Kitchen Garden Forum

Getting low on dried dog food, went back to my local supermarket for a 15kg bag. Got home putting the last of the old bag into the new one, noticed it had shrunk by two and a half kilo's. Same price as the old bag though.

I'm expecting this will be the norm for the next year or so! Most folk will not even notice the shrink in content but they would definately note the rise in price.

Westi

I think this is the current Austerity Con of the year

It's pretty well known that bargain stores like Poundland sell their wares in smaller sizes these days so that they can keep the price at £1. As household budgets get squeezed we can expect to see this happening across the board for all kinds of food products. People tend to remember prices whereas they don't remember pack sizes quite so easily.

Or buying something for £1 in Poundland or similar and finding it's just £0.79p in Sainsburys or Tesco's.

I bought some Flash (Mega sized) all purpose cleaner from Asda last week for £2.00 special price. Only to notice that it is only 1.4 Ltr rather than 1.5 ltr which is my last one. How sneaky is that. Same price less content.

The fruit juice cartons at our supermarket have shrunk from 1000ml to 900ml.

A few weeks ago when we were shopping my husband called over an assistant and asked him whether it was more economical to buy the same pears loose by weight or packaged and priced per fruit. The assistant ummed and aahed and couldn't decide so we took the packaged pears and weighed them. After a bit of mental arithmetic it worked out that the packaged ones were cheaper than those sold loose (didn't really make sense at all). Next week it will probably be the other way round!

Its best to ignore the prices in big letters but look for the cost per unit on the shelf label. This is usually in very small print. Often you can find that small packets are cheaper than larger ones or offers are not really very good value after all. Things do get really complicated though when there is a BOGOF offer or worse when its 3 for 2 - this can require some serious mental arithmetic. We have three supermarkets to choose from round here and I would say that Tesco's is the worst offender.

John

But it isn't a supermarket con.The manufacturers have reduced their amounts because of the rising prices in raw materials and are selling at original prices.Most of the consumers will notice a price rise but most will not notice a reduction in the amounts.

John wrote:Its best to ignore the prices in big letters but look for the cost per unit on the shelf label. This is usually in very small print.
John

But when the unit price is in different units i.e one is per piece and the other per kilogram it doesn't help does it? Especially when the assistant can't even work out which is better value.

We were talking to a farmer the other day who had lost most of his potato crop due to flooding. he was saying how little the supermarkets pay him and then sell cooked mashed potatoes, chipped potatoes, pre-cooked jacket potatoes for an extraordinary price.

My husband used to think I was mad because I would stand in the middle of the supermarket aisle working out if the 500ml bottle of something was cheaper or dearer overall than the 1ltre bottle of the same thing, only to then work out that 4 x 250ml bottles were on an offer which made them the cheapest option.

It drove him mad because I did this with most things and made the whole ordeal that bit longer. However, he is now as bad as I am and automatically works the prices out as he goes about the shop.

I tend to do my main monthly shop online these days. I put everything into my basket that I need for the month and then go back and spend 2 hours checking to see if the 'Special Offer' actually IS the better option or not.

This week I put 3 x 600g (1.8kg) mince steak on a 3 for £10 offer into my basket only to remove it an hour or so later when I worked out that I could actually get 2kg of Butchers Counter Finest Mince Steak for £8!!!!!!!

Overall I managed to knock a saving of around £13 off this months shop by checking each and every price and quantity. It's a time consuming pain in the backside job to do but when you take this over a year, it's worth it ..... well I think it is

VPM
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snooky wrote:But it isn't a supermarket con.The manufacturers have reduced their amounts because of the rising prices in raw materials and are selling at original prices.Most of the consumers will notice a price rise but most will not notice a reduction in the amounts.

At last !

I've been shopping at A---- for the past 20 or so years. The quality has improved greatly over that time and I reckon it is up to 50% cheaper on the basic items. Also, what you see is what you get. Occasional disappointments, but generally fantastic value for money and absolutely no quibble refund/replacement if dissatisfied. They now do a 'Clover' lookalike which tastes pretty much the same, even my very picky daughter didn't notice the difference.

VPM - there's a supermarket price compaison website http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk which, I think once you've registered, will allow you to put in the contents of your weekly shop and then compare how much it will cost in each supermarket. I've not used it myself because I don't shop for groceries online but it may possibly give you an idea where some savings can be made.

Thank you Primrose. Will give that a try next month

VPM
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watch out for the large tins of quality street etc out for xmas. rumour is they are reducing the tin size but keeping last years prices !!!!