I'm totally baffled by this task. Nick said Susan's team were fined 202 pound for missing 1 item and Gavin's team 312 pound for missing 4 items.

If Susan had not paid 410 pounds for the tea and just did not get this item surely her team would have won by a far bigger margin then 9 pounds.

The Savoy's list price plus £50 per item

What do you mean list price?

The amount the Savoy would expect to pay for each item/unit. The fines incurred can be a strange thing... In the case of the tea it would have more than likely been better to take the fine than pay the £410.

So I take it the Savoy manger did not give the teams any idea of this list price?
Watching the end of it again the 4 items they did not get were relatively cheap items, ice,cloche,bulbs and physallis.

Its not really a very fair task when you can miss 4 items and nearly win.

No, not really. The Savoy would have prices of what they would expect to pay for each item; it is likely that this would be lower than market price as it would be in bulk.

Believe it or not it would actually be a better strategy to ensure that you get all your cheap items and skip/forget getting the more expensive ones; as the more expensive an item the higher the propensity is to overpay for said item.

As long as the amount you pay for an item does is not over £50 more than what the Savoy pay then you are doing well. If, however, you pay in excess of the Savoys price + £50 then it would have been better to incur the fine.

Example;

X amount of light bulbs are listed as costing £20. The team pay twice this... As this does not exceed the listed price + £50 (aka; £70) the team has actually done well in not incurring the fine. This is how it should be...

However, if I purchase tea (as an example) for £410 and the listed price by the Savoy is around £250. We can see that incurring the fine would be better than making the purchase; the fine would stand at £300 instead of the ludicrous purchasing figure of £410. This is where the system arguably falls down; the counter argument is that the team should effectively be penalised for not spotting the insanely high prices.

Last year the winning team missed 3 items, whilst the losers got all 10.

Lordalun berated the losers for treating it like a 'treasure hunt' when its actually about getting discounts and organising your time.
Considering how often this task comes up, candidates really should know this by now - Susan and chums were very lucky really to have escaped the BR.

Well last night he berated the losers for not getting the 4 items saying they deserved to lose for this alone.

The penalty for not getting items should be higher.

Indeed. And debate here was pretty heated as to how good a task this is.


But this task is almost always about luck as much as anything.

As has been pointed out for this instance, the fact that someone got an extra £10 off one item swung the result. (If you want to look at it that way.)

Because the teams do not know typical prices they are at the mercy of luck when it comes to the people they find to source them.

I believe (because I have never heard anyone mention a price until they arrive at the seller) that they are not allowed to ask for prices on the telephone. So they are forced into a situation where if they happen to pick a couple of high price suppliers for one of the expensive items they can lose it on just that one thing.

It was puzzling last night as Susan correctly identified they needed to head out east where things were cheap, but then ended up in Mayfair & St James's.

I also wonder about the top hat - was it in the spec that it had to be a specific make and a new one at that? Otherwise why did both teams go to high end suppliers
Maybe all this years candidates are mates with the King of Tonga like Nick so would never consider going to M&S for their hats

Yes, that is one of those annoying things that should have be explained but wasn't.

She specifically told them where to look for the best prices but was, apparently, ignored. Yet she was castigated because her team went to the wrong areas and no questions were asked as to why.

Presumably if they'd lost the matter would have been discussed at some length.

I trust everything is above board, the teams were made aware beforehand how the fines would work, the Savoy really does have a list of how much they'd expect to pay for the ten items in question (which sounds strange, but I'm not in the hotel business), that last week the girls really did get several thousand more downloads of their (incredibly lame) app than the guys did of their (incredibly lame) app.

Because to the casual viewer it comes across as though the producers are making a few things up as they go, maybe because they want certain candidates to stay.

I don't.

We've heard various snippets as to some of the things that affect results that we are never supposed to hear.

Such as the candidate that found locations for some activity but, because those locations would not allow filming - which was not her fault - it appeared as if she'd failed.

Or certain ideas being disallowed at the last minute meaning teams had to go with stupid looking ones.

You can clearly see this on YF when the fired candidates are neither asked about nor volunteer vital information about certain reasons for their failure.

The trouble is that they have all information locked down because nothing can 'slip out' as it's all effectively censored.

I just hope that one day someone writes a book about it so that we can see the dishonesty of the producers.

What was the item susan's team did not get which would cost £150

Nine of the items were (I think):

tea
top hat
cloche
ice
steak
organza
chandelier bulbs
brass sign
loo roll

That and the plant.

But how do you work out £150 for the plant. The other team combined missed ice cloch bulbs physalis.(plant) at £300. according to previous poster.. That would mean ice cloch bulbs at also £150. We know the cloch doesnt cost much over a tenner. It sounds a lot for a plant. your list
tea yes
top hat yes
cloche yes
ice ?
steak yes
organza yes
chandelier bulbs ?
brass sign ?
loo roll ?
plant ?

I think all the other items I put a question mark are more likely to cost £150

It was surprising that such different approaches from the teams led to such similar final performance - less than 1% between them. Such a close finish exaggerates the effect of chance.


Getting (and recognising) a good price is part of the task.


They do mention prices before the arrive. Last year a price was mentioned for the truffles, and this year Susan mentioned a price for the tea. I expect both candidates learned those prices during the course of the task.

We've also seen them order stuff in advance (eg the kitchen work surface last year), and presumably a price is agreed over the phone when they do that.

I think that most sales people just prefer to negotiate face to face. It may be that the production encourage it, because it makes better TV, but I don't see strong evidence that it's a rule.

In this task I suspect the fines were based on the ease of being able to obtain the item. Something like light bulbs or ice will have a lot more probability in finding over the cloche or top hat, which will come from specialist merchants (ie catering supplier and milliner). Therefore the fine is higher for the specialty items.

Helpful voice-over-man said it was a flat £50 per item plus the "list price".
Sadly we dont know what the coming in late fine was, as that could have an influence on strategy - though Zoe had to sacrifice getting the ice due to time.

Aw sorry, must have missed that!

edit previous post
to Jepson

But how do you work out £150 for the plant. The other team combined missed ice cloch bulbs physalis.(plant) at £300. according to previous poster..That would mean 100 for all four items together.
So the plant cant be £150
tea yes
top hat yes
cloche yes
ice ? unlikely
steak yes
organza yes
chandelier bulbs, cannot be
brass sign ?
loo roll ? unlikely
plant cannot be

I think all the other items I put a question mark are more likely to cost £150. Must be the brass sign.
Last edited by barbar : 19-05-2011 at 22:22

It could be the sign, although Gavin's team got one for £80. I thought it was Physalis but you can buy one for £5 .