"Mum charged £47 for two bags of pick and mix from Cardiff Winter Wonderland"

[sunnydaytoday0]

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/mum-charged-47-two-bags-25576870

When I saw the headline I was shocked someone would pay that much for a couple of bags of sweets even at a place like winter wonderland, which like tourist traps and a lot of attractions are going to be very expensive.

However on reading the story the company isn't wrong in saying that the price per 100g was displayed, as well as a weighing scale being available, plus the mum let her child start eating the sweets before they had fully paid so couldn't put them back?

I don't think the stall has really done anything wrong? Apart from it being very expensive, but then that's why I don't buy stuff from these sorts of places.

What cretin lets their darlings eat something before paying? Maybe they should have eaten more so it was nowhere near £47.

Tesco Miss Tilly's fudge is £1.60 for 100g and that's a fairly big box/bag of fudge you get, way way more than enough for a child. So 1.6kg is an obscene amount of fudge, even if you don't know exactly what 100g looks like when your kids have 800g of sweets each from a stall like that it's going to be bloody expensive.

And who lets kids tuck in before you've paid!? Bet this family are a nightmare.

A 'family' bag of haribo starmix is 175g. My favourite drumstick squashies are 160g. The sharing bag of peanut M&Ms are about 250g. So basically 1.6kg is enough for a family for a week.

We have offered Rhiannon a full refund, and explained that we are already working to improve our service so we can avoid issues going forward: clearer signage explaining weighing and pricing to customers, retraining our staff to be able to offer better assistance to avoid similar incidents going forward, adding some pre-mixed priced bags minimise issues and lines waiting to weigh sweets.
"We are very sorry that Rhiannon felt she was obliged to pay and hope that she accepts our offer to refund."

That's a very customer service reply. Not "What an idiot, she took 1.6 kilogram of sweets, that's 3.5 pounds of sweets, how could she not realise. No way are we paying her back"

That' s a good example actually, so we are talking 10 x that bag of fudge. And those kids would likely have eaten that all in one day. Yeuch...

100% this.

When it’s pick and mix, more than a couple of inches of sweets in the bag is expensive and way too much sugar. The bags are huge, and you don’t have to fill them up.

Well you can buy the tins still. They just cost more. Also, those big tins used to cost the equivalent of £20. If you spent £5 you won’t get £20 worth of chocolate.

Seems a bit mad to expect that the sweets will cost anything other than the advertised price per weight. I'd just avoid. Am I the only parent who used to (kids grown up now) pre-empt this by producing cheap sweets from my bag, to divert kids from these stalls and similar at cinema etc?

I wonder what those bags looked like?

And felt like.

Still - if I was the kid's teacher, I think there is a valuable maths lesson on weight and working out the cost of something when in price per 100 g

So the mum got a refund anyway. Why go to the press? Oh, so she can get well wishers saying "oh hun, your kids deserve to tease pre-diabetes with pick n mix. Been such a tough year. Here is a crowdfunder so your darlings can indulge in jelly snakes and foam shrimps for the next year"... or something.

I've been stung on pick n mix before because it turns out I'm awful at estimating 100g. It's lots less than I think it should look like.

How anyone bags up over a kilogram of pick n mix without realising it's a HUGE amount of sweets is beyond me though.

Didn't read the article but £2.79 for 100g of sweets is expensive.

We paid a lot for some churros for dc while walking on the Southbank - no event as such.

I think many people are just charging mad money now and it is not right. They are taking advantage of people, who are desperate to make memories with their little ones after the pandemic.

£40 on tokens for rides plus crepes at £7!

I would have stopped there-if not before!!

There's a simple short word that has to be used sometimes!

Well I can’t see the bottom of the bag. It could well be the full amount of sweets.

This is too funny. I wish the Mum had started a AIBU thread about this. There would be carnage 😅

I may not know exactly what 100g looks like, but I know that 1.6kg of sweets would be HUGE! Stupid people... even more stupid to go to the press about it and not be self-aware to know they'll look stupid!

I saw one of these pick n mix buses at a festival over the summer. The number of flies, wasps etc swarming over it was enough to put me off. Appreciate it is a different time of year but the exposed nature of it made me think about the things I couldn't see... Not relevant to the story but the set up did make me think about whether I would want to spend money on something where the consumables are so exposed.

There is a Hand made Fudge seller stall in one of the Marquees at Badminton Horse trials
My goodness - It’s expensive but so worth it.
Soft and flavoursome— It gets sliced off a loaf, about an inch thick, and they give samples.
Delicious.’
About £3.50 a slice - I’m a pig, 🐷and even I couldn’t eat one of their slices in one go🙂
I really want some now!

Why did you pay?!

Even if the thing I was being hugely overcharged for was something I REALLY wanted (like Rufus Sewell dipped in chocolate) or something the DC really wanted (could be lots of things) is it not much better to just say “No, I’m not paying that” and use the opportunity to explain to the D.C. about sharp practice and budgeting and so on? (Assuming they are school age.)

This kind of thing drives me mental. Nobody checks their change any more. Sales assistants frequently now just wave the contactless thing at you without announcing the total or turning it round so you can see it. We are all supposed to go along like sheep and wave payment at them without checking.

I refuse to get sucked into it. Especially when my youngest is with me.

They are taking advantage of people, who are desperate to make memories with their little ones after the pandemic.

They really aren’t. People need to use their personal responsibility and agency. It isn’t COVID’s fault that this woman doesn’t know the difference between 100g and 1600g, and can’t stop her kids eating food before it’s paid for.

The largest tub (formerly tin) of Cadbury's Roses contains 600g, or 0.6 kilos of sweets.

So at 1.5 kilos these kids bought nearly three times that amount of sweets.

Then again I can buy three large tubs of Roses for £12.…

Same here- And kid’s sticky fingers in there-
Threadworm, anyone?

The Hand. Made fudge stall at Badminton ( Hampton Court flower show as well) is strictly hands off, all tongs and gloves and under cover.

You know sweet-sellers/churro-sellers have bills to pay as well, Hun?

Shame the parents don’t feel able to chip in on yea hing life skills and practical maths since they’re the ones in the shops with them.

Prices should be a bit more reasonable for everybody, not unreasonably high with sellers preying on the unexperienced, uneducated, disadvantaged in other way among us.