Everytime I visit Sainsburys they justify their excessive prices (my nearest is Haywards Heath, surely the most expensive in the country) by printing a ream of ticker tape telling me I've "saved" some money.
Not to be left out my usual haunt of Tescos has started doing the same. Today I spent £18.30 and apparently saved 59p. There's no indication of how I saved 59p or consideration of the fact that in that location doing the shopping I was doing there are no alternatives within reasonable driving distance.
It's interesting as there was an article in the Times last weekend suggesting that shopping costs are tumbling. I'm not sure where they are tumbling and what products one has to purchase to see tumbling but I have to suspect tumbling is not happening in Sussex at the moment, in fact from my credit card bills I can prove they aren't tumbling anywhere except upwards.
Is there a price war on? Picture the conversation :
Supermarket 1 : "we're going to add 50% to the price of beans"
Supermarket 2 : "we're going to undercut you, 45% here we come"
Is that a price war because that's what I see (to be honest I can't tell you about beans, pretty sure milk has stayed fairly static but anything else...).
What's more annoying is there is no indication of a way to tell the supermarkets to stop wasting money on paper and give me cheaper prices in the first place.
Tips to supermarkets :
1) Give me good prices on good products - I know you need to make a profit but stop taking the p*ss.
2) Stop wasting money on endless bits of paper.
3) You frequently control a geographic area so if you put staff on checkouts people will come to your shop.
4) Get over yourselves, if there were better choices we'd be off elsewhere but there simply aren't so we put up with you.
