Why should people who always bulk buy when things are on offer feel bad for being well stocked now? I'm not bulk buying at the moment but it makes financial sense to me to buy the things we use a lot when they're cheapest.
This. I will only buy big packets on offer at a good price, rather than buying a small amount as and when I need it. I buy a lot by habit usually cos otherwise I end up forgetting until I'm down to the final roll and have to dash out for some. Its something I like to put in the trolley as little as possible.
Anyway my buying habits aside I have to say all the talk of a bog roll shortage is somewhat overblown.
I've been out trying to track down something for my house without much luck, so have trekked all over the place.
There was toilet roll everywhere. Not so much in the big supermarkets but its not exactly hard to find.
And on the subject of supermarkets, some of them have deliberately tried to stoke up sales. The branch of Tesco I went into earlier this week had buy 2 for £2 on antibacterial wipes and had them on an end of aisle, together with tissues and other flu related products. The psychology of end of aisle is to caught the eye of shoppers and make them buy additional impulse buys. Its not a coincidence they chose antibacterial wipes because the chain has very sophisticated spotting of trends - they check the news and weather to make sure they have barbecue stuff in at the right time and snow stuff in at the right time. So Tesco have deliberately sought to exploit anxiety over this.
A friend was telling me how the supermarket he went in yesterday had put so much toilet roll in the aisle that it took up the shelves and half the aisle. So anyone looking at that and hearing talk of shortages (toilet roll shortage has been trending on twitter earlier this week as a joke BEFORE there was a run on it anywhere, which made me hmmm) Psychologically seeing extra large displays of bog roll and talk of shortages is liable to spark a run. The thing is the supermarkets have had not just stock but extra stock in, with the point made that they physically couldn't get stock back out on the shelves quickly enough. Not that they lacked stock.
It's different with hand sanitisers as supermarkets haven't had stock.
But toilet rolls? I think there was some rather cynical marketing going on to get people to stores and buying more than they usually would. Think manufactured bog roll panic as a 'loss leader' to suck people into stores.