The UK has two tier pricing with loyalty cards spreading their wings to places such as Superdrug.
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Supermarkets discussion
- Thread starter Cowley
- Start date
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
I received a ‘locals discount’ at a cafe recently in a town very popular with overseas tourists, as I evidently didn’t look like one. Tourist tax in reverse!
That’s one for the comedically annoying thread..
That's true, but you can get a card and pay the lower price at any time (for now!). I am not a fan, especially when the non-loyalty card prices are sometimes rather comical and totally unbelievable.
gg1
Established Member
But can you register if you're just visting the UK, if not it is in effect a tourist tax like the NYC one mentioned earlier.
When we were touring California a couple of years ago we bought a fair bit of food and drink from CVS where there was two tier loyalty card/regular pricing, but to register you needed a US address and phone number.
Related but changing theme.. Our Tesco has recently greatly reduced the number of manned checkouts, there are around a dozen but rarely more than one or two ever in use even at busy times. OK I have no problems with the self service but prefer a manned checkout as at least I can chat with the lady or man there (being single and living alone that is very important...). One chap told me that when cashiers leave they are not replaced implying it will get worse. It only takes a couple of people with big trolley shops to take over the checkouts for long periods and those with baskets have no option.
DannyMich2018
Member
- Joined
- 19 Dec 2018
- Messages
- 932
I've always found in recent years Tesco stores have more staffed tills open but even now it's more self service. Our Hinckley store last year went from about 15 to 7 staffed tills and self service only in the evenings too, only Lidl have staffed ones as they have no self service (yet....)
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Ah Lidl.
My town centre Lidl has about twenty self serve tills arranged in two rows of facing tills. The entrance is in one corner so at the end of one row. People seldom see the unused tills in the other row. I usually march straight over to that row and hover, often not for long. Obviously if the entrance was adjacent to the ends of both rows customers could see better.
The is usually always a staff member hovering for items that require authorisation. On Sunday I noticed they were making no effort to direct customers to vacant tills. I actually queue jumped about ten people to choose one of at least five vacant tills for myself and wake up other shoppers to the tills not under their nose !.
The layout of self service tills can often be counter productive.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Completely agreed, when the entrance is one end of a bank of tills, those at the far end can end up being free due to some people being unable to see them. Or when you get some supermarkets (mainly Morrisons) having separate banks for "Trolley Shops" and "Basket Shops" when you get dirty looks for daring to use a till in the near empty Trolley section when the Basket section has a queue.
Would be better to redesign those areas, so the entrance is in the middle with exits at both ends, although the side closest to the exit will no doubt be more popular
I'm not sure. That's a good point. Lots of tourists will shop in supermarkets and they're potentially paying the made-up price. Likewise, kids aren't technically able to get a card (Tesco is planning to change this, but isn't moving quickly AFAIK) so also get penalised.
I am not a fan of the dual-pricing. Are we supposed to believe that Tesco is giving such a massive discount just because you have a loyalty card? Given everyone says they are on such razor-thin margins, they would be taking a huge hit on profits. Or, it's the other way around, and they're making a huge profit on the people they can get to pay 'full price'. It can't be both.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Tesco have been failing to hire new people to replace those going for years. Remaining staff moan on Tesco employee forums about all the extra duties put upon them, as well as managers being able to make them do xx minutes here, xx minutes there and moving people around departments multiple times per shift - when it's usually more sensible to keep people doing only one or two things so they can actually do a good job.
Whoosh is also pushing some staff to the brink. The times they're given to pick items is insane, and some shoppers are ordering 50-100 items so effectively using it to do a large shop they'd had previously used the home shopping service for.
jon81uk
Member
It was generally the same discounting before they locked it to loyalty card holders though. A lot of the promotions are subsidised by the manufactuer, or the supermarket works on the average of the prices, so the item is £2 for six weeks, then £1.25 for six weeks, then £2 for six weeks and so on.
The offers are in most cases the same as they were ten years ago when you didn't need the loyalty card, although of course prices have risen.
Things like Ginsters pasty was £1.75 and on offer at £1 every few weeks, now its £2.25 and on offer at £1.25 every few weeks.
Ham was two packs for £3 now its two packs for £3.50.
Plenty of other examples, these offers have been running for ten years they aren't anything new, its just now only cardholders get the promotions.
But there are things that cost £50 without a card and £20-25 with (an example was Colgate toothpaste or an electric toothbrush*). I know companies pay for promotions but something is off here. Some normal prices are ridiculous and nobody else sells the same item for.
Maybe supermarkets didn't intend to let this happen, but it has happened.
* Can't remember the brand, but it may well have been Oral-B which seems to sell all of its toothbrushes with ridiculous SRPs and near constant promotions. However, the way they do things on their own site or Amazon means nobody really pays the normal price. With a supermarket, some people do.
Maybe supermarkets didn't intend to let this happen, but it has happened.
* Can't remember the brand, but it may well have been Oral-B which seems to sell all of its toothbrushes with ridiculous SRPs and near constant promotions. However, the way they do things on their own site or Amazon means nobody really pays the normal price. With a supermarket, some people do.
But anyone wanting a discount can get one so nobody is denied a discount.
My local Lidl has a similar layout, but almost always one half of the tills are disabled. I assume because they don't think a single member of staff can monitor both halves at once. Does make it fairly pointless that they remodelled to add all those tills though!
Peter Sarf
Established Member
As usual it pays to plan ahead. I book FlixBus as far ahead as I can - of course it is easy to predict when we should travel but the rest of the family cannot plan so far ahead. For Supermarkets I buy long shelf life items when they are on offer. An example is Thai Jasmine rice 5kg usually with a shelf life of over two years, It varies between £6-£8 but offers take it as low as £4.50, that is happening in Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsburys and Lidl at different times of the year. It is only short shelf life items I have to worry about.
Morrisons and Sainsbury have individualized discounts in their app - my default shops are Morrisons and Aldi. For Morrisons I've had the free cup of coffee once, so now its spend £5 get £1 off that is appearing. Also it seems to know I've been to a Morrisons local (on my annual trip to Blackpool) as I've been getting points offers specific to "local" for awhile.
There have been quite a lot of the spend x, save x/10 vouchers (valid for 7 days after its issued) printed off so they are trying to get bigger basket spends and can probably work out if likely not to be shopping much elsewhere and adjust offers accordingly. The £2 off £20 always gets used, £3 off £30 mostly does, and the £4 off £40 never has with me - I assume it continues like that so if you normally get bigger shops and typically spend say £55 then it won't be any of those, but could be £7 off £70. Never seems to give them 2 weeks in a row.
The last few times I've shopped at Sainsbury's, the machine that prints offers has failed (and I don't use the same till). I can hear it try to print what appears to be two or three vouchers (usually it's a double or triple Nectar point one, then some offers) and in all cases I ask staff what I need to do and they say I can't do anything. They can't reprint them and the printers have either jammed or run out of paper.
I'm starting to think it's deliberate because surely someone would attempt to load more paper, or fix any issues? Seems like it's an effective way to ensure I don't get any vouchers. I went to customer services and they said they can't do anything either, but offered to fish some out of the bin that other people had used?!?!
I'm starting to think it's deliberate because surely someone would attempt to load more paper, or fix any issues? Seems like it's an effective way to ensure I don't get any vouchers. I went to customer services and they said they can't do anything either, but offered to fish some out of the bin that other people had used?!?!
3rd rail land
Member
There needs to be limits on how many items can be ordered via Whoosh. If you want to do a huge order use the traditional delivery option as its set up for that and Whoosh isn't. Its just the regular staff picking the Whoosh orders and I doubt Tesco are hiring extra staff to cover the extra work.
jon81uk
Member
Again, those discounts existed before the promotions became loyalty card holders only. Tesco often had half price offers then and now.
No, they're not hiring extra staff.
Kite159
Veteran Member
..
Similar to DVDs back in the era people purchased DVDs. Standard Retail Price being something stupid like £25 for a typical movie, which would be available for £10 in all the various supermarkets which sold DVDs
I remember the craze of hard wood furniture stores where you opened a store as an individuals to sell high quality furniture (I guess today it's akin to drop shipping) and told the supplier what SRPs you wanted them to put in the brochure they produced for you.
Although the vouchers are printed with a message "Just for you with your Nectar card ending xxxx" they are actually totally generic and will work for anyone (and work multiple times).
I suspect the staff are just rushed off their feet and don't have a chance to sort the printers/can't be bothered/don't know they're not working rather than some conspiracy to stop issuing paper vouchers. If they wanted to they could simply withdraw them and make them app only...
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Ah, but I fear not with Morrisons. I had a £5 voucher that refucss to work becasue I have the wrong (Match and) More card.
I was promised it had not been used BUT as it is straight money the checking might be stricter.
ABB125
Established Member
I tried using a voucher off the floor a few years ago in Sainsbury's, but it didn't work (and I think the till decided it wasn't happy so a member of staff had to come over to reset it). Has this changed relatively recently?
I still purchase DVD's and their off-spring, Blue Ray.
I saw someone checking/updating the electronic labels in Aldi and they seemed to be doing it with a tablet, so quite likely they are changed locally by this method using Bluetooth or something like that and aren’t networked and able to be controlled centrally. I guess that would make it harder and more labour intensive to dynamically price things. The labels can also be moved around the shelves quite easily.
Changing prices dynamically also has the issue of what happens if the price changes between the customer picking up the item and paying for it at the till - surely that would be dishonest and possibly illegal?
Dynamic pricing and subscription schemes seem to be a particularly greedy and unwelcome aspect of modern capitalism. My other half is involved in software procurement/licensing for a medium sized firm and they are constantly changing the terms to the detriment of the customer, always with a few glib sentences saying how this is a benefit for them somehow when it absolutely isn’t and is just trying to squeeze out more profit. It’s a huge burden for businesses already facing other rising costs.
Buzby
Established Member
I queried this, and was told price changes are applied overnight (when the store is closed). The ‘tablet’ incident most likely was contacting the server, not the label itself, as imagine the chaos of tills having to query shelf tags individually for a price!
I've been in Lidl where one of these labels was showing the details for the wrong item. I talked to a member of staff who pointed his device at the label and after a few seconds updating showed the correct item. I'm not sure if this shows anything about how the data flows between things.
On the trial I read about, if the price goes down it goes down immediately so you will check out and pay the lower price even if you saw it was higher. If the price goes up, the lower price remains charged for a set period of time (say 15-30 minutes).
These are things supermarkets would indeed need to take account of.
Of course, due to short staffing in many stores it is currently a problem with items priced incorrectly and the electronic ones can solve that at least - without any clever stuff like variable pricing. I believe they use Bluetooth LE, but they could use another protocol like ZigBee for longer range and retaining good battery life.