Clearer supermarket prices for all!

Why do we assume that people need someone else to decide for them whether or not they can buy an offer? Surely they can decide for themselves. Those who can benefit from an offer should do so if they choose to, those who won’t benefit simply buy something more appropriate. As you can tell, I believe people should be allowed to exercise freedom of choice and not have the State (or anyone else) dictate how they should behave.

You and I can work out whether an offer is good value for money even if we are not given the unit price for the special offer. Some are not so fortunate and – as I have said before – we should consider the disabled and the elderly.

I have spoken to people who have worked in supermarkets and been told that making pricing difficult to understand is a deliberate ploy to encourage customers to buy more and spend more money.

I have no problem with supermarkets competing on prices but making it difficult for customers to understand pricing is not on. This is a real issue for many customers who are struggling to make ends meet or just don’t want to be cheated.

I have no problem with condemning shops that mislead with pricing. My issue is when we seem to underestimate the ability of most people to make judgements on information and offers that are presented clearly. I don’t see that disabled or elderly people should be singled out as having lost these faculties.
What really worries me is that there is some complacency that simple arithmetic tasks, and basic judgements, are somehow too great a challenge for us and we should dumb everything down to avoid using these basic skills . There must be something fundamentally wrong with our education system if these “life skills” are not acquired at an early age.
Education should address the practical issues we will face in life – including finances.

Lack of numeracy was one of my greatest concerns during my career in science teaching in universities. I produced teaching materials for use by colleagues and for self-help, both on paper and online. I worked with support services to identify how they could provide tailored face-to-face support for struggling students on a confidential basis. I noticed that Greek students tended to be much better than the average home or overseas students at handling numbers and was told that they had not been allowed to use calculators at school. No doubt there are other reasons for the marked decline in numeracy since the 70s. Scientists and engineers who handle numbers on a regular basis will improve their skills through practice, albeit later in life than their elders.

Not everyone shares our concern that a fair proportion of the population is not good at arithmetic. Some could say that numeracy is not very relevant to life in the 21st century. I don’t agree, but at least I now acknowledge that it is not necessary to learn to touch-type to work at a keyboard.

Having studied the issue of supermarket pricing for years, I believe that the majority of people do struggle. I don’t believe that we should force people to try to improve their numeracy by making supermarket pricing more complicated. As people get older they often lose skills and it is predicted that 135 people will be living with dementia by 2050. Not all disabilities are mental, but let’s not make life any harder than it is for the disabled.

All the major supermarkets have agreed to improve how they show their prices and hopefully the latest petition will achieve more in the fight for fair treatment of customers.

I shop in Tesco and if there is a member of staff nearby I ask them to compare the offers and tell me which product is best value for money when special offers are involved. I can do mental arithmetic but I don’t see why I should have to, or anyone should need a calculator to help compare prices.

Thanks Wavechange, I’ve passed on your feedback 🙂 Oh, and the special offers campaign is new!

It does not matter if the customer is “cerebrally challenged” or not. Deliberately marking prices in a way that confuse in a no no.

Maybe I am ignorant but I cannot imagine what ‘fit balls’ are. 🙂

At that price it seems unlikely they are fat balls for feeding birds.

Made my day.. they are those big inflatable balls used in gyms for activity such as crunches (a type of sit up) and other exercises. Can also be used as a chair if you want to engage your core and keep back straight when sitting.

They come in different sizes depending on the size of the user – e.g. 65cm, 75cm etc.

Tesco decided to price them by the metre (^_^) – I reckon some junior in the office is having a laugh.

This week I spotted a pack of 16 toilet rolls at £8.97 – or £8.97 per 100 sheets

Thanks Adam. It’s obvious really. 🙂

The toilet roll you mention must have very thick sheets.

Tesco are certainly living up to their slogan. I think it’s something like “Very little help”.

I find Twitter is kind of satisfying – I Tweet @Tesco from in store (useful free wifi) with photos of offending items – they always claim to be “shocked” and “surprised” – hilarious!

The balls should have been priced per litre, I think. I have seen toilet rolls priced per square metre – I have difficulty relating that to their use.

There is a culture generally that I dislike – explanations that include:
– it was a mistake that we do not normally make
– we have so many products a few mistakes do occur
I wonder how many of these “mistakes” work in the customer’s favour?
But the worst I find is “lessons will be learned” – repeated so often that clearly they have not (and probably never will be).
Some do try to treat us well – we have returned a watch for the second time because the strap has failed due to poor design. It is well out of guarantee, but the retailer is sending it back to the manufacturer to, hopefully, be sorted. They also told me this was not the first failure of this type they had dealt with. This is John Lewis – that’s why people shop there, isn’t it? Watch this space.

But even when pricing a bag of veggies on the label, albeit in small print, is the per kilo price

They are legally obliged to have a weighing scale available for customer use, so that Items which are priced per unit can be weighed for comparison purposes. Of course, we then have do some mental arithmetic or use a calculator to work out the best value, so we are back to where we started. Realistically however, certain items are best priced per unit, eg cabbages, cauliflowers, melons, lettuce and cucumbers. Note that you will not see half cucumbers on sale these days – they are cucumber portions – the reason ? Trading Standards have deemed that it is virtually impossible to be certain that a cucumber has been cut precisely in half – safer from the risk of prosecution to call it a cucumber portion. Just a snippet you might like to know.