Do you find Waitrose’s 3 for 2 offers confusing?

In my experience Waitrose are competitive on like-for-like products and on many branded goods. They have a reputation for priciness because they offer a large number of more upmarket groceries, dairy and deli products and some of the more sophisticated cuts of meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. But if you stick to the food you would buy in any other supermarket – and avoid the ‘added value’ lines – your shopping basket price will be as close as makes no difference. The same applies to M&S Food – you don’t have to buy the more flavoursome choices as the plain vanilla ones are very good quality and value. Of course, temptation is a popular weakness and the retailers know how to lead us there.

Quality of food matters as well as price, if you enjoy eating. That doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. Rump is my preferred steak because it has flavour, but buy cheap and it can be like shoe leather. Buy from a reputable shop and it will have both texture and flavour.

I concur with your views of M and S offers. On my first shop at M and S I fell victim to your example. NEVER AGAIN. It was very very confusing at the time and I had to ask a member of the M and S team what was included in the offers and how it worked as all the red labels looked the same. I now spend more time reading those M and S “red” offer labels even cancelling items at the till if I don’t get the discount I was expecting.

Yes, M & S work the system even more sneakily than Tesco or Asda. I’d forgotten about that ‘3 for £10’ trick – very subtle indeed, and now we collect our stuff then grab an assistant and ask them to go through it to check. Wastes the shop’s resources and, again, if everyone did it they’d soon change their policy.

We shop at M&S every week and use their offers when they suit us, which is frequently. We’ve never found any “sneaky” offers, and very rarely found any difficult to understand. There is no 3 for £10 trick that we have seen. An odd genuine mistake maybe, but that is it, and the staff are extremely helpful when putting things right.

Offers on their Sparks card work well; 20% off the normal price of eggs, milk, coffee, tea, sausages, cooked chicken, this week. Every little helps.

Perhaps Waitrose think most of their customers have nothing else to do all day [and to some extent they might be right by all appearances!] . They might also assume – with some justification – that their customers either (a) are more able to work out the best deals than the customers of other shops, or (b) don’t take any notice of the price anyway. I agree with you about Sainsbury’s: shopping there has been at least as pleasurable as going to Waitrose and I think they are quietly creeping into Waitrose’s market position – which might be why Waitrose are getting in a flap.

I don’t enjoy shopping for my bits and pieces in a vast superstore which often involves a longer journey and pushing a trolley round and round miles of elongated corridors and searching for my itemised list of shopping amongst long rows of shelves for it; rather like looking for a needle in a haystack, which only adds to the stress, confusion and fatigue of my fortnightly shopping experience.

Waitrose is my nearest supermarket in both directions so I not only save on petrol getting there, I also enjoy the adequate space and size, the clean and fresh ambiance, and now the ‘free’ coffee even though that involves buying a pastry or cake to accompany it which I will sometimes wrap up in the napkin provided and take home with me for eating later on in the day. If their pricing and offers confuse, why not pop a calculator into your pocket or handbag to assist with the price offers?

We are fortunate to have such a wide choice of places and prices to shop but it’s been my personal experience over the years that food buying in a cheaper store usually results in buying much more than I intended, or even needed and exceeding my original budget.

Could that be one of the many reasons for the high rate of obesity in this country? Food for thought, if not for money being the motto here!

I agree with you, Beryl.

Waitrose respond to a different demographic to that pursued by the “cheaper stores” to which you allude and I think the way they present food reflects that. They don’t seem to major on the aisles full of crisps, snacks and sugary drinks and cereals that others do. They sell the same popular products [mostly] but in lesser volumes so they are not so prominent. It is instinctive retail psychology to allocate the best spaces to the highest-selling lines and it becomes self-reinforcing. And because the Waitrose customer tends to have a preference for the healthier choices and more natural foodstuffs, these are more noticeable on the shelves. These values are also dynamically conditioning their customers a bit like compound interest. Waitrose therefore becomes alien territory to those who think their food is both expensive and not enjoyable. This makes Waitrose even more appealing to the sensible shopper who appreciates their style and disdains the other supermarkets [and by extension, perhaps, the people who prefer shopping there]. I am not suggesting that you feel like that, Beryl, as you made it perfectly clear that you shop at Waitrose because it is the nearest. I find the psychology around shopping rather fascinating, especially how some of our biggest corporations lose the plot and drift into positions and policies that bear no relation to their original business plans.

I agree with you Sean.

Waitrose, M&S and the Co-op are fighting a battle against a public perception that they are more expensive than the others. Since Tesco had to give me back £3.23 on a modest shop under their ‘brand guarantee’ the other day it suggests they are uncompetitive – and that refund would not have been available to a customer who bought fewer than ten items. The Tesco brand guarantee is set against Asda, Morrison’s and Sainsbury’s prices for branded products [i.e. not own label] but since Waitrose also have an extensive list of ‘brand match’ products, and their own-label products are competitive on a like-for-like basis, shopping there need be no more expensive but the high-price image takes some shifting.

I agree that the proliferation of confusing – and sometimes conflicting – offers and deals is not helpful, leads to waste, and only benefits the better-off or larger households.

“Waitrose, M&S and the Co-op are fighting a battle against a public perception that they are more expensive than the others.”

My personal experiences suggest there is plenty of evidence to support that view!

Nonetheless, I do like the range of stuff that Waitrose sell.

If you buy the same products as you would in any other supermarket I don’t think Waitrose are more expensive overall, but – as with M&S – they upscale their products with added or special ingredients or offer superior quality foods so they are not comparable like-for-like. Understandably, those items will be more expensive. I have no recent experience of the Co-op – I just think they have lost the plot; their nearest store to us was recently sold to Aldi who have made a real go of what was previously a nearly-empty and lack-lustre store [albeit with excellent friendly service but bad music]. I would guess that footfall has tripled now.

Good food is one of life’s pleasures, so we look for decent quality products, whether in raw or prepared form. Had a sirloin steak on Saturday, tender, tasty, with grilled tomatoes from the greenhouse. A prepared seafood casserole the night before with salmon, prawns, scallops, tomato and spinach – but mainly fish. Delicious. The point is, I want to know that firstly, the ingredients will be good quality, secondly it will not be padded out, and third it will be reliable (how many steaks have you had that were tough?). So if a store is a little (and only a little) more expensive, I can live with that when I can look forward to my next meal. But often there are good, and sensible, deals on offer on the same quality of food.

I agree with that Malcolm. The better the quality of a main course the more satisfied we are and less likely to want an unhealthy dessert. I always prefer seconds to afters.