Are you a victim of deceptive pricing? - Shrinking Groceries

[Thailand]

I was bored last Monday, so I thought I would send a few emails to pass the time. I thought I would go through the entire list and see what would be said about these shrinkages - not that I thought I'd get any truths, rather to see what spin they would put on it. The generic letter I produced, turned out not to be so easily tweaked for each one, so gave up after 3.

I started with the beans in post one, then onto Cadbury's in post two. By then I jumped straight to Ginsters as it was annoying me as to who was being so darned cheeky, the retailer or the manufacturer. As it turns out I emailed, or used the on line feedback, only for manufacturers. I've had a reply of Ginsters.

I wrote, and no my name is not Pedro, nor am I an editor!

To: Ginsters Reception
Subject: 'Shrinking Groceries'


Hello,

My name is Pedro Rodriguez, I am a 3rd year student preparing an essay regarding 'Shrinking Groceries', and also the editor of my universities thrice yearly 'almanac'.

For reasons pertaining to my essay, and a feature in our forthcoming publication, I wondered if I could acquire Ginsters response to the following facts. I would be extremely grateful to publish your viewpoint on the matter and of course your express permission to do so.

Amongst other evident shrinkages to maintain profit margins for the manufacturer, rather than play fair with the consumer, the misleading offer surrounding the sale of your products is alarming and thus must be dealt with, if for no other reason than alerting the general public. Could you please verify if promotions such as the following are the marketing whizz of your company, or are that of the retailer? A local ‘Spar’ close to our university is selling your product (standard pasty) at £1.69 BOGOF (buy one, get one free) Sceptics amongst my fellow students/reporters believe this is to mislead the consumer.
On a recent field trip to Lancaster, we, by chance, had Ginsters pasties for lunch. The cost, or RRP (please advise as to this), was 90 pence. So, you see, pricing at £1.69 can not be tolerated as a price for the sake of pulling the wool over the consumers eyes via a ‘BOGOF’. All it does is ensure the retailer sells two, rather than one, as the price is nearly double. In these harsh economic times it appears the retailer, or yourselves, not only tries to salvage sales, but double them at the same time.
This report will also conclude on BOGOF offers and the truth behind the inflated price which makes this ‘deal’ viable only to the manufacturer/retailer.

Whilst I will go ahead and print our opinion, backed up with photographic evidence, I would very much like to print your response in the spirit of fairness. I have a statement of the local retailer that alleges this mater is wholly to do with the manufacturer.

Regards

Pedro

Dear Pedro
Thank you for your email.
We would like to make a few points which we hope you will find helpful.
We sell our products to the stores at a wholesale price, but we do not decide the retail price on shelf. (Competition law forbids manufacturers from dictating the price at which their products are sold to the consumer.) So the retailer is free to set whatever retail price they think is suitable for their business. As a result you will see some wide variation in the prices at which our products are sold when compared across the different types of retailer.
When it comes to price promotions, again there are laws in place that prevent anyone suddenly putting up the retail price in order to then run a price promotion. The law states that a product has to be on sale at a particular price for a minimum period of 28 days before a store can run a promotion based on that price.
I hope this will reassure you that there is a framework in place that protects the consumer.
From our perspective, we aim to produce good quality foods from locally sourced fresh ingredients, and always do our best to ensure our range offers good value for money for our consumers.
Kind regards,
Larry File
Brand Communications Manager

So my local Spar is the culprit, the cheek of them....I bet when the BOGOF is finished they won't stay at £1.69.

I'll post up what HP (Heinz) and Cadbury's say if they can be bothered to get back to me.

[DuffNCustard]

Anyone else getting brassed off about LARD - we used to buy 500g - now we can only get it in 250g blocks for 31p - which is just about what 500g used to cost a few months back - chiselling swivvelers - if any one knows where we can get 500g please reply!

[elizabeth1]

Originally Posted by DuffNCustard

Anyone else getting brassed off about LARD - we used to buy 500g - now we can only get it in 250g blocks for 31p - which is just about what 500g used to cost a few months back - chiselling swivvelers - if any one knows where we can get 500g please reply!

I think you'll find this price change is more to do with the Catering industry now buying larger quantities of Lards and Dripping for deep fat frying foods more recently. Maybe the manufacturers realise they can achieve a higher price?

Couple of reasons I read about were -

1) the price of cooking oils (rapeseed, veggie oils etc..) shot through the ceiling with the Gov'ts bid to stop car drivers using cooking oil to run their cars on cause it was cheaper than diesel/petrol. So Oil prices were raised to meet petrol prices kind of things - this resulted in lots of catering industry switching to use Lards and Drippings for cooking etc.. as it was more affordable. (To accomodate vegetarians most places just keep one oil fryer for their foods)

2) there was something to do with obesity & cholestrol = Lards and Dripping have different properties that were supposed to be healthier than these oils for cooking foods (saturates, mono saturates, polyunsaturates etc..) the switch in usage was meant to be beneficial to health etc..

I don't think retalers are going to miss any opportunity to gain higher price margins for goods if they can help it.

[pompeyfaith]

Anyone noticed the offers that are not offers at all if you look at the individual price i.e 2 for £2 but look at the individual price and they are £1 each.

I noticed this last friday while at asda walmart in Havant i forget what it was for now but ill look again this saturday and post again.

Regards

Leon

[mfpa]

A pint of semi-skimmed has been 42p for several months in my local M&S, Co-Op, Tesco and Sainsbury. Last Wednesday in M&S it was suddenly 45p, an increase of over seven percent! Not yet seen if the rest of them have increased too.

Still cheaper than Boots, Superdrug and Spar, who are all 54p.

[gyzmo]

I always look at the price they are selling it for and ignore any offer price. if i think the offer price is worth it (and it is something I need) I would buy it.

I seriously suggest that people ignore any past price or individual price and simply look at what they are selling it for there and then. If it aint worth it, don't buy it, regardless is it is 90% off.

[lexis200]

Originally Posted by gyzmo

I always look at the price they are selling it for and ignore any offer price. if i think the offer price is worth it (and it is something I need) I would buy it.

I seriously suggest that people ignore any past price or individual price and simply look at what they are selling it for there and then. If it aint worth it, don't buy it, regardless is it is 90% off.

Just a massivly sexist generalisation here, but I find it's men who can't pass up a 'bargain' 99% of the time...

Like my friend, who's husband came home with 10, yes 10, large pots of peanut butter because they were very cheap. Never mind the fact that no-one particularly liked it, or that they didn't have the space for them - it was a bargain and that was that.

Or my lovely OH, who proudly came home telling me he'd got a kilo of President butter for £2. 'Wow', says I, 'that's excellent'. Then I notice the sheepish look - what he didn't mention was that it was a kilo of butter in individually packaged 10g pats. It took me about an hour to get enough to make a cake

Oh, and my brother in law who bought a beautiful plant for about a tenner instead of £50 odd quid - then bought 6!!! bags of compost to fill in the (massively over-large) hole he'd dug for it so it would be 'happy'...

[un1boy]

Originally Posted by Thailand

I was bored last Monday, so I thought I would send a few emails to pass the time. I thought I would go through the entire list and see what would be said about these shrinkages - not that I thought I'd get any truths, rather to see what spin they would put on it. The generic letter I produced, turned out not to be so easily tweaked for each one, so gave up after 3.

I started with the beans in post one, then onto Cadbury's in post two. By then I jumped straight to Ginsters as it was annoying me as to who was being so darned cheeky, the retailer or the manufacturer. As it turns out I emailed, or used the on line feedback, only for manufacturers. I've had a reply of Ginsters.

I wrote, and no my name is not Pedro, nor am I an editor!






So my local Spar is the culprit, the cheek of them....I bet when the BOGOF is finished they won't stay at £1.69.

I'll post up what HP (Heinz) and Cadbury's say if they can be bothered to get back to me.

Thanks for doing this - it's actually been interesting....it's a sahem we can't get a standard letter, eh?

I was particularly concerned with this statement:

The law states that a product has to be on sale at a particular price for a minimum period of 28 days before a store can run a promotion based on that price.

The reason is that I used to work for a well known retailer who sells a wide range of products and whilst I worked on the entertainment department, they would issue offers on DVDs and CDs etc......the price before the offer started was, say, £9.99 each.

The offers would normally star ton a Monday, and all the prices would be changes for that day - during a BOGOF promotion, the prices were set at £16.99 each.....they weren't on sale for £16.99 as the prices changed for the start date of the promo and then were reduced back down to the £9.99 on the day the promo ended.

Things like this should be informed to the customers and trraading standards should check the promo's to make sure this doesn't happen.

[gyzmo]

the 28 day rule has now disappeared. It is now merely a reasonable length of time that is required thereby creating a complete and utter embuggerance for trading standards officers to enforce this legislation.

And HMV still have a CD on sale that has been on sale now for 3 years....

[hightail]

If a supermarket has a display of something with a good offer, make sure you pick it up off that display. Exactly the same product can be elsewhere in the store but won't necessarily be at the offer price. I was pointed in the right direction by a Tesco employee a couple of weeks ago and was quite shocked. Once you've seen a big notice saying the product is on offer many people would assume the price would hold good throughout the store. Check the price at the point you pick it off the shelf.

[un1boy]

Originally Posted by gyzmo

the 28 day rule has now disappeared. It is now merely a reasonable length of time that is required thereby creating a complete and utter embuggerance for trading standards officers to enforce this legislation.

And HMV still have a CD on sale that has been on sale now for 3 years....

Ok - I was talking about more like 6 years ago.

[Parva]

My biggest annoyance is the great pint to litre conversion. Now to be fair, the big supermarkets do appear to play fair on this one, it's mainly the corner shops and / or the merchant supplying the milk that's profiteering.

Bought what we would typically call a 2-pinter from said corner shop earlier, it was actually 1 litre which is 1.76 pints. So for a comparable (if not slightly more expensive!) price you lose nearly 1/4 of a pint. Ok, it's not huge but think 10 litres, that's 2.5 litres near as damnit. Ultimately, for every 4 litres they sell they get one free. Working in the quantities that they do that's one hell of a nice, free mark-up for them!

[gyzmo]

Originally Posted by hightail

If a supermarket has a display of something with a good offer, make sure you pick it up off that display. Exactly the same product can be elsewhere in the store but won't necessarily be at the offer price. I was pointed in the right direction by a Tesco employee a couple of weeks ago and was quite shocked. Once you've seen a big notice saying the product is on offer many people would assume the price would hold good throughout the store. Check the price at the point you pick it off the shelf.

I can only imaging this arising if the particular item had a discount label on it. WH Smith do this. I picked up a box set and noticed right next to it the exact same box set at half price. I obviously bought the half price one and then queried it with the staff. They could not answer.

I cannot see how such a thing you state would work. The same items will have the same barcode on it and I do not see how it can be discriminated against based on where in the shop it is. There must be some difference.

[Gilbert_O'Sullivan]