consumers duped by special discounts

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nick mercedes

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"An investigation into thousands of individual supermarket prices has revealed widespread "misleading" pricing tactics which are duping shoppers into believing they are getting a better deal than they are."

"products which become more expensive than the original price per item when they go into a multibuy offer."

"it identified prices being increased immediately before going on "offer" making the discount appear more significant."

Finally, Which? discovered products that were not sold at what was claimed to be a "higher" price immediately before going on offer."

"Which? is urging the government to tighten up its rules on pricing to give more protection to consumers."

"Consumers should not have to worry about whether a special offer is really 'special', so we want the supermarkets to play fair and the government to tighten up pricing guidelines so that people can shop with confidence."

'Misleading' supermarket special offers are duping shoppers, Which? finds | Money | The Guardian

Anyone have any other examples of large retailers increasing prices to cover discounts and thus ripping off consumers?
 
Who buys stuff based solely on the discount offered? Surely most people either buy at a price they deem acceptable or simply don't care what something costs (within reason). The rest is just marketing fluff to attract the hard of thinking.
 
Majestic multibuy Champagne offers are more than moderately misleading - their single bottle price is absurd, and with discount, you can still find things more cheaply elsewhere.

I thought this would be one of life's essentials for MB owners to be aware of. :)
 
As of this moment I don't think I have been. Now I finally have your attention, can we take this outside and reply to one of my e-mails please?
 
As of this moment I don't think I have been. Now I finally have your attention, can we take this outside and reply to one of my e-mails please?

The gasket did reappear yesterday as it happens - via Citylink, which is a bit odd given it went out by UPS, so expect a refund to appear over the next few days.

The problem with simply refusing delivery when you've changed your mind is that be it the Royal Mail or UPS, things that took 24 hours to be delivered in the first place take ages to come back to me.
 
I assume tags are free text again, judging by those below:dk:.
 
The gasket did reappear yesterday as it happens - via Citylink, which is a bit odd given it went out by UPS, so expect a refund to appear over the next few days.

The problem with simply refusing delivery when you've changed your mind is that be it the Royal Mail or UPS, things that took 24 hours to be delivered in the first place take ages to come back to me.

OK, lets not keep this private. Lets be right about this, I did not "change my mind" I refused to accept a damaged package. I made it quite clear in my e-mails that I am prepared to have a replacement sent out if you have one, not something I'd do if I had indeed changed my mind.

The tracking system on UPS showed that the parcel arrived back with you on the 16th and I took this as gospel. I was obviously unaware that this was not the case, maybe if you had responded to my requests for information I would have known this.
 
Who buys stuff based solely on the discount offered? Surely most people either buy at a price they deem acceptable or simply don't care what something costs (within reason). The rest is just marketing fluff to attract the hard of thinking.

Sadly, I think you are giving the greater populus far more credit than it deserves.

The supply of stupidity is just about infinite, to paraphrase a well-known physicist. The supermarkets (and plenty of other retail outlets) know this. The result is inevitable. It has not come about by chance. Retail strategy planners go to great lengths to find out what makes people 'tick' as far as shopping is concerned.

As Scott Adams one wrote, there are four categories of consumers:

1. Stupid Rich
2. Stupid Poor
3. Intelligent Rich
4. Intelligent Poor.

Category 1 is the one to really make a push for, but 2 is just about as good. You want to steer clear of 3 and 4 altogether.
 
I suppose I'm somewhere in between three and four, like most people on here, I'd have thought.
 
Aah after reading the tags, I see nick has a personal vendetta against a certain car parts retailer. That old chesnut. Clearly someone with far too much free time.
 
Who buys stuff based solely on the discount offered?

People with rather less disposable income than you.

Surely most people either buy at a price they deem acceptable or simply don't care what something costs (within reason). The rest is just marketing fluff to attract the hard of thinking.

Or the hard up. If you buy a bottle of value shampoo / a four-pack of baked beans / a box of cheap tea bags each week and you find that some of these are on a BOGOF or some such offer then you may well buy far more than usual to save money over the coming weeks.
 
Or the hard up. If you buy a bottle of value shampoo / a four-pack of baked beans / a box of cheap tea bags each week

The irony is that a lot of these 'value' products are actually poor value for money; Fairy liquid, as opposed to value brands, for example works out cheaper because you use less when washing your car, so you're getting more.

There are a hell of a lot of products on the market that I wouldn't use, even if they were free...
 
The irony is that a lot of these 'value' products are actually poor value for money; Fairy liquid, as opposed to value brands, for example works out cheaper because you use less when washing your car, so you're getting more.

There are a hell of a lot of products on the market that I wouldn't use, even if they were free...

The "Happy Shopper" brand of my student days springs to mind.
 
The irony is that a lot of these 'value' products are actually poor value for money; Fairy liquid, as opposed to value brands, for example works out cheaper because you use less when washing your car, so you're getting more.

There are a hell of a lot of products on the market that I wouldn't use, even if they were free...

True, but there are two sides to every coin. Working for major food manufacturers I can tell you that some of the own-label or "value" products are actually the same as the branded costing twice as much! Only the packaging is different. Where there is a difference, it's also not unusual for consumers to prefer the cheaper, unbranded versions when tested "blind".
 
People with rather less disposable income than you.

Scott_F - I think you may have missed the point I was making.

I would expect people to pay more attention to the price they were paying than to the discount offered.

Think of the endless sales offered by the warehouse-type furniture companies, where everything is advertised as being half-price or less. Does anyone actually belive that this stuff is really worth twice the advertised price? If people are buying these things just because of the "50% off" claim, and not because they think the price they're paying represents good value, then they have only themselves to blame.

A fool and his money, and all that...
 
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