Doesn't help detect changed ingredients that lower quality, though.
I thought this was a EU thing, but a quick search suggests that maybe it's something specific to us?
Rather amusingly (to me!), lavatory paper has a price per sheet, which is abbreviated "sht"... https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304782328
I hope the CMA comes down hard. It's disgusting.
"30p each or only 3 for £1" isn't a joke. I saw this in a London store when they tried making multi-pack offers near the checkout actually more expensive than picking up separate items.
"Meal Deals" are a fantastic scam that charge you more for eating less. If you don't take the crisps or drink it doesn't "count" as the meal-deal, and the individual items cost more. I end up buying an extra bag of crisps I don't want and giving it to the homeless person outside.
Like many British supermarkets they operate a three tier pricing structure, normal, discounted (with yellow labels) and "Clubcard" prices. These are applied to similar items on proximate shelves, so you're never quite sure which ones the offers apply to. Sometimes those little yellow stickers don't scan, and surprise.. you pay the original price.
And don't get me started on automatic checkouts, which are basically "mugging robots" designed to rob humans.
Supermarkets are playgrounds for screwing people over with little mind games. What a desolation of human life for those who waste their days thinking up this shit.
How is "If you add a third item the price sometimes goes down" a scam?
* £3.50 is the price. That means they'll make a profit on that. It's a "low" price because it's garbage, tasteless, low-quality junk food,
* The supermarkets know which items are more likely to sell separately. Like your bottle of water example. So those items are individually priced higher while others that rarely sell separately (like sandwiches) will be individually priced low. Whatever it really is, the supermarket has all the data, they know how to win.
Similarly, it's like how people think shoplifters steal from the supermarket. The supermarket knows how much stuff gets stolen each year. They price accordingly. Shoplifters steal from you.
This is wrong. They won't always make a profit. On some items they make a loss.
> * The supermarkets know which items are more likely to sell separately. Like your bottle of water example. So those items are individually priced higher while others that rarely sell separately (like sandwiches) will be individually priced low.
This is also wrong. These items a) have an actual unit price, which will differ depending on various factors, and b) compete with other vendors selling the same or similar, and c) need to be there or shoppers won't go the the shop in the first place.
There are many forces acting on these prices. Thinking profit is the only force is bound to be wrong.
I know about loss leaders, but I severely doubt meal deals are loss leaders considering they are placed at the front of the shop and customers often come in to buy them at lunch time. They are competing with the likes of Gregg's here.
It doesn't matter about the individual technicalities. What matters is the bottom line. You aren't beating Tesco.
I think it comes from everything they sell. You're taking the business' overall performance and seemingly attributing it all to people not buying meal deals when they could.
> I know about loss leaders, but I severely doubt meal deals are loss leaders considering they are placed at the front of the shop and customers often come in to buy them at lunch time.
This is the definition of a loss leader. Bring people in to buy it, and they'll buy a few other things at the same time.
> What matters is the bottom line. You aren't beating Tesco.
These conversation-ending grand statements aren't relevant. I'm not trying to beat Tesco.
How does that work? Are you saying they charge more for the same purchases?
Please place your item in the bagging area. Unrecognized item in the bagging area. Please scan items one at a time.
I have not seen those annoying checkout scales anywhere else in Europe.
There are no scales and nobody would notice if you just don't scan the item. In theory there are "random" checks. I've never seen one happen though. Not having a huge desperate underclass makes many things a lot smoother.
Grocery shopping in rich neighborhood = scale has a large tolerance and will not stop you from continuing to scan if you place something unexpected on it. You can scan and bag in whatever order without the machine making any accusations.
In a poor neighborhood = you scan an item and put it on the scale, then put your bag from home on the scale to bag the first item. The scale is set to a strict tolerance and stops scanning items “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA” and you have to wait for an employee to unlock it.
As they say “there’s nothing more expensive than being poor”, and bad self-checkouts is just another factor in that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsohPbnp1b8
(Skip to 3.25 in the video for the classic quote).
Another thing that annoys me is there being no indication of how long a sale or promotion is running. Lidl does this correctly, and puts a to/from date on the price tag in tiny text. (for internal use, I assume. but still super useful)
"Clubcard prices" somehow avoid the laws on misleading discounts as well, where the price you're discounting from needs to be the lowest price that product was on sale for for the preceding 30 days.
For example you might have price per sht (well you need at least 4 per sh*t ;) but there will also be a 2 for 1 offer with no price per sht and then a multi pack with no offer on it with a different price per sht. So you have three factors to compare to work out how many sh*ts per sht are best value. And then there's the confusion of loyalty card only prices.
I have got to the point I'd rather shop at Waitrose because they don't pull that sht.
On that note I think I'll go to Morrisons today and be mugged differently.
This is a beautiful sentence, i think.
Same sh*t, different day I suppose.
/g, /ml because its easier to say Rs. 2.04/g as compared to Rs. 204/100g. This makes so much more easy to compare
Easy comparison – price per unit
You should also be able to compare prices between brands and between package sizes – to see, for example, what saving you'd make buying a large-size box of breakfast cereal instead of a small box.
To help you do this, all products must be marked not only with the selling price, but also the price per unit – for example, the price per kilo or per litre. This information must be understandable, easy to read, and easily identifiable.
This rule also applies to adverts that mention a selling price.
^0 https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/consumer-protecti...
^1 https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...
I almost feel sorry for the producers
Incompatible goods. Buy 8 buns for a 6 hotdog package. Jam jars of 600 mL but refill packets of 750 mL. Absolute madness. Why do you do this?
Store's own brand is like 20-30% cheaper across the board. How is this even possible?
And the worst one:
Incompatible units in comparison price. You buy popsicles, one box has them in money/popsicle, one box has them in money/volume frozen water.
No need for marketing costs. Also companies compete for shelf space (sometimes they will have to pay to have their products placed in a favorable spot). Also they buy BULK. When (e.g. Tesco) buys bread they issue the recipe they want and they guarantee LARGE volumes.
Regarding the comparisons, in EU they got labels that give you cost per 100ml or 100gr or per item.
And I have a feeling they intentionally increase price of other brands to force people to buy store's brands.
And many individual products are still good enough.
Some NZ supermarkets have that kind of labelling, but not always for every product.
My regular (soon to be former) cereal has gone from 700g to 620g to 535g in about 3 months, all for the same price. The box has the same width and height, but the depth has been shrinking.
Good thing to not be hooked by fake discounts.
"The price per unit is displayed with a font size of roughly 20 mm while the comparison price is just under 2 mm" (freely translated from Swedish)
https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/moti...
The problem in the US is that food/ag corporations are powerful and always fight against this kind of consumer information. Same with ingredient and nutrition labelling. They want the consumer to have as little information as possible (information asymmetry is the term in economics).
In particular Marabou, which is (debatably) some kind of gold standard for kids chocolate in Sweden.
I think they gradually decrease the amount of cocoa and check if customers accept it. And when they do it a little at a time of course no one notices.
Or when I lived in Belgium it was per 100ml, or per liter, or per 100 grams which aren't necessarily the same.
And it is a law that if you decrease the weight of the product, you need to call that out on the label.
It works great.