Victim of egg fraud

[MidnightPatrol]

Earlier this week I read that people were swapping ‘premium eggs’ in the supermarket, for cheaper ones.

Reader, today I opened my Clarence court eggs to find… only half in a box of ten had the relevant crown stamp.

I’ve been had!

Check your eggs!

Not just that but if people thieve the expensive eggs the farmers dobt make the money to maintain the standards for the chickens

I worked for a posh egg company once and this is super common. So many people do it. We used to get complaints about customer’s eggs, and when we checked the batch code they were from a different brand.

I think there's something wrong. When I read the OP's title I thought of some horrible IVF scenario. When I read the title of a previous post, I was all set to think the OP's sister, who couldn't get home, was having a one night stand. Have I been on Mumsnet too long?

A few years ago I was in Tesco wanting to buy a bra. I opened the pack to look at the size and someone had done exactly this, swapped their grey, grubby old bra for a nice new one ! Took it to the desk and the lady said people did this all the time, was in the times of being able to go into changing rooms 🤮

how disgusting

But they are not getting the higher welfare standards because they aren’t paying for them!

Take boxes of eggs from the back of the shelf in the supermarket - there is less likelihood that they have been tampered with by sticky, stealing hands.

Supermarkets will probably have to install a better egg security system - maybe some kind of recorded message being played like, "Don't steal the eggs, you sad twats!"😉

i have noticed the have moved the eggs in my local waitrose to quite close to the tils. that would explain the reasoning.

But that makes no sense. I support the higher welfare standard by paying for it. I would hope to increase demand for a higher welfare standard aka to contribute to more chicken being kept accordingly.

if I swap the eggs, I don’t do any of that. I might even lead to a decrease in demand because people like OP might not buy the more expensive eggs anymore…

I read about this op I can't believe we have a real life victim.
You poor thing.
I can only imagine a specific kind of criminal committing this crime though.
Perhaps a pensioner who can't afford the premium eggs anymore but can't face the cheaper ones ; as pp said it's hard to go back once you get the tatse

If I got home and my Burfords had been swapped for standard ones id be gutted.I love the gorgeous orange yolks.

I've seen a similar tactic used in tk maxx with the make up, lipsticks taken out of the packaging and put in a cheaper box but eggs! So fiddly to do.

I think the posh ones do taste nicer. They have a richer yolk. I got a double yolk the other month, first time ever! I was so happy 😁

Surely the staff would notice people switching them? I guess they'll have a camera firmly pointed at the egg section from now on.

I always buy large free range from Tesco (home delivery) and have thought for ages they are smaller than they used to be.

Wouldn't surprise me if the pickers are deliberately selecting boxes that have been swapped out to save on product waste. Similar to all the nearly out of date bashed up fresh stuff I always seem to end up with.

Maybe this is my five minutes of fame opportunity, with a sad-faced daily mail article.

@MidnightPatrol get in op ! Make a buck practise the face and pose now !

@Bunfighter actually I'm not sure it's that fiddly

I was just thinking I'm going to be a poorer pensioner, I should learn how to swop eggs .

But eggs you can legitimately open the box to check they aren't broken so step one is clear. Unlike opening up make up boxes etc.

So step one is clear step two needs some sort of magic trick training...snuggling eggs up sleeves into hands and back ...a magician could do it no problems.

It seems like a lot of faff to go through just for some nicer eggs.

On that note, I always buy organic eggs as the welfare standards for organic egg producing chickens is much higher than normal free range.
Years ago I contacted Daylesford to ask about the difference and got a very long and involved reply. The big takeaway though was this;

’In summary, perhaps the most important point taken from the comparison between organic and free range eggs is that the standard for free range eggs is very blurry and you cannot be sure that the eggs have come from a high welfare environment. Eggs from an organic farm, by law will be from hens reared in a very high welfare system. I personally have visited our hens at Daylesford and can report that they are very contented ladies! They have ample grassland on which they love to forage, areas for their dust baths (which they love) and ample perch space within their coup where they rest at night.’

This was 10 years ago now though and things may have changed with bird flu.

I remember a manager at Waitrose telling me that there was a problem with organic bananas being in a cardboard sleeve rather than a plastic bag as folk would take them out and try to pay for them as non-organic. Bizarre!! 🙄

Never mind the eggs; I'm truly shocked about the bra swapping.

No way I only buy Burford Browns, none of that funny business here.

Although like the pp I avoid large.

I understand paying more for higher welfare eggs but don’t be fooled by the colour of the yolks. As a farmer I buy a lot of animal feed from the feed merchants, we keep a few free range hens plus geese & ducks, along with the bigger stock. When you buy poultry feed the merchants have a colour chart for you to pick what colour yolks you want from the various types of feed plus feeding corn makes them more yellow too.

'Reader', it's a bit weird to not open the box of any eggs you're about to buy to make sure none are broken...

We keep our own hens (some burfords, quite temperamental 😂) and our eggs are absolutely lovely. Rich and delicious with a proper flavour. Was round at my mums recently and my stepdad made me a fried egg (was breakfast!) and it was a horrible crap cheap egg. I’ll never understand it, she’s loaded but refuses to pay for higher welfare anything.
But they absolutely don’t taste the same.
It’s bloody awful that people are swapping them though.

I think this is a stamping error. We buy Clarence Eggs from Ocado (about three dozen a week as DH is protein counting…) Some eggs are not stamped but look exactly the same when cracked (unlike cheaper eggs). Ocado packs from a warehouse rather from the shop floor. So this would suggest sometimes stamping machine is not perfect.

Unless the robots have plans for the good eggs…