Minimum alcohol pricing and money off vouchers.

[WaxOnFeckOff]

Not sure if we've already discussed this, but was in Waitrose today with money off shopping vouchers (£9 of £90, thank you very much! :o )and found that you can't have alcohol as part of your shop if you want to use a money off voucher.

I wasn't buying any anyway, but there was a note on the door as you go in and then the checkout staff member also checked with me before she put the shopping through.

It is a little bit of a pain as it's normally my go to if my shopping isn't getting close to the spend for the voucher, usually I can lob in a bottle of something to take up the value without having to trawl for lots of smaller items.

I'd noticed revised small print a wee while ago ( before min alcohol pricing came in but while it was going through the courts) on my Tesco and Sainsbury's money off vouchers as I'd used to top up with some wine/sherry if I was a wee bit short of the threshold.

Now I'm topping up with wee "household" extras for ds as he's off to Uni in September

Good thinking! We buy all our bulk stuff at Costco so it's really just fresh stuff I buy on a weekly basis and my freezer is full. I went for washing powder and sun cream :)

I do most of my shopping at Lidl, so my top ups are either Sainsbury's or Tesco (depending on which has the better money off voucher ). Fortunately, they are both big ones, so I can buy some knickers, or household goods, gardening stuff or stationary to reach the threshold. I'm very strict that it has to be something that I need/use and not just for the sake of it.

We do the same. Cat food or cat litter are our usual staples. If not, its detergent or loo rolls, and one of the kids always needs some extra socks!

I forgot about the cat litter (biggest bag) ...we're always running out partly because I never deal with it and dh forgets to tell me he needs more

My other one - which I must remember next time I go, as we're getting low - is a big box of Ariel powder or a bottle of Persil colour liquid as long as there are offers on them - they're about the only "brands" I buy (except for Boursin, Lurpak salted butter and my Twinings Earl Grey loose tea)

DH is allergic to anything except Surcare powder. It's about £6 a box, never on a deal and not sold everywhere. It doesn't dissolve properly and leaves everything covered in white marks :(

You can if you order online and the computer happens to be in England.

Interesting! You'd think I bought a lot of alcohol and wasn't the person still with a full wine rack from Christmas 2016.... 😁

I came on to start an enquiry about this! I'm irrationally annoyed about it, but I think that might be that when the checkout person at Waitrose was trying to explain to me that I had to ring through two separate shops I just wasn't understanding, while DH was understanding just fine and looking at me as if I was an idiot.

Our voucher didn't need us to reach a certain spend, so that was a work around in that case. Wouldn't work, though, if you needed the gin to make your target.

So annoyed was I, that I checked out whose rule this is. The government don't say that Waitrose have to handle it this way, but clearly it's wildly complicated to be sure that you keep within the law every time if you handle it any other way.

yep, I understand why they do it, I just never really thought about it until I saw the signs/was asked. It's one of those things that as soon as you know you can't. you just want to keep adding alcohol to the trolley on impulse!