Tesco fricking Club Card / two tier pricing

[Fahbeep]

AIBU to hate Tesco Clubcard App and the two tier pricing in store. It rely annoys me on principle that Tesco actively sets out to overcharge customers in store if they haven't got the app handy or the card, in which case, massive palaver at the tills. They do this so they can scrape your personal data. It just puts me off shopping there TBH.

Moan over. I'm in Tesco's car park as a I write as I've flounced out in outrage!

You can download the club card to your phone wallet (on an iPhone at least)

Yeah exactly. For some reason, a few of these supermarkets are DESPERATE to have people sign up to their storecards! Why IS that? Why the desperation to make so many people have storecards??? Don't tell me it's because they care about the consumer/the customer, because that's simply not true. They don't give a rat's ass about us. You can tell that by the way they con gullible people into believing the storecard 'saves' them money!

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It's a discussion that's addressed in the article. They are gouging.

The Which? study found that a third of the products it examined at Sainsbury’s (34% of 71 products) had only been at the “regular” price advertised beside the Nectar deal for less than half the time over the previous six months. At Tesco, it was a quarter of the products examined.

It's disgusting .In my view ,the people who are least likely to have signed up or have an app on a smartphone handy are likely to be elderly or find it challenging .

It's a two tier pricing system with the higher prices being charged to the people in society who can least afford it .

Personally I think there should be a campaign to boycott Tesco to stamp this out .
As people have said ,it's spreading to other supermarkets and it's morally corrupt.

I honestly CBA with it. I went into Tesco today thinking to pick up a couple of ready meals (out and busy over dinner time, walking home in the cold) and it wasn't just two tier pricing, it was two tier then two for £6.50 or two for less with a clubcard - I walked out and went to the chippy instead. Can't be fucked to stand around trying to do three stage calculations about buying ruddy ready meals that work out more expensive than m&s.

Chippy was spot on by the way.

Exactly! Can't believe people fall for this rubbish!

@FreshWinterMorning the fact is that if you shop in Tesco or Sainsbury's then you'll pay more than me.

You can choose not to shop there at your inconvenience, that's your choice.

Judging by the profits you're in the minority though.

'In my view ,the people who are least likely to have signed up or have an app on a smartphone handy are likely to be elderly or find it challenging'

In my experience, the people that are least likely to have signed up are ones that either want to make a point about not having a clubcard (usually middle aged men, but not exclusively) or have recently moved to a house near a Tesco.

The elderly are definitely less likely to have the app - but they usually have their physical card at the ready. People that find tapping a card challenging also find shopping and budgeting challenging, and usually have someone with them to help.

Maybe different branches of Tesco have different approaches but in the one I use regularly this isn't how the club card pricing works. I know how much the things I buy every week are and they dont go up the week before the reduction then come down to the previous price, they are genuinely cheaper for that week/fortnight

There is a cheese that I like but is more than I want to pay so I will buy when on club card price, if has consistently been the same price for months except for a couple of weeks when it was offer and I stocked up

What kind of products are people buying where the price goes up and down?

@VisionsOfSplendour 100% agree!

I used to work in a shop that pretty much mostly only the elderly used for food. It also had a members card scheme which gave you money off. This was back over 15 years ago now and I can tell you, they had no problem carrying a card around to swipe it.

But you’re not being penalised, bullied or controlled. It’s entirely up to you if you set foot in Tesco.

There are at least six other supermarket chains in the UK so just go to one of those. Waitrose doesn’t have two tier pricing, neither does Aldi or Lidl.

People throw the word bully around until it's lost all meaning.

Nobody is being bullied.

It's a choice.

Tesco doesn't send its heavies round to chuck Yorkshire farmhouse free range eggs at your windows if you don't shop there or you do but you don't want a clubcard. 🤷

Do I want Tesco to compile a huge database of what groceries I buy so they can further their evil cause of, erm, knowing which loo roll lovingly strokes my arse after I take a shit?

No = don't get a clubcard, accept this means you pay a few bob more.

Don't give a shit = get a club card save a couple of quid.

It's not bullying because one of your choices is not shop without a clubcard, safe in the knowledge that Tesco doesn't know which brand of razors you buy or whether you eat too many biscuits while still getting the small discounts given to those who do have a clubcard.

I have always had a clubcard but since this pricing strategy I go to Tesco much less.
A couple of things have made me grumpy. I don't see that it's a discount but more a false inflation of the stuff.
There have been a few times where me and the checkout person forgot about scanning it, then I had to go to customer services where they reluctantly rescanned all of my shopping. It was too expensive not to.

I don't even bother with Boots since they introduced the same thing.

I've had a Clubcard for years, am happy to get lower prices, than if I didn't have it, and despite being "elderly" 🙄 can manage the app ok.

But, it's not compulsory and no one has to get one.👍

'There have been a few times where me and the checkout person forgot about scanning it, then I had to go to customer services where they reluctantly rescanned all of my shopping. It was too expensive not to'

I can see why they would be reluctant to rescan everything - your receipt details how much you are due back and what points you are due, so there is no need to rescan everything to get that information.

I do wonder about the people that don't want the business they buy from knowing what they buy. Do they only ever use cash? Imagine how much information a bank holds! Do they never buy anything online, or if they do, for places that don't allow you to 'checkout as a guest', do they set up a new account every time?

Fair enough if you disagree on principle, but I can't agree that it's remotely difficult to use or to understand the pricing.

The point is loyalty schemes used to reward loyalty - ie, the bigger your spend, the bigger the rewards. That's fine and worked well for years.

Now they've decided to actively penalise people who don't have their loyalty card/app (and it's even worse if it has to be an app as people don't want them, not everyone has a smartphone and not everyone takes it absolutely everywhere).

Bonuses for having a loyalty card, yes

Penalties for not having one, no.

I suspect the CMA will agree with me.

How do you differentiate between rewarding loyalty card holders and penalising those that choose not to have one?

Surely they are both just different sides of the same coin?

you're not penalised for not having one! I'm rewarded for having one. 🤷‍♀️

That's the advertising spin.
In reality the "normal" price is often not the normal price, it's inflated to make it seem like the loyalty card holders are getting a good deal, and actually charging a surplus to customers who don't have, don't want or cannot easily access a loyalty scheme.
Which or another consumer group found that loyalty card prices are actually the normal price, not a saving.
Another article in the BBC I think found that there were sudden "price hikes" on products a few days before the loyalty price was launched for that item.

They also don't often publish the cost per gram pricing for items on promotion, which also makes it difficult for customers to work out what's the best deal.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

How do you differentiate between rewarding loyalty card holders and penalising those that choose not to have one?

Surely they are both just different sides of the same coin?

Rewarding loyalty card holders = this item is normally £5. If you have a loyalty card, you can have it for £4. It will remain £5 for everyone else

Penalising those who don't have a card = this item is £5, we're going to raise the price to £7 on Monday and on Wednesday slap a big Loyalty Card Pricing sticker on it to say loyalty card holders can have it for £5 (or in the case of some supermarkets, £6!). Now we're going to do this for hundreds of items, and the best thing is some of our loyalty card holders will defend us because they think they're getting great discounts but we don't have to make a loss at all.

The one article I saw that suggested prices were raised then dropped suggested it was a third of items in one shop and a quarter in another.

Which would suggest that by day the majority of the savings are genuine rewards for loyalty card customers rather than penalties as you define it. But there might be others out there that I haven't seen that suggest otherwise.

Non-loyalty card holders are free to not buy the clubcard offers - and they usually don't. They just love to tell us that at the tills.

So they are voting with their feet and choosing not to be penalised.

Interesting that the 'out and open' offers are the ones that are criticised. Nobody cares about loyalty cards that do it surreptitiously, by hiding the offers in an app or a mailshot - which is better, being able to choose not to buy something because you know you won't get the offer, or buying it not knowing that there's an offer you can't get?

So Morrisons don't do a two tier system? Seem to inflate their prices and then reduce and still more than tescos