots and onions are all slightly different sizes, so some would be better value than others. And you can’t pick out the biggest ones on the website like you could in the shop. It’s a tough life. Do you still make Modge at camp?

It is time there was an industry standard of ml or gram.

Tomato ketchup and mayonnaise are sold in both units of measurements so you can’t compare them.

In most cases grams (g) and millilitres (ml) will be nearly interchangeable if the product has a high water content. Vegetable oils and anything with a high oil content (e.g. mayonnaise and other dressings) will differ because oil has a lower density than water.

I think it would make sense to sell everything by weight, so the units are grams (g) and kilograms (kg = 1000 g).

I’d still prefer to buy a litre of milk. It seems to me that solids should be sold by weight, liquids by volume. The difficulty for some might come with those in between, like Alfa’s mayonnaise; put both g and ml on perhaps. Personally I’ve never had a problem with this.

The small bottles of milk contain a pint. I think that is an ancient legislative requirement.

Careful John, or you might reignite the entertaining imperial vs. metric debate 🙂 . I still like pints, miles, and some others in appropriate circumstances.It is interesting to see that Which?, along with many others, still quote car fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. I like that.

Well we still measure road distances in miles and yards [with metric in brackets on some signs like Low Bridge] and once you know that half a litre is a wee bit less than a pint it all makes sense. I think we keep these measurements to foil an invading enemy.

Now that they’ve abolished the Eleven Plus, with its focus on mensuration in the arithmetic paper, I see no justification for these inconsistencies and there should be an international salad dressing and tomato ketchup standard, [differential product density will always outwit the standardisers though irrespective of whether its ml or mg.]

I would like fuel economy in km per kg.

Diesel would not fair so good Wave…….You have a diesel have you not

Its actually a fair idea and much fairer than the mpg or L per 100km

Some products can be sold by volume, but everything can be sold by weight. I have no problem with both units being shown, though it could continue to cause confusion.

When I am baking I don’t measure liquids but put the mixing bowl on the digital scales and pour in the right amount of milk or water. It saves washing up a measuring jug.

Would you want to buy 2.72 kg of milk, buy petrol at £1.43 / kg or emulsion paint by the kg – equivalent to around 0.77 l?

I would be delighted to buy milk, petrol and paint in kg quantities. Taking the example of milk we could have 0.5, 1, 2 and 3 kg bottles, etc as useful quantities for sale. At present, I buy milk in 1.136 litre quantities. 🙁

Obviously unit prices would be shown as the price per kg.

Indeed Wave,,,,,,,,,,,,,,I’d like fuel to be sold per kg
Our propane would look very expensive as its near to 2L per kg
Boy I would really love that
The LPG BB are getting away with murder by selling LPG/Propane at per litre rates…………They buy it per tonne and sell it per litre…….Hows that for a contradiction……….

Imagine the confusion, particularly among older people, if we changed from volume to weight for liquids. Change something we are all used to and it is a recipe for long-term opportunists to make money out of ignorance – as happened with metrication and decimalisation. why on earth change something that works.

Personal preferences DeeKay, I’m with you on that.

Why run the world to suit older people rather than young people who have been taught the metric system?

DK – I don’t think 970mm and 9.7cm are the same. And Tesco would like to inform you that they don’t stock hypochlorite red label and offer Johnnie Walker as a substitute. 🙂

To my knowledge, running the world for anyone has not been suggested at all. For personal use we can use whatever system of measurement we like. if I choose to be 6 ft 1 in, that’s up to me. Officially I will be 1.85(4)m. I have no problem with that either.
We must remember that some, maybe many, older people find it difficult to adapt to systems that are new to them, whether it is electronic ways of communicating, systems of weights and measures, or whatever, and need to respect this. Let us be as helpful as possible.

Older people can find it difficult to adapt to change but look how well many of them have adapted to computers and the internet, once mainly used in universities. I have heard people over 80 enthuse about their tablets, e-readers and smartphones and the chap who gave me a job in 1980 sent me his usual distinctive Christmas card – not as custom printed card but by email. He is 90. Can you imagine a world in which we reject progress because some would find it difficult to adapt? Those of us who can cope can – and I think should – help others make the transition. Of course we should be able to do what we want in our own homes.

Trying to get back to our topic… I recently unearthed a couple of receipts for groceries that I ordered online, more than ten years ago, for my mother who was living alone in the family home. She struggled to carry heavy groceries in her late 70s and in the written account of her life she was effusive about me being able to order via computer and have the groceries delivered to her home 125 miles away. I regret that I did not buy her a computer to give her the independence do the job herself. On each of the Tesco receipts were queries about the pricing and I remember having to make enquires.

I rarely have reason to question prices or unit prices in the local Tesco branch, so why is online pricing a problem?