Mumsnet Talk

...I can't bring myself to pay full price. I have a freezer full of croissants. So when I see 2 for £1 offers, I think no way. Wish other things were reduced like that. Only ever seems to be bread and bread type things.

I have 2 freezers, both are full of yellow label goodies - meat, fish, chilled items (ham, bacon, cheese, milk, yoghurts, butter), fruit, veg, herbs & bakery items. And I really only buy stuff when it is 75% off or more.

If you ask the staff in your store (either at the checkout or in the department itself), they will be happy to tell you when the reductions happen. I have been told that they are better/more numerous when there is a big sports game on TV or it is raining really heavily so not many people can be bothered to come out. Also, when a new store opens, the manager may take a while to find the right stock levels, resulting in a surplus of stock.

i am now hooked on these too - dh stops off at waitrose on the way home and comes in with lots of cheap goodies - eg sandwiches reduced to 20p that we take for lunch the next day

Jenduck, thanks for that tip. Checks match fixtures and weather forecast.

But don't go as far as my Mum who used to look for bargains in advance! (She would scan the newspapers for reports of civil or political unrest in other countries and was known to buy in large amounts of whatever they produced if it was a staple crop and she became concerned. )

Your mum sounds fab. That's hardcore!

Even better are 241/24£x and reduced.
I know sainsburys & waitrose do it still.
Buy both reduced items on offer & they pay you to take it away.

They pay you? How does it work?

WiganKebab - say sausages are usually £3.50 a pack or two packs for £5. The packs then get reduced to 80p each, so you buy two. But when it goes through the till, the multi-buy saving still gets taken off - so you get charged £1.60 for the two packs, but the £2 saving for buying two packs is still deducted.

It's only happened to me a few times but it's pretty good when it does.

It's just the way their tills work. They take the initial offer off, ignoring the reduced price. So say £1 each 2 for £1.50.
Reduced to 10p each.
So 20p, minus 50p offer is -30p. You get 2 reduced items for the freezer & 30p.

It does help if you have some other shopping. The staff call a manager if the till tells them to give you money!

Or the tesco offers where they mess up. Double the difference & you keep the items. We had some fantastic free barbecues last year

DS and I went to Tesco yesterday and we bought two bags of cookies, a pack of mince pie puffs, custard tarts, two bags of chocolate coins and two loaves of Kingmill for £3.

I was very impressed with the snacky bargains and I do love a good reduced sticker.

Just be wary of the use by dates- I got some reduced gluten free rolls as DS2 was screaming and i didn't notice until we got home that they were 3 days out of date and completely mouldy.

The meat in our Tesco is never reduced by more than 25p a pack. It's daft!

You do have to be a bit careful with the Tesco reduced stuff, some of it only goes down by pennies. Sometimes the multibuy items are reduced by the individual price rather than the offer price. You then get a single pack of shortdated sausages (or whatever) at virtually the same price as the normal dated multibuy sausages. (iyswim)

I hate them. In fact I deliberately avoid any time there might be any reductions. People go crazy for the reduced stuff, pushing shoving stockpiling twenty loaves of 10p bread. There's always a huge group of people waiting for the reductions. Times are hard I guess and everyone's cottoned on about the stickers.

I went to asda after Xmas and there were a number of people who went at 4pm, filled their trolley with loads of fruit, veg, bread showing as best before that date and then presented their trolley at 4.50pm to be marked down to 10p. The poor guy with the label gun looked stressed.

Having said that, back in the day when no one wanted the reduced stuff I got a lovely bunch of red roses for 20p. Bargains are nice but up north they go within minutes.