Win! Government crackdown on misleading supermarket pricing

I am a marine engineer and every time I come back from one of my terms on board my ship I find that the cost of my weekly shop has gone up. The Supermarkets say the prices have gone down??????????????
Special offers are most of the time a con. The customers are being taken for a ride.

There has been a trend setting in lately with packaging that is also linked to pricing. Its the actual size of the packets relative to the product within. We chased this point with a manufacturer who told us they realised this but the size was the dictate of the supermarket!!!! We followed this up with them, they gave us our money back, took details but could not sat any further action would be taken as its the marketing dept. that controls such things and the complaint is unlikely to reach them!!!

It is often cheaper to buy two packs of a product than the “special offer” of a double pack. This really is a con – less for more money? It should be illegal. If you`re in a rush or herding children you can`t always check weights and volume. Also some things are weighed in lbs and ozs and others in kg and grms, I`d put money on it that this is designed to confuse. It`s sharp practice.

Always check the offers, I have found at least 50% of the time they are either no cheaper or the difference is a couple of pence. Beware of the ‘Special Offer’ followed by a price only – there is often no comparison price. Mind you the furniture shops have been getting away with bogus sale prices for decades! No there are no real genuine sales or bargains these days – we’re all being taken for a ride.

I have got to the point where I so distrust Tesco that, where possible, I now go out of my way to avoid their products. Unfortunately, without a car, they are the most convenient, but when I have ventured elsewhere they all appear tarred with the same brush. I how just HATE shopping!

Why in the last 7 times I have gone to Tesco my weekly shopping there has been no skimmed milk on show, so I have hunted a person down to enquire and they go out the back and come with a full rack! Once or twice I can understand but 7 times in a row is not acceptable.

We have been shopping at tesco Baldock for nearly 30 years & every week things get worse most normal products we usually have are not stocked any more because we’re told there’s not enough call for them now, everything is getting smaller but prices are getting bigger, the cartons of 6 pints milk are so thin you have a job lifting them without them collapsing we have had several leak out into the car by the time we got home, when you try to complain there’s never a manager in the store I though tesco was a food store, stop selling all the junk and sell more food

No more offers just flat, honest prices. Meat particularly is different weights in the different supermarkets to make it not comparable. Ban battery eggs, bring back non homogenized milk, and make it clear how animals have been kept and fed on meat packs. An honest price for honest food that’s not been messed with. Make it clear what fruit and veg and meat is in season so that we can get back to buying seasonal foods. Make it extremely clear on all foods when something has over 1/4 of our daily need of something per portion and what the weight of the portion size is both raw and cooked. I would love to see a supermarket before and after a nutritionist went in and removed all of the foods that we shouldn’t be eating in the majority of our diet!

Not everyone is happy about the Which? super-complaint: http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Business-News/Super-complaint-from-Which-was-a-waste-of-time

The article says we get a fair deal from our grocery retailers. That’s alright then.

Perhaps we should dedicate the image at the top of this page to the guy who wrote the article. 🙂

I would also like to comment on the so called Roll Back Prices, they are either more expensive than the original price or, they are exactly the same as the original price like, “Was £1 rolled back to £1”, this drives me nuts and, every week the cost of my weekly shop changes even though I buy the exact same products every week! all this should be made illegal, and all their stock trolleys shouldn’t be left in the isles its highly dangerous for, disabled people like me! its disgusting, my local Asda always do this, I’m sick of having to get my carer to move them out of my way! its not fair!!!!!!!

If I want to buy, for example tomatoes, I’m faced with:
1)….. A pack of 4 or 6 with a pack price – no weight, nor price per Kg/lb
2)….. When available – lose toms, priced by weight = Kg/lb

1)… Is, of course convenient – BUT much overpriced – IFF (sic) one checks !
Unfair / sharp practice !

Stop the practice of advertising the saving represented by a price reduction on the supermarkets’ shelf edge labels and tickets.. This illustration is often very misleading because amount saved is in larger print than the actual price of the product that has been reduced thus conning customers in to believing that they are getting a bargain

I do not really trust supermarkets on pricing. especially when one of the “Big” supermarkets prices soup on offer at 65p a can and then boost of a multi pack deal of 4 cans for £3.10p. work it out.

I live on my own and find the way that supermarkets price and package vegetables irritating: I could buy a 1kg bag of new potatoes for £1 and throw half of them away as they’ve sprouted / gone soft before I’ve used them or pay £3 per kilo for the loose new potatoes. The majority of offers are based on buying more of a product, which is not much use to those of us who live alone.

I’ve noticed the Co-op half price offers are not as half price as they seem! Currently they state their retail price for Comfort Intense Fabric Conditioner:’ Was £3.99, now £1.99, half price, 570ml, until
3.11.’ ha ha! go on my supermarket.com and the other supermarkets show their standard retail price for the same product at between £3.00 and £3.50!!!
I thought what I used to know as ‘drop closing’ by inflating the starting price was illegal?
Is this maybe why Co-op aren’t on mysupermarket.com because it would expose this practice on some of their offers. Must Tweet it and see if they panic……………………………………..

I get cross when I see the offers that say “spend £40 and get a saving” I am a pensioner who lives alone so do not spend £40 therefore I am always a loser, why do we never see offers for pensioners only for folks who spend a lot?

Over a period of many years there has been public concerns over the general level of UK Supermarket prices. In response there have been one or two government ‘investigations’. Each time the official verdict has been that pricing is reasonable. BUT I understand that a number of major players in the market make significant contributions to the major political parties. Is it surprising the politicians are find no reason to criticize such financial supporters. Prices must surely include an element related to these political donations which members of the public might well resent but cannot avoid. until hey presto along come foreign players in the market – Messrs Aldi and Lidl. This question of political donation might be an area for the CA to explore.

I’m back in the uk after 11 years in Vancouver BC. I’m disgusted at the monopoly and cartel behaviors being run by the supermarkets.
What happened to select your own loose groceries and pay by
the pound, seems fair to me and from an ecological point of view stop wrapping everything in plastic!

I’d also like to see the end of multi-buys as a it would stop a lot of waste. Often single people or couples feel discriminated against as you cannot purchase less items at the same pricead but at the same time you d not want to pay the higher price. A good example of this is Asda free range “Happy eggs” £1.95 for 6 or £2 for 12, who is seriously not going to buy the 12?

A joke we had 25 years ago is as valid today as it was then;

“what is the acid test of your marketing department, how do you know it’s performing well”?

“when your sales people don’t know they are lying”.

I get suspicious when I see a certain percentage discount, such as “25% off!” or “Half price!” as the reference price for the discount is almost never a realistic one. Take, for example, the price of dishwasher tablets. Their price history on mysupermarket.co.uk is a perfect square wave which goes from one price to double the price at regular intervals. When the product is at its non-double price, the supermarkets display it with a big “Half price” sign on the shelf. But that price is only half compared to an artificial price, not one that customers normally pay. I think the law should require that discounts be based on the average price over the last 12 months weighted by volume of sales. By using the weighting, it will show objectively and numerically that these discounts are not really discounts at all.

It is not just Supermarkets but the whole of the retail sector that has bee conning us for years with their spurious offers. Action is needed across the whole of the retail sector

I hope they will also sort out the price per weight, sometimes it is in grams, sometimes in kilograms and other times it is in pounds or ounces. I do believe we need to keep our imperial weights but we need to be able to compare the price of the same item, perhaps pre-packed over lose where one is often weighed in grams and the other in pounds making for a complicated calculation to see what the difference actually is!!