"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.

Plus what everyone forgets with these places is that the sweets are weighed in the bag, which is quite heavy even when empty.

You're probably paying 50 p to £1 for the bag alone.

Basically mum was in the wrong and refused to admit it so kicked up a huge fuss and has now been rewarded for it. I wouldn't have given her a refund, the company have been incredibly reasonable.

Absolutely. I.6 kilos??????? And she kept saying in the article “Nobody knows what 100 grammes looks like”.

Well, yes you do if you take any notice of what you buy in the supermarket or what you weigh when you cook things. I feel sorry for the stall holder having to deal with such stupidity.

It’s not exploitative.
It’s like the restaurant on holiday with the nice view being more expensive than the one around the corner

Type 1 Thinking.

If people have ever read "Thinking Fast and slow", a lot of our decisions are based on Type 1 thinking.

People need to slow down and think about their decisions.

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

Mass - people may not know what 100 g looks like but they do know what a bag of sugar feels like. They brought 1.6 bags of 1 kg bags of sugar - which is a LOT.

Yes, they nudge people with the big bags, but people should be taking responsibility. 1.6 bags of 1 kg bags of sugar feels heavy

Quoting this as I think it's the most relevant post.
If more people spoke up rather than being too embarrassed to be called bad at math the less this would be the normal events scene.

f more people spoke up rather than being too embarrassed to be called bad at math the less this would be the normal events scene

I don't think it's being bad at maths or speaking up.

If you aren't sure about something and are about to spend money, don't do it. Take time to slow down and think.

Even in a busy, rushed environment.

I can't believe she was refunded. I wrote on fb about my Lindt pick and mix and lots of my friends commented they'd also been charged a lot for pick and mix before. It's quite a common thing but they shouldn't have refunded her

They bought pick n mix sweets, not fudge. The bag would have felt really heavy. They would have known there was a lot of ‘normal’ servings of sweets in there.

To put it in context, a pack of sweets like fruit pastilles/skittles etc is about 40-45g. So they purchased the equivalent of 35-40 packets for their children. Yet they didn’t let them go overboard. 😂

They bought pick n mix sweets, not fudge. The bag would have felt really heavy. They would have known there was a lot of ‘normal’ servings of sweets in there

I wonder what the difference in the volume is of 1.6 kg of fudge versus 1.6 kg of normal pick and mix sweets?

Now that's a good maths question.

Pick and mix always silly money
Always used to tell mine to only pick a couple heavy sweets like the worms etc
Just because they bought a certain amount if sweets , doesn't mean they would eat them all at once
Mine have had pick and mix and been eating them a couple weeks later
Mumsnet would prob last 5 years that amount but these places are silly money

@XenoBitch but a clear bag of 100g wouldn't show what it looked like
100 g marshmallows, would look different than some chewy snakes
Pic and mix cost depends on what you get
I could fill a small bag with marshmallows but only get a couple gummy snakes or some bon bons

Also it wasn't handmade fudge they bought the picture shows its pick and mix sweets so nothing to do with how expensive fudge is

Interesting on the skittles - if she had brought 40 bags of skittles from Tesco, it would have cost 40 x 65p - which is £26. A bag of Skittles is £1.45 / 100g.

Of course, we are not at Tesco. It's going to be much more at this event.

But you can imagine what 40 bags of skittles looks like and feels like.

Also from Tesco

Sherbet Dib Dabs - £2.40 per 100g
Milky Bar chocolate buttons - £2.34 per 100g
Dairy Milk - £1.60 per 100g
Tic Tacs - £3.34 per 100g
Kinder Egg - £4.50 per 100g
Jelly Babies - 34p per 100g

Some sweets are expensive for what you get. Some are cheaper. I do get a bit obsessed by cost of something per 100g though.

@cakeorwine it was in multiple bags though wasn't it as each child had their own bag
All this mumsnet shit about how much sugar etc , it doesn't equal pure sugar does it and they may of been sweets to last a while , may be kids that only get sweets a couple times a year
The simple fact is pic and mix is a rip off , we all know it so lets not comment on sugar and how the should know what 100g looks like ( which is difficult when its pic and mix as sweets don't all weigh the same) its why most people when they go to the cinema sneak their own sweets in
Maybe if we actually didn't accept being ripped off and weren't so british and politie and not complain , conpankes wouldn't take the piss

They brought 1.6 bags of 1 kg bags of sugar - which is a LOT.

They bought a total of 1600g in two bags, so about 800 each. It is still a lot but not as much as you say.

Many people would have a rough idea of what 100g is but so too lots of people may not be used to thinking about weights of food at all. A bag of sugar might be just a bag of sugar to them with no thought to its weight. They may not ever bake anything themselves.

Another thing is that the price has to multiplied by the weight
mentally. They probably only noticed the £2 not the other complicating 79p and reckoned they had about 300g each costing about £6 in total, £12 for the two bags - which is still a lot but better than £47.

The scales were by the till, with customers being attended to, not where they were picking.

The picture of a bag of sweets in the article is a bit deceptive.

Father must be a bit dim. Mother too judging from article.

What the hell were they thinking?! Diabetes if nothing else!

I bought some Dom Perignon the other day and it ended up costing me many times more than the exact same size bottle of Lidl Chardonnay - I bought just one normal-sized bottle, so it's not like I'd gone overboard.

Companies that charge very high prices for things that have much cheaper alternatives and clearly advertise those prices when offering them for sale so that people can freely choose whether to buy them or not are no better than thieves....

I just shoved a 1.2kg bag of frozen chips into my freezer and laughed thinking about this thread again. You'd really know it if you bought 1.6kg of sweets.

We'll surely if you don't know what 100g looks like and can't afford to pay whatever it costs for what you choose - you use the scales provided?

Another example of people refusing to think for themselves and it always being someone else's fault.

When you put a lot of bags that weigh 1.6 kg together, it weighs 1.6 kg.

It has NOTHING to do with what it looks like.

It is what it feels like. And 1.6 kg - well, it's 1.6 kg. 1600 g.

Are they being ripped off? Well - it's the market price for pick and mix.

You are not being forced to buy it.

If people don't buy it, then they may well sell at a lower price.

But people do buy it - or enough people buy it to keep the company selling it at that price.

A fool and their money are easily parted. There are many people who can easily be taken advantage off. People have a responsibility to themselves when it comes to spending money.

I also don't think you can blame the company for offering massive bags. Of course, they want people to buy lots from them, just like supermarket trollies are huge. There's nothing saying that you have to fill them; saying "they should deliberately offer much littler bags so that they discourage customers from buying very much and they thus make a lot less profit.... isn't really very canny, is it?

800 grams is a lot.

It is a lot of mass. It's 800 grams.

A bag of skittles has a mass of 45 grams. So this is about 18 bags of skittles. Which is a lot of mass.

I wonder if we can try this at the tescos pick and mix. 'Well nobody knows what 100g of sweets looks like'.

Or the cinema! I'm dim so let me have my sweets and refund me.