It's still an attempt to mislead especially when certain packs have "BIGGER value pack" slapped across them then you discover it's actually cheaper to buy 2 of the half size packs. Example dolmio pasta sauce. A 750g family size value jar is just £2. Sounds good until you realise the 500g jars are selling for a quid each so for the same money you're getting 250g less by buying the so called bigger value jar.
Don't even get me started on Tesco. I've lost count of the times my local store has had bogus offers labelled as 95p each or 2 for £2. How does that work? These supermarkets are relying on people being too busy to check and work it out. Unless you're wandering around with a calculator constantly comparing the price per unit of everything you put in your trolley then it's very easy to be mislead by these bogus special offers.
I don't see it as a problem.
Take this product for example, which I've picked on because I buy it.
A single one litre carton is £1.29, a pack of 4 is £4.99 (£1.29 x 4 = £5.16, so a slight saving on the pack of 4, over one bought singly), but the best offer is in buying two singles, which you can get for £2.00, so 4 bought singly would be £4.00.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out where the bargain is.
I've just noticed that coca cola have now started to sell 1.75 litre bottles of Coke, the thing is they are more expensive than the 2 litre bottles (which they don't have in the supermarkets)
I asked a member of staff in the co-op if they has any 2 litre bottles and she said coca cola have discontinued them.
This is daylight robbery. They are saving produce and making money in the process.
The 2 litre bottles were£2.09 and the 1.75 litre bottles are now £2.39 .
It says quite clearly on the packaging what size the product you are buying is.
trouble is, people are too stupid/lazy to read labels and need someone else to blame other than themselves, so blame "someone else"
It's still an attempt to mislead especially when certain packs have "BIGGER value pack" slapped across them then you discover it's actually cheaper to buy 2 of the half size packs. Example dolmio pasta sauce. A 750g family size value jar is just £2. Sounds good until you realise the 500g jars are selling for a quid each so for the same money you're getting 250g less by buying the so called bigger value jar.
Don't even get me started on Tesco. I've lost count of the times my local store has had bogus offers labelled as 95p each or 2 for £2. How does that work? These supermarkets are relying on people being too busy to check and work it out. Unless you're wandering around with a calculator constantly comparing the price per unit of everything you put in your trolley then it's very easy to be mislead by these bogus special offers.
Who needs a calculator? A quick read of the prices and a quick bit of mental arithmetic to compare them is all it takes.
The only people who get "conned" or "misled" are the ones who don't bother to read the label of what they're picking up, and that is their own fault.
With regards to the OP. I drink CocaCola and often find it's cheaper to buy the 1.25l bottle at £1 each (8p per 100ml) than the 1.75l bottle at £1.85 (10.5p per 100ml) because per ml the smaller bottle works out better value and sometimes multipacks can work out more expensive than buying them individually.
It may not be a con per se but the supermarkets know full well that people believe that they will get a better deal when buying in bulk but these days it seems the supermarkets are cashing in peoples belief that bigger is better value.
Yes the prices are shown if you can read the small print under each item but the way they market these products they trick customers into believing they're getting a better deal by using phrases such as "value pack" when in fact they're not better value at all.
I recently purchased some Fairy fabric softener claiming to be 30% extra free but it was not long ago they shrunk the size of the bottle so what they're actually doing is giving me the same amount as they did before only at a slight price increase.
It happens to a huge range of products. I buy veggie sausages which used to fit in the plastic tray they're sold in. Then they shrank a bit, so I emailed the company to warn them about their shrinking products. Oddly, no reply. They've shrunk again since, and are beginning to look a bit foolish in their giant packaging.
A ton of companies do it, not just Coca Cola.
Take this product for example, which I've picked on because I buy it.
A single one litre carton is £1.29, a pack of 4 is £4.99 (£1.29 x 4 = £5.16, so a slight saving on the pack of 4, over one bought singly), but the best offer is in buying two singles, which you can get for £2.00, so 4 bought singly would be £4.00.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out where the bargain is.
That's alright if it works out in your favour but reread the offer again. I said the packs of bread rolls were 95p each or 2 for £2 meaning that by buying more than one it's gonna cost me an extra 10p. I wasn't talking about a multipack. I was talking about buying 2 single items which work out more expensive when put through the till than buying just one. How can anyone not have a problem with that? OK I can refuse to buy them but what if I specifically need two packs? Tesco do this a lot. In fact an old colleague of mine even set up a Facebook page to warn people of Tesco dodgy offers where customers get penalised for purchasing more than one where he encouraged people to upload photos of bogus deals such as this. You'd be surprised how often they do this. Sorry but it's just wrong.
If you walked into a shop and said, "I'd like to buy this Mars Bar please?" "Certainly that'll be 40p please". "That's not bad value I think I'll take two". "No problem sir that'll be £1 please?" I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too impressed.
You don't have to buy Coca Cola® you can opt for a cheaper Cola-like substitute drink. There are myriad of Cola-like fizzy drinks available nowadays, and some of them are just as good as the good ol' Coke.
You don't have to buy Coca Cola® you can opt for a cheaper Cola-like substitute drink. There are myriad of Cola-like fizzy drinks available nowadays, and some of them are just as good as the good ol' Coke.
The only one I've found that comes close to The Real Thing is Asda Chosen by You and it's not the same at all. They tend to contain more co2 and while the flavour might be very similar it has a tendency to taste a bit thin and watery. Coca-cola has a very full boddied flavour almost as if it contains more caramel or something and whilst some imitations come remarkably close, a regular coke drinker can definitely tell the difference and as far as I'm concerned Pepsi takes like that draught stuff you get in pubs so isn't even a consideration.
There are some items I'm happy to buy the cheap versions of and others where anything but the top brand simply doesn't cut the mustard. Coke, baked beans, ketchup and Fairy liquid happen to be just a few where the own brand variety just isn't the same.
get the cola out of Iceland, it's only about 75p for two litres and as it tastes like shit it will take you about eight weeks to finish the bottle, that works out about 9p a week on cola :cool:
Personally I no longer buy coke that way, I go to the supermarkets and just top up my Camelbak Hydrobak, sit and watch dead enders while waiting for my last remaining teeth to drop out
get the cola out of Iceland, it's only about 75p for two litres and as it tastes like shit it will take you about eight weeks to finish the bottle, that works out about 9p a week on cola :cool:
Last shop I did at Iceland most of it ended up getting scraped in the bin. In my experience most of what they sell tastes like shit not just their cola. Tiny portions of processed crap that looks great on the box but sadly the box would have been more tasty and probably even more nutritional than the minuscule portions of processed chav fodder inside it.
They're all cutting back on size for the same money, it does wonders to make inflation figures look good.
Yes and it's a con. Take Aerial washing machine liquid or fabric softener for a prime example. They shrink the bottle and sell you less for the same price (supposedly on special offer) then a few weeks later they hike the price up to full price so you're now paying more for less and then a week or so later they bring back the original size bottle advertised as 30% extra free.
It's not free because it's only what they've already been short changing you with for the past few weeks only since then they've had a slight price increase so now I'm paying more for the same thing that I was paying for originally before they shrunk the packaging and fiddled me out of 30% less.
All they've done is take it away to give it me back at a higher price under the sales technique of it being "extra free". What absolute bull****.
Another known scam is when they make the product smaller claiming it to be concentrated like in the case of these new "compressed" antiperspirant canisters claiming we only have to use half as much but we all know it doesn't work like that and the majority of people will still end up using the same amount as they've always been used to using and therefore we end up paying the same price but only getting half the amount out of each can thus generating more sales/money for their product.
These retailers must think we were born yesterday.
If you walked into a shop and said, "I'd like to buy this Mars Bar please?" "Certainly that'll be 40p please". "That's not bad value I think I'll take two". "No problem sir that'll be £1 please?" I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too impressed.
"Oh, OK, I'll just have the one"
"That'll be 40p"
"There you go"
"Thank you, sir. Have a nice day"
"Actually, you know what? I think I'll have another one"
"Actually, you know what? I think I'll have another one"
Except that in somewhere like Tesco where all your shopping goes through the scanner and the till adds up any promotional offers at the checkout, you don't have that option unless you physically hold one of them back and put it through on a separate transaction. Otherwise on such and offer as this you will end up being charged the higher offer price for 2 instead of working it out separately and charging you less. When Tesco have what I refer to as reverse promotions as these the customer will end up out of pocket unless he's savvy enough to realise and stick them through as two separate transactions. They really need to get their act together because it's just plain wrong to do this. Whether it's a pricing error or not is irrelevant. The customer is still being done out of pocket unless they've been quick enough to spot it.
That's alright if it works out in your favour but reread the offer again. I said the packs of bread rolls were 95p each or 2 for £2 meaning that by buying more than one it's gonna cost me an extra 10p. I wasn't talking about a multipack. I was talking about buying 2 single items which work out more expensive when put through the till than buying just one. How can anyone not have a problem with that? OK I can refuse to buy them but what if I specifically need two packs? Tesco do this a lot. In fact an old colleague of mine even set up a Facebook page to warn people of Tesco dodgy offers where customers get penalised for purchasing more than one where he encouraged people to upload photos of bogus deals such as this. You'd be surprised how often they do this. Sorry but it's just wrong.
If you walked into a shop and said, "I'd like to buy this Mars Bar please?" "Certainly that'll be 40p please". "That's not bad value I think I'll take two". "No problem sir that'll be £1 please?" I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too impressed.
That would make plausible sense if the bread rolls were in a inseparable pack of two for £2.00, but I don't see how an individual item priced at 95p, and scanned through at 95p, can suddenly morph into £2.00 when two of those individual items are bought, as opposed to 2 x £0.95 = £1.90.
That would make plausible sense if the bread rolls were in a inseparable pack of two for £2.00, but I don't see how an individual item priced at 95p, and scanned through at 95p, can suddenly morph into £2.00 when two of those individual items are bought, as opposed to 2 x £0.95 = £1.90.
Well the offer price clearly said 95p each or 2 for £2 and when 2 are scanned through the till together on the same transaction it does indeed hike it up from £1.90 to £2 because that's what the offer has been set to on the till. I know because it happened to me, I was prepared for it and so I checked my receipt at the end. I had to tell the checkout lady to credit me back and put them through separately. I've seen pricing errors like this a regular thing in our local Tesco so you have to be on the ball otherwise you will end up out of pocket.
It's not a huge difference but how many others are they getting away with this with that haven't noticed? Don't believe me? Scroll down to take a look at the photos on this website...
Price drops that are in fact price hikes. Offers that aren't offers. Incentives to buy in bulk which end up costing you more. Half price offers that aren't half price, not even full price but more than full price. Disgusting!
According to Moneysavingexpert.com while you have every right to question the bogus offer, you still have to check your receipt as you still can be overcharged. Apparently Tesco isn't the only offender.
If you walked into a shop and said, "I'd like to buy this Mars Bar please?" "Certainly that'll be 40p please". "That's not bad value I think I'll take two". "No problem sir that'll be £1 please?" I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too impressed.
Mars Bars huh, not long ago you could buy a four pack for £1 (on offer from £1.79) but now I see it's a three pack for £1 on off from £1.39.
They're all cutting back on size for the same money, it does wonders to make inflation figures look good.
No, it's because the cost of many of the raw materials has gone up significantly faster than the rate of inflation, and there is only so much cost the manufacturers can absorb before they have to pass it on. And there are only 2 ways to do that, either put the price up, or reduce the amount you sell for the same money.
And manufacturers and retailers know that people are price sensitive - so making the pack smaller, to hit a certain price is usually the preferred option.
Well the offer price clearly said 95p each or 2 for £2 and when 2 are scanned through the till together on the same transaction it does indeed hike it up from £1.90 to £2 because that's what the offer has been set to on the till. I know because it happened to me, I was prepared for it and so I checked my receipt at the end. I had to tell the checkout lady to credit me back and put them through separately. I've seen pricing errors like this a regular thing in our local Tesco so you have to be on the ball otherwise you will end up out of pocket.
It's not a huge difference but how many others are they getting away with this with that haven't noticed? Don't believe me? Scroll down to take a look at the photos on this website...
Price drops that are in fact price hikes. Offers that aren't offers. Incentives to buy in bulk which end up costing you more. Half price offers that aren't half price, not even full price but more than full price. Disgusting!
According to Moneysavingexpert.com while you have every right to question the bogus offer, you still have to check your receipt as you still can be overcharged. Apparently Tesco isn't the only offender.
Comments
I don't see it as a problem.
Take this product for example, which I've picked on because I buy it.
A single one litre carton is £1.29, a pack of 4 is £4.99 (£1.29 x 4 = £5.16, so a slight saving on the pack of 4, over one bought singly), but the best offer is in buying two singles, which you can get for £2.00, so 4 bought singly would be £4.00.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out where the bargain is.
trouble is, people are too stupid/lazy to read labels and need someone else to blame other than themselves, so blame "someone else"
Who needs a calculator? A quick read of the prices and a quick bit of mental arithmetic to compare them is all it takes.
The only people who get "conned" or "misled" are the ones who don't bother to read the label of what they're picking up, and that is their own fault.
It may not be a con per se but the supermarkets know full well that people believe that they will get a better deal when buying in bulk but these days it seems the supermarkets are cashing in peoples belief that bigger is better value.
Yes the prices are shown if you can read the small print under each item but the way they market these products they trick customers into believing they're getting a better deal by using phrases such as "value pack" when in fact they're not better value at all.
I recently purchased some Fairy fabric softener claiming to be 30% extra free but it was not long ago they shrunk the size of the bottle so what they're actually doing is giving me the same amount as they did before only at a slight price increase.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WXalU04X6coC&pg=PA297&lpg=PA297&dq=%E2%80%9CPhyletic+Size+Decrease+in+Hershey+Bars,%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=fgkka_FWKC&sig=Wa4GA3d5bD2x6DtnA3onsmhFDAk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WIE-VPGrFoTY7Aav7oH4DQ&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CPhyletic%20Size%20Decrease%20in%20Hershey%20Bars%2C%E2%80%9D&f=false
It's a bit of a dry parody as it's actually explaining a biological concept, so for those who can't be bothered - he measured the change in bar size/package size/price over 25 years or so, and came to the conclusion that at the rate it was decreasing in size while going up in price the weightless bar would appear in 1998 and cost 48 cents
That's alright if it works out in your favour but reread the offer again. I said the packs of bread rolls were 95p each or 2 for £2 meaning that by buying more than one it's gonna cost me an extra 10p. I wasn't talking about a multipack. I was talking about buying 2 single items which work out more expensive when put through the till than buying just one. How can anyone not have a problem with that? OK I can refuse to buy them but what if I specifically need two packs? Tesco do this a lot. In fact an old colleague of mine even set up a Facebook page to warn people of Tesco dodgy offers where customers get penalised for purchasing more than one where he encouraged people to upload photos of bogus deals such as this. You'd be surprised how often they do this. Sorry but it's just wrong.
If you walked into a shop and said, "I'd like to buy this Mars Bar please?" "Certainly that'll be 40p please". "That's not bad value I think I'll take two". "No problem sir that'll be £1 please?" I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too impressed.
The only one I've found that comes close to The Real Thing is Asda Chosen by You and it's not the same at all. They tend to contain more co2 and while the flavour might be very similar it has a tendency to taste a bit thin and watery. Coca-cola has a very full boddied flavour almost as if it contains more caramel or something and whilst some imitations come remarkably close, a regular coke drinker can definitely tell the difference and as far as I'm concerned Pepsi takes like that draught stuff you get in pubs so isn't even a consideration.
There are some items I'm happy to buy the cheap versions of and others where anything but the top brand simply doesn't cut the mustard. Coke, baked beans, ketchup and Fairy liquid happen to be just a few where the own brand variety just isn't the same.
Last shop I did at Iceland most of it ended up getting scraped in the bin. In my experience most of what they sell tastes like shit not just their cola. Tiny portions of processed crap that looks great on the box but sadly the box would have been more tasty and probably even more nutritional than the minuscule portions of processed chav fodder inside it.
Yes and it's a con. Take Aerial washing machine liquid or fabric softener for a prime example. They shrink the bottle and sell you less for the same price (supposedly on special offer) then a few weeks later they hike the price up to full price so you're now paying more for less and then a week or so later they bring back the original size bottle advertised as 30% extra free.
It's not free because it's only what they've already been short changing you with for the past few weeks only since then they've had a slight price increase so now I'm paying more for the same thing that I was paying for originally before they shrunk the packaging and fiddled me out of 30% less.
All they've done is take it away to give it me back at a higher price under the sales technique of it being "extra free". What absolute bull****.
Another known scam is when they make the product smaller claiming it to be concentrated like in the case of these new "compressed" antiperspirant canisters claiming we only have to use half as much but we all know it doesn't work like that and the majority of people will still end up using the same amount as they've always been used to using and therefore we end up paying the same price but only getting half the amount out of each can thus generating more sales/money for their product.
These retailers must think we were born yesterday.
"Oh, OK, I'll just have the one"
"That'll be 40p"
"There you go"
"Thank you, sir. Have a nice day"
"Actually, you know what? I think I'll have another one"
Except that in somewhere like Tesco where all your shopping goes through the scanner and the till adds up any promotional offers at the checkout, you don't have that option unless you physically hold one of them back and put it through on a separate transaction. Otherwise on such and offer as this you will end up being charged the higher offer price for 2 instead of working it out separately and charging you less. When Tesco have what I refer to as reverse promotions as these the customer will end up out of pocket unless he's savvy enough to realise and stick them through as two separate transactions. They really need to get their act together because it's just plain wrong to do this. Whether it's a pricing error or not is irrelevant. The customer is still being done out of pocket unless they've been quick enough to spot it.
That would make plausible sense if the bread rolls were in a inseparable pack of two for £2.00, but I don't see how an individual item priced at 95p, and scanned through at 95p, can suddenly morph into £2.00 when two of those individual items are bought, as opposed to 2 x £0.95 = £1.90.
Well the offer price clearly said 95p each or 2 for £2 and when 2 are scanned through the till together on the same transaction it does indeed hike it up from £1.90 to £2 because that's what the offer has been set to on the till. I know because it happened to me, I was prepared for it and so I checked my receipt at the end. I had to tell the checkout lady to credit me back and put them through separately. I've seen pricing errors like this a regular thing in our local Tesco so you have to be on the ball otherwise you will end up out of pocket.
It's not a huge difference but how many others are they getting away with this with that haven't noticed? Don't believe me? Scroll down to take a look at the photos on this website...
www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/195158-tesco-uk-sales-further-fall-blamed-on-economy/page-4
Price drops that are in fact price hikes. Offers that aren't offers. Incentives to buy in bulk which end up costing you more. Half price offers that aren't half price, not even full price but more than full price. Disgusting!
According to Moneysavingexpert.com while you have every right to question the bogus offer, you still have to check your receipt as you still can be overcharged. Apparently Tesco isn't the only offender.
www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/promos-gone-wrong
Mars Bars huh, not long ago you could buy a four pack for £1 (on offer from £1.79) but now I see it's a three pack for £1 on off from £1.39.
Piss taking or what.
No, it's because the cost of many of the raw materials has gone up significantly faster than the rate of inflation, and there is only so much cost the manufacturers can absorb before they have to pass it on. And there are only 2 ways to do that, either put the price up, or reduce the amount you sell for the same money.
And manufacturers and retailers know that people are price sensitive - so making the pack smaller, to hit a certain price is usually the preferred option.
I think most of these mistakes are down to human error and possibly technical issues.
They really should ensure someone who can do the math and has a quick logical brain is put on stuff related to money off bargains.
I don't think it's deliberate - the nature of the errors are too crass for that.
I pay between £1 and £1.50 for 21 slices of bread.
Somehow I think a loaf of bread would work out cheaper than the equivalent in luxury items.
That's my stance as well, I don't buy it at all unless on special offer
Is Coca-Cola included in the inflation figures?
I don't know. You said it affected inflation so I was asking.