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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

349 replies

sunnydaytoday0 · 26/11/2022 20:39

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.

OP posts:
sunnydaytoday0 · 27/11/2022 00:32

Plus, isn't letting your kids eat items that are costed by weight before they are weighted and paid for stealing?

There's no issue about stealing here because they ultimately paid what they took away with them. The thing she was mentioning in the article was that her DD had started eating the sweets as the dad was paying, so they couldn't put it back once the mum had realised how much it had cost.

That said I don't know why people have to start eating stuff before they've fully paid for something, even if they fully intend to pay. It's like opening something in a supermarket then handing the wrapper to the person at the till for scanning.

OP posts:
stuntbubbles · 27/11/2022 00:35

£1 bag of Haribo is actually 175g. Not that it matters, because the family weren’t buying prepackaged Haribo for £1 for 175g, they were buying pick and mix for £2+ for 100g.

jtaeapa · 27/11/2022 00:42

I think the set up is a bit exploitative. You're leaving an attraction, kids excited, the sweet place is lit up like a christmas tree, massive array of enticing sweets, you think oh it's a nice evening out and we planned for a bit of expense so they can have a few sweets. And then they put sweets in a bag, of course the parents are not doing a mental calculation of how many lots of 100g they have, particularly as most people will not be great at estimating weight. This woman's kids had a bag each and the bags were nowhere near filled. She was NBU to have been stunned at the £47. £47 is a rip off and it's a rip off that is obviously difficult to estimate. It's par for the course that an excited child will grab a sweet to eat as well, meaning that the sweets can't be put back.

It would be better if the company gave out cups and said you can fill the cup for £5 or £10 or whatever so you can easily have a good idea of what your quantity will cost. But that's not really how this type of place operates is it.

cakeorwine · 27/11/2022 00:44

ScrollingLeaves · 27/11/2022 00:27

If 100g of haribou costs £1
1600g of haribou would be £16

And at Winter Wonderland?

What are you saying here, cake?

Location, location, location

The price what you pay in a supermarket is different to the price you pay for pick and mix at an event.

cakeorwine · 27/11/2022 00:48

This woman's kids had a bag each and the bags were nowhere near filled

So 800 grams each?

That is still a lot of sweets.

Pick and Mix is expensive. Like popcorn is at the cinema.

stuntbubbles · 27/11/2022 00:53

Or salad at Whole Foods. (They do it by weight as well. But you’d probably not get a compo face headline out of it because it doesn’t have the heady tabloid mix of kids and sugar.)

MargaritaPie · 27/11/2022 00:55

100g isn't much. Couple pieces of toffee maybe.

JonahAndTheSnail · 27/11/2022 01:01

If you had even an inkling of confusion as to how much 100g of sweet looked like, then why would you let your kids fill a bag and start eating them before weighing and paying? Do people not think along the lines of 1kg is a standard bag of sugar, note said size of bag and consider how much larger a typical sweet is than a grain of sugar?

ScrollingLeaves · 27/11/2022 01:01

I remember buying sweets from jars. The amount would be ‘a quarter’ which was 4oz which was roughly about 100g. This was the standard order, not more, and just fitted into small white bags about 3ins square. Sometimes people would just get 2oz.

If you’d had a large bag to fill, this amount 4oz/100g would no longer have seemed generous and would have been perceived instead as being a tiny amount.

Hence we are now getting problems with diabetes.

Similarly, in the cinema they used to sell small packets of sweets like Wine Gums, Maltesers, Fruit Pastilles, Opal Fruits or little boxes of ‘Poppets’ and you’d make them last for the film. Now there are big ‘sharing’ packets which may not get shared!

Florenz · 27/11/2022 01:03

The fudge company would be paying a lot of money to have their stall at the event as a concession so you can hardly compare prices there to pick and mix at Tesco etc.

I honesty despair when people expect to be able to act stupidly and get away with it. There's no incentive for people to learn from their mistakes.

ScrollingLeaves · 27/11/2022 01:10

Florenz · Today 01:03
The fudge company would be paying a lot of money to have their stall at the event as a concession so you can hardly compare prices there to pick and mix at Tesco

The headline said Pick and Mix which are generally certain sorts of mass produced sweets.

It didn’t sound as though it was hand made/special fudge in the article.

Maybe if there was a fudge company it was selling ‘Pick and Mix’ too.

stuntbubbles · 27/11/2022 01:17

ScrollingLeaves · 27/11/2022 01:10

Florenz · Today 01:03
The fudge company would be paying a lot of money to have their stall at the event as a concession so you can hardly compare prices there to pick and mix at Tesco

The headline said Pick and Mix which are generally certain sorts of mass produced sweets.

It didn’t sound as though it was hand made/special fudge in the article.

Maybe if there was a fudge company it was selling ‘Pick and Mix’ too.

It was a fudge company, which also sells pick and mix. The Great British Fudge Company. The point still stands that a massive concession in a double-decker bus at a rip-off event like a winter wonderland is obviously not comparable in price to sweets bought at Tesco. It’s not about handmade fudge vs mass-produced, or handmade pick and mix vs mass-produced: it’s about where they bought it.

ScrollingLeaves · 27/11/2022 01:36

It sounds as though they were taken by surprise by the massive price thought appropriate by the place where they bought it.

It probably hadn’t occurred to them how much weight fits in those bags either.

The very intention behind pick and mix bags is to get people to buy more than they need.

These people would probably not be the only ones paying nearly £50 for sweets and feeling a bit shocked. They just happened to mention it afterwards even though they had paid up at the time, realising it was their fault.

Vitriolinsanity · 27/11/2022 01:37

Oh come on Rhiannon, one look at that bus and any idiot would know you'll just be handing over your purse.

LubaLuca · 27/11/2022 01:39

£2.79 per 100g?! FML, I'm so glad I taught my kids how to look for the best value sweets in Home Bargains.

LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet · 27/11/2022 01:40

This is why I stopped going to these types of places. I bought a tiny bag of pick and mix once and it was £12! Have also bought olives from an olive stand that worked out to be £1 an olive and honestly you get tastier ones from M&S.

I think in terms of ‘the prices were displayed and scales available’ - that’s all well and good but nobody expects to have to fork out £50 on crappy pick and mix and these vendors rely on rushed people not thinking too hard about it

ScreamingFrog · 27/11/2022 01:47

ScrollingLeaves · 26/11/2022 23:09

Who would check the price of Pick and Mix in case it was going to be £45 for two bags?
Would you pick up a bottle of milk and check the price?

It ought to be illegal to overcharge to that extent.

An ordinary label isn’t enough of a warning. The writing is too small. It would need warning posters.

They are as good as thieves.

Who are as good as thieves?

The business selling a product with price clearly marked, who ended up letting the customer keep the sweets?

or

The mum who:let her children grab the equivalent of three family sized tins of Quality Street at the advertised price, let her children eat some before weighing them, then ran off to the press to get it for free?

A real head-scratcher.

Mummyoflittledragon · 27/11/2022 02:04

I get the bags are deceptive. However, there were 2 children and 2 parents so they could have watched them more closely. I used to stand with my dd and whilst she put the sweets in. A few years ago now, but I would try to keep spends to about £5 but you didn’t get much for that. Probably around 200g, which was plenty for several days of treats for a primary school kid.

Loving the held at hun point typo!

IntentionalError · 27/11/2022 02:06

The utter stupidity of some people simply defies belief. How is it possible that anyone could be so thick as to be incapable of understanding what ‘£2.79/100g’ means?

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 27/11/2022 02:09

some loo roll is priced per sheet and some per roll for example.

I always remember seeing the little price comparison shelf label in Tesco and it gave the price 'per sht'. I was actually quite relieved (no pun intended) when I realised they were abbreviating 'per sheet' Grin

Ahh remember penny sweets? I used to love picking out a 100 sweets for a pound and watching the cashier count them (and making you put some back if over !)

We had the opposite at our corner shop - they had a tray of about 8 different penny sweets on the counter and if you spent, say 95p, on whatever goods and handed over a pound coin/note, the man would give you your change in random penny sweets - cheeky beggar!

It was a fudge company, which also sells pick and mix. The Great British Fudge Company. The point still stands that a massive concession in a double-decker bus at a rip-off event like a winter wonderland is obviously not comparable in price to sweets bought at Tesco. It’s not about handmade fudge vs mass-produced, or handmade pick and mix vs mass-produced: it’s about where they bought it.

Yes, I think that's what it comes down to. The kids may well not have appreciated that, but the parents should have done - and guided accordingly. Just the same as buying a 'gift' pencil from an attraction gift shop is not going to cost anywhere near the equivalent of one in a pack of 10 from Wilko, you have to go into these places expecting them to try to rinse you at every turn. I'm not saying it's right, but it's the way it is. The fudge company will also have paid a great deal for their pitch fee, which has to be earned back somehow.

I assume their main line is selling posh fudge at prices that people will not expect to be cheap, but they probably also have some child-friendly options, for those kids who don't like fudge (and may otherwise moan and stop their parents from buying more fudge) - like when mid-market foreign-cuisine restaurants also offer burgers and chips for fussy eaters, so that one person with a very limited palate doesn't stop the rest of the group from choosing to eat there by whining "But I don't liiiiike it!". You're clearly going to pay a big premium if you just use it as a generic supermarket '£4 for a massive cup' Candy King alternative.

Whether or not their fudge/sweets are worth that is debatable, but the price is clearly marked and scales are available. Nobody is forcing anybody to buy from them - and it's a bit of a parenting red flag that the kids not only chose humungous, heavy bags of sweets, but they couldn't even wait until dad had paid before starting to scoff them. Assuming they weren't after freebies, and that all selected sweets were duly weighed, I can't believe there was a very long window between the sweets' being presented and the cashier announcing the price, for the kids to grab them and start fisting them into their gaping maws.

We have an amazing chocolate shop near us, where all chocs are hand-made, using proper thick Belgian chocolate and quality ingredients (e.g. proper red juice from actual strawberries as opposed to dry white artificially-flavoured powder like in cheap ones). They are delicious and you only need one for the taste to linger in your mouth for quite some time. We don't go that often, because they are obviously a treat and not an everyday bulk purchase. Their prices per 100g are clearly displayed and they even tell you approximately how many you will get for how many grams; but every time we go, we always encounter somebody who goes in and then storms right back out - with a disgusted look on their faces - because they were clearly expecting these handmade delights to cost a tiny fraction more than a big waxy glomp of Cadburys. Some people really do have highly unrealistic expectations.

BusgyMalone · 27/11/2022 02:11

I always remember seeing the little price comparison shelf label in Tesco and it gave the price 'per sht'. I was actually quite relieved (no pun intended) when I realised they were abbreviating 'per sheet'.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll makes me lol every time

ScrollingLeaves · 27/11/2022 02:35

ScreamingFrog · Today 01:47
Who are as good as thieves?

The business selling a product with price clearly marked, who ended up letting the customer keep the sweets?

or

The mum who:let her children grab the equivalent of three family sized tins of Quality Street at the advertised price, let her children eat some before weighing them, then ran off to the press to get it for free?

A real head-scratcher.

The price was marked per 100g and the bags so big that a large amount in weight looked like less than it was. The scales were not at hand but near the tills.

We both made sure the kids never went over board. The bags were nowhere near half full, but nobody knows what 100g of sweets looks like
Why are the bags so big that 800g does not even half fill them? Is it not to ‘nudge’ people into over filling them without realising how much they have put in?

As my husband was paying, my little girl started eating the sweets so I couldn’t have put some back if I wanted to
So the little girl ate some sweets as he was paying the £47. He paid after they had been weighed. So she was not stealing them.

Rhiannon says that she shared her experience on a social media post and says that a few other people have contacted her saying they've had a similar experience

So she did not go to the press, as you say. The press must have picked up on her post and the replies. She could not know the company would refund her as a result if her post.

Anyway this is a good warning to parents to be very careful.

HairyMcLarie · 27/11/2022 03:24

I remember we used to get 10p mix ups or a quarter of those jar sweets.

I still remember a girl down the road got given a pound coin when they were first released and she bought a £1 mix up! Everyone was agog at the extravagance! Nearly100 sweeties!

Annie232 · 27/11/2022 05:58

Woolworths pick n mix was the best back in the day, think it was 60p per 100g

BarbaraofSeville · 27/11/2022 06:48

jtaeapa · 27/11/2022 00:42

I think the set up is a bit exploitative. You're leaving an attraction, kids excited, the sweet place is lit up like a christmas tree, massive array of enticing sweets, you think oh it's a nice evening out and we planned for a bit of expense so they can have a few sweets. And then they put sweets in a bag, of course the parents are not doing a mental calculation of how many lots of 100g they have, particularly as most people will not be great at estimating weight. This woman's kids had a bag each and the bags were nowhere near filled. She was NBU to have been stunned at the £47. £47 is a rip off and it's a rip off that is obviously difficult to estimate. It's par for the course that an excited child will grab a sweet to eat as well, meaning that the sweets can't be put back.

It would be better if the company gave out cups and said you can fill the cup for £5 or £10 or whatever so you can easily have a good idea of what your quantity will cost. But that's not really how this type of place operates is it.

Fair enough but the equivalent of 16 bags of Haribo are not 'a few sweets'.

So even in the unlikely event that this is the first time this woman has come across the ubiquitous 'captive market, rip off prices' model it's not going to be the first time that she's seen a bag of sweets so she can't claim she's unaware that they'd picked up an enormous amount of sweets which are going to be a lot of money from anywhere.

Even if they'd been from the Pound Shop what they'd bought would have cost £16, so hardly pocket money prices or a small treat on a day out.

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