Supermarket abuse of pricing?

Even my first mobile phone. The mighty Motorola M3788, which I had in 1998/9 had a calculator on.

There’s no excuse for customers to stand at checkouts and kiosk going on their phones to transfer money on their banking apps or ring their partner “transfer £20 please babe”
 
I just want to thank those who thanked my post #100 on this thread. You can understand why I whinge.

Many retail workers can’t leave work as they don’t drive, hours worked fit around child/grandchildren care etc. Most jobs now require people to own a car and drive to work. As workplaces are inaccessible by public transport or
at times where it doesn’t run.

Due to many health issues- asthma, high antibodies in thyroid and now similar symptoms to when I had 12-14 bowel polyps removed 16 months ago. I can’t afford to change jobs. As if I need time off for anything, I would be on SSP (£109.40 a week) for any time in the first year (or even two). Staying at my current job I will get full sick pay.

I don’t moan all the times like some customers do.
 
jon86 said:
Most people have a phone in their pocket or bag that has a calculator app. What's the issue with punching in 499 / 12 or 350 / 8?

In my local Aldi, a bag of 6 apples, a bag of 6 pears, a bag of 6 oranges, a bunch of bananas, and 3 punnets of berries might cost £10 total. £15 - £20 for the same thing sounds like a rip off.

You can; it's called ALDI. No loyalty cards, no coupons, no fuss, and the same price for everyone. We buy about 85% of our food from our local ALDI store, and we love it. The other 15% comes from Costco (certain organic bulk items) and Walmart (specialty items that Costco and ALDI don't sell).



Or just pull out your phone and use the calculator app?

Costco has started cracking down on people sharing membership cards by insisting to look at your card (to check that it's yours) before you checkout.

Indeed.

"This product is not eligible for price match as the model number is 11458B, and we only sell model number 11458."

Costco very often has unique model numbers for the electronics that it sells.

ALDI has no loyalty program. :)
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The point isn’t getting the phone out? The point is by law, they are required to show it to allow the customer to compare prices at a glance. The point is they are not complying to the law for the club card price.
 
cheesefest said:
Those who moan about self scans. Staff, not just my store, elsewhere leave without being replaced fully - in terms of hours. Plus got 3 long term sickness (hip replacement, back surgery and something else which i can’t remember). That’s just the customer service. There’s another 3 with surgery which was postponed by Covid.

It’s a legal requirement for staff to have breaks, days off and annual leave. There’s no law to say a till must be opened! A Sunday last summer - we had just SIX, yes SIX staff in the entire asstore! When we normally have 12-15. We still had to have breaks. It was a combination of annual leave, sickness and jury service. Employers can’t defer any employee’s call up. The jury service colleague still had to have her days off.

Customers who shout at us for no staff have never worked in retail. They wouldn’t cope! We had some new starters and all left within 6 weeks as they couldn’t hack the rudeness from customers. YOU are responsible for staff to leave. If you were pleasant, they would have stayed. Store manager has requested more staff but head office blocked it. As probably worried about the same thing happening again.

There’s no need for being rude, abusive
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I have never been rude to a shop employee in my life so you can keep your blame away from me thanks very much! however it isn't unreasonable for a large shop to be expected to be properly staffed..... after all it is the large stores who essentially outcompeted most of the small corner shops to... not extinction but definitely endangered. That said I would not blame the working staff for that, but I would blame the higher up management. I have friends who work in the industry supplying supermarkets (Aldi village bakery bread for one).... supermarkets play proper hardball and can get away with it due to their position.... if they don't hire enough staff such that the staff they do have are worked to the bone (and so quit or get sick)... that is on them (the management) imo . I am not going to have any sympathy with the big supermarkets and their profit margins as they utterly screw over the suppliers. (my cousin. used to work with milk farmers and she/ they hated supermarkets)
 
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bigmike20vt said:
I have never been rude to a shop employee in my life so you can keep your blame away from me thanks very much! however it isn't unreasonable for a large shop to be expected to be properly staffed..... after all it is the large stores who essentially outcompeted most of the small corner shops to... not extinction but definitely endangered. That said I would not blame the working staff for that, but I would blame the higher up management. I have friends who work in the industry supplying supermarkets (Aldi village bakery bread for one).... supermarkets play proper hardball and can get away with it due to their position.... if they don't hire enough staff such that the staff they do have are worked to the bone... that is on them imo . I am not going to have any sympathy with the big supermarkets and their profit margins as they utterly screw over the suppliers. (my cousin. used to work with milk farmers and she/ they hated supermarkets)
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The pandemic has caused many people to be rude, have no patience and belittle retail workers. Try working in a supermarket for 7 hours a day. You see people who are simply too horrible.

Three and a bit years ago, people were ok and understood why they had to queue up to enter supermarkets and other essential retailers. As we were limited to the number of customers who could enter. The customers thanked us for being there and for our work.

There’s nothing to achieve in a positive way of being rude towards retail workers. Lost count in the number of customers who made me cry. Had a man grabbing me by the arm as I was going home. “YOU WILL SERVE ME”. There was another till open and a colleague at the kiosk. The store manager was hearing this. He came over and banned the customer on the spot. The customer did similar things to staff in other shops in the area.

Now many customers tut and sigh if they have to wait 30 seconds to be served.

Sometimes the absences are beyond our control. My employer can’t stop family members dying, children falling out of trees and breaking a limb and having employees called up to jury service.

My father (now retired) worked in food packaging. Some retailers were awkward with their demands. For example, M&S wanted a different dimple design for their triffles pots to the other supermarkets. This meant making new moulds, after getting a few options for them to choose from, which costs more money. Probably why M&S are more expensive - customers are paying for the different design of the pots. My dad retired 12 years ago.
 
I absolutely agree that is unacceptable to be rude to staff..... I get why small shops may feel forced to put up with it (they are struggling) but the large retailers should have a zero tolerance policy .

whether they act on it i am not sure (I hope they do) but our GP and our dentist have a sign up warning of zero tolerance to abuse to staff. no 2nd chances, just kicked out of the practice. I am amazed tescos et al are not the same.

and no an employer can't help unexpected staff absences. again perhaps I have double standards but I am more forgiving on little corner shops ... but the likes of Tesco's I would expect should not cut the margins so fine for staff....... and then the odd times there were a few shortages here and there one would expect in these current times some staff would be champing at the bit for some voluntary overtime (assuming they are not worked to the absolute limit for the rest of the time - and if they are that again points to unacceptable working conditions for the staff probably linked to understaffing)

I don't work in retail ...... but if I did I would be really worried of all these self service tills. they are great for the shopper (I love em) but surely it's gonna mean even more staff cuts.
 
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LuckyBenski said:
Coop are doing this but with a £1 joining fee now.


I hate em! Never work very well, much prefer talking to a human.
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Coop has done that for donkeys, the quid is a token payment to become a member. The rewards scheme is pretty decent if you offset the fact they're like 40% more expensive across the board :cry:
 
Stumble Bum said:
It ****** me off more they don't also put the price per unit on the 'reduced' price making it impossible to determine which product is better value for money.
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jon86 said:
Most people have a phone in their pocket or bag that has a calculator app. What's the issue with punching in 499 / 12 or 350 / 8?
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Stumble Bum said:
What a silly response. Just get a phone out for every Clubcard item and calculate the price per 100/g....

Very practical.
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Or, like....you know....just work it out in your head? :p

You only need approximations to work out whether there's a significant difference to worry about or not.

But I do agree, I've always thought it was an intentional ploy to obfuscate prices, as just because something is on "offer" doesn't always mean it's the cheapest item per size anyway. Oh, and I don't always trust the /100g price anyway as I've often seen errors on Tesco labels.

The latest was on those packets of cadburys chocolate, all the same price, roughly similar or same pack size but one of them had about a 25% cheaper /100g price showing, which was nonsense, but I did wonder how many people wouldn't have noticed the error and just bought them.
 
bigmike20vt said:
I absolutely agree that is unacceptable to be rude to staff..... I get why small shops may feel forced to put up with it (they are struggling) but the large retailers should have a zero tolerance policy .

whether they act on it i am not sure (I hope they do) but our GP and our dentist have a sign up warning of zero tolerance to abuse to staff. no 2nd chances, just kicked out of the practice. I am amazed tescos et al are not the same.

and no an employer can't help unexpected staff absences. again perhaps I have double standards but I am more forgiving on little corner shops ... but the likes of Tesco's I would expect should not cut the margins so fine for staff....... and then the odd times there were a few shortages here and there one would expect in these current times some staff would be champing at the bit for some voluntary overtime (assuming they are not worked to the absolute limit for the rest of the time - and if they are that again points to unacceptable working conditions for the staff probably linked to understaffing)

I don't work in retail ...... but if I did I would be really worried of all these self service tills. they are great for the shopper (I love em) but surely it's gonna mean even more staff cuts.
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We have a sign at the front of the store. As people don’t read signs.

I have refused to serve some customers as been horrible and racist towards my Asian colleagues. A few years ago, on checkouts- there were all Asians including self scan and kiosk. One man demanded that he wanted to be served by a white person and ‘not by a p**i’. I said I wasn’t going to serve a racist and anyone using the p word. He left immediately before that - I took the basket from him as could see him walking off with not paying.

Not seen him since.

As to overtime, at my work we do have a few slots available some weeks. I say only about a quarter of slots are taken. I don’t do it as work long enough. The same faces do overtime.
 
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CMA needs to get on with the analysis of the supply chains versus those in europe, and its contribution to egg/tomato etc price inflation,
salad crops are taking a hit with the high temps, but, if UK summer never arrives maybe it won't be a problem



unit pricing stuff is just a superficial study V that didn't even ask/survey the actual customers - they assumed small PMO/price marking order infractions create problems.

if you purchase with an eye on cost you know the price of your regular articles, have a shopping list, to be efficient, and don't walk into the supermarket and think what brand of tea, or biscuits am I buying today;
and if you have the internet, you spend a minute looking on hotuk to identify any deals, more useful than social media.

Scope and methodology
....
36. To assess compliance with the PMO we developed a basket of 20 productsincluding fresh, frozen and non-perishable food and drink, household cleaningand personal hygiene products.34 Products that formed part of this basketwere selected to ensure a cross-section of essentials that are sold in a range
of sizes and brands (including own and value brands) as well as products thatwe were aware had previously caused difficulties for retailers under the PMO.

40. During the review, we also spoke to a number of grocery retailers, businessrepresentatives, enforcers, consumer representatives, UK governmentdepartments including in the devolved nations, and other stakeholders with aninterest in unit pricing matters. The information gathered through thesediscussions has also informed the recommendations we are making forreform to the unit pricing legislation and the recommendations that we aremaking to business.
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Steeps said:
Doesn't have to be your details, or your card. Just has to be someone's details or any card.

Any online form which requests details before quoting a price I usually put the details of the company I'm getting the quote for so they can contact themselves if they want to badger someone for a sale.
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Co-op used to send reward vouchers to your registered address so any fake one you aren't getting anything. Most annoying thing though is they want your phone so unless you have a throwaway you know you're going to get badgered one way or another despite unticking all teh boxes. Yeah I caved and got a nectar the difference in prices is just too much

cheesefest said:
Customers who shout at us for no staff have never worked in retail. They wouldn’t cope! We had some new starters and all left within 6 weeks as they couldn’t hack the rudeness from customers. YOU are responsible for staff to leave. If you were pleasant, they would have stayed. Store manager has requested more staff but head office blocked it. As probably worried about the same thing happening again.

There’s no need for being rude, abusive
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I've never been rude to any staff mother would have given me a clip round the ear as a nipper if I did! Besides I've worked behind the scenes in sainsburys and I know what its like. I didn't stay long there aren't many jobs where I've turned round and said nope, I'm out of here but that was one.
 
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