Supermarkets are taking the pi$$

[ButterflyTable]

I can’t believe how expensive food is now especially in the likes of Sainsbury’s for the same product. Total P-take, e.g. Organic Milk Sainsbury’s £2 Aldi £1.79.

Why give us ‘nectar’ prices when they are inflated prices in the first place? £5.50 for a Pizza Express Margherita and £2.75 on Nectar. I think actually it’s the fakery with making us think we are getting a good deal that’s pissing me off.

I went to Aldi today (we don’t have one near us) as I was doing a drop off nearby and the price difference is huge!!

Do you have a reference for this?

I like big supermarkets. More space away from other shoppers as people aren't all crowded in together with no proper space.

We have a brand new Sainsbury's, and the space available is lovely!

What is your point?

why as everything you buy now in the supermarkets shrunk down n size and the prices have gone up.crisps pkts biscuits chocolate bars kids easter eggs (last year cost about £1 ,this year £1.25 and so tiny now) it’s a rip off
i always buy lurpak butter and around this time last year i would have brought a 500g pack it’s now 400g and the 1 kg is now just 750g pg tips teabags were 240 are now just 210 and what’s happened to the eggs the chickens that lay them must have bloody shrank also because there’s no such thing as a lg egg now they are medium size and the medium ones are now the small. god knows what small eggs are like they must be as big as the cadbury mini eggs and by the way the packs of those have also shrunk considerably. the manufacturers are not loosing out as they are shrinking everywhere. ok that’s fine but the prices are scandalous 🤬🤬

This is how I feel about the hysteria about data collecting, that ship sailed many years ago so you might as well use the benefits. I don't buy anything I am ashamed of!

😂🤣 That’s very nice of you to say, but I’m 65 in a few months!

I shop in alot of aldi stores, fruit and veg standard is variable by store, presumably down to different managers. Don't be put off by one bad store. Our favourite Aldi, happens to be our closest and is great luckily.

in my area our shopping complex place has a Sainsbury’s, Asda /‘s M&S with an Aldi round the corner too (just as close as M&S bud not part of the complex). The Asda is huge but always busy. Has a decent selection of clothes but it’s always got a funny smell. It did so when it was another brand of shop twice before. Lots of young families shopping. The Sainsbury’s is a decent size, less choice of clothes. Lots of elderly folk shopping and is much quieter on the day I shop. I prefer it in there and generally don’t spends loads. Found I spent more at Asda or Aldi. In Sainsbury’s I self scan on my phone. I’ve always bought mostly own brand things or branded when they’re on offer. So my biscuit selection (wrapped for packed lunches) isi either the nectar price things or the now £1.25 (used to be the £1 range). I prefer their PE brand for a few things anyway. Self scan tills I’m usually through with no wait. The manned tills always have queues and we still have quite a few open. We have a huge Sainsbury’s no far but I don’t like shopping there. I pop to Aldi for certain products - mainly their cereals as the kids seem to like them better. I did try shopping there longer term but I didn’t like their soya milk for example so had to go to Sainsbury’s for that. I’m not a fan of the Aldi cooked meats either. I also used to find myself buying random stuff from the middle aisle . It’s definitely more a warehouse style shop that a supermarket and I don’t find it as welcoming.

I’m no a fan of nectar prices however I seem to collect a lot of nectar points - food shop, petrol and at one point I had my insurance with them before it went up and a credit card.

The M&S food we have is quite tiny and limited stock and literally only used by pensioners for food and younger people to collect clothing order from online shopping. I find it expensive the odd time I’ve popped in for bits n pieces.

we used to have a Morrisons but o spent loads there on their multi buy offers.

I think atmosphere has as much to do with shopping experience in these places as anything else, and that can vary more between actual stores than between retailers.

These can be fairly toxic workplaces, because qualifying to be a retail manager consists of little more than being able to prove you can shift boxes and talk bollocks at the same time.

These “managers” are there simply to make sure the bean-counter tech is working properly and then send all the moolah home to HQ, not actually manage people and prevent unpleasant cultures from developing.

Like politics, retail subsists on a culture of profit, arse-covering and excuses… and shopping experiences are becoming all the worse for it.

No it depends what cows are fed on.

what’s happened to the eggs the chickens that lay them must have bloody shrank also because there’s no such thing as a lg egg now they are medium size and the medium ones are now the small. god knows what small eggs are like they must be as big as the cadbury mini eggs

@mikkimull Could be linked to bird flu? Also large eggs are a welfare issue as it was unnatural for the hens. Perhaps they've stopped whatever they were doing to make the eggs bigger?

But I thought egg sizes were defined so can't be changed, but anyway its now said to be best to buy medium or mixed size eggs as its better for the hens and the latter has the added advantage of being significantly cheaper for the same eggs, just not all the same size.

Eg we get the mixed free range eggs from M&S but I think all supermarkets do similar. They're £1.30 for 6 vs £1.85 for medium and nearly £3 for large.

We just use them at the same rate or occasionally add an extra one to a cake if they seem small but that's rare (despite what Mary Berry and the like say, you don't need to be that precise with cake just chuck in a bit extra milk if your eggs are smaller) and looking at the sizing rules a larger medium egg can be virtually the same size as a smaller large egg anyway.

I don’t have a link, but I remember seeing a programme - I think it was called Inside The Factory with Gregg Wallace - where they said something similar, and it wasn’t just meat it was other products, including some ready meals. Essentially the same product, just packaged according to supermarket and with a different price point.

We buy our eggs from local people that have chickens and some of them are enormous.

Sainsburys is the most expensive supermarket I've found along with asda. Tesco, lidl and marks budget range is cheaper. I don't have access to Aldi

Lots of retailers use the same factories, however, there are different manufacturing lines and the retailers will have distinct specifications.
Some of the specification differences will be slight (e.g. bags of flour), others specifications will be massively different.

I’ve found the wrong packaged meat in the wrong supermarket before

So it’s actually that different retailers will use the same factory to produce the same type of product, but with different specifications according to each, rather than just the same product in the retailers’ own packaging ? That makes more sense. They definitely didn’t make that clear though, it left me with the distinct impression of ‘same stuff, different packaging’ !!

I’ve had wrongly packed items in Aldi at check out before. Item wouldn’t scan. I can’t remember what supermarket it was though.

Yes.

I suspect some foodstuffs will be very similar. That's why I mentioned flour. You cannot tell between any of the retailers on that product.

Other products there will be huge differences, probably the best example would be ready meals or chilled desserts, cheese, meat. You can definitely see the different specifications in those categories.

Sometimes it doesn't have to be about the food per se, sometimes the difference could be packaging , or sometimes the difference could be about provenance or welfare - but it all comes from the same factory

I actually think the tesco club card is really good. For the things we buy there's not that much difference in price and there are certain things that I can't buy in aldi that I would have to spend the money on petrol getting to tesco anyway to buy the extra. I pay the 7.99 a month for premium club card but I save about 20- 25 pounds off the shopping every other week as you get 10 percent off 2 shops per month plus I get all the kids clothes etc from there at 10 percent off whenever. Every summer we use the club card points to pay the entry for some of our days out as at the moment a proper away holiday is not affordable for us. This year I already have enough to get all 5 of us into legoland Windsor and by summer will have enough for another day out somewhere else. I have a nectar card but don't go into here often so don't find the points etc as valuable. I suppose it depends on what you buy and whether you would actually use the points collected. I do walk to aldi occasionally for extra bits and bobs but I agree with other posters who have said the quality is very hit and miss sometimes it's great but then sometimes you end up throwing whole packs of things away and rebuying in a different shop anyway.

Sometimes it will be exactly the same, sometimes there will be a difference, it's probably impossible to say with certainty as there will be many variables. Often it's about perception of quality rather than a measure against an objective scale.

Sometimes the specification about physical appearance will be tighter for higher end retailers. Eg M&S or Waitrose will expect the cheese to be more evenly spread over a pizza than Asda or a cake to be rejected if the icing is smudged or a cherry isn't in the middle.

I had to go into a cereal factory for work recently and they make own brands as well as the branded products and he said the highest quality muesli they make was for Aldi. I suspect it’s because they get the product specifications from Germany.

Size of eggs is due to breed of hen. If I have to buy I use M&S mixed eggs.

I agree with this but in the case of pizzas they also want more cheese than other retailers! We used to clear the lines off completely before starting up the M&S orders because the ingredients and specifications were different and we had to have more stringent QC checking at various stages so had to organise the teams slightly differently.

i’m more annoyed that the prices are higher and every has shrunk in size . anyone else thing the same as me .
i don’t mind if things are smaller in packages if the price is lower