Supermarket Brands Dirty Tricks

shroomish on 15/03/2016 - 15:18
Last edited 15/03/2016 - 15:31 by 1 other user

Theres been a few whoppers, like brands reducing their product by small margins (cadbury anyone?) and the whole "3 for 2" nonsense. heres a couple that have irked me recently.

  • Woolworths mock discounts. Had to laugh when i saw a whole cooler of "reduced" lamb chops that had had their labels replaced by discount stickers knocking off a whole 20c a pack. Almost worked as i instinctively reached for one.

  • Anchovies (any brand) I (proanity) love anchovies. whats with the consensus that those little jars are actually 50% oil with the fillets arranged on the inside of the glass to give the appearance of looking chocka block.

Food & Grocery

Comments

  • tomsco on 15/03/2016 - 15:33

    Anchovies (any brand) I (proanity) love anchovies. whats with the consensus that those little jars are actually 50% oil with the fillets arranged on the inside of the glass to give the appearance of looking chocka block.

    Can't say I've noticed this. Are you saying down the center of the jar is just oil?

    • jelko on 15/03/2016 - 15:56
      +1

      Who cares how it looks? As long as you are receiving the number of grams specified on the packaging then there's nothing wrong with it. I guess you're the type of person who complains that their crisps packets are 'full of air'.
      PS. I'm referring to shroomish

      • Glider on 15/03/2016 - 16:16

        In this case the priced weight is based on whatever is in the jar, and that weight is gross weight (oil and anchovies) not nett weight (just anchovies).

        I've noticed it too, those little blighters are arranged neatly in a circle around the outside of the glass jar to look full but there is an empty tunnel of clear oil in the centre of the jar right down to the bottom once you open it up.

        So you are paying for the oil as well as the anchovies, much like when you buy a tin of tuna. But opening a tin of tuna there is usually way more tuna than oil/water. For anchovies this isn't the case, and they cost much more too.

        • PVA on 15/03/2016 - 19:28

          do they say the % of fish like they do in tinned?

        • kiitos on 17/03/2016 - 21:55

          I haven't bought jarred anchovies for a while, but this sounds interesting. Perhaps they need to stack them neatly around the jar so they don't break up against each other and turn to catfood. And so they need a hole inside to get their finger (or mechanical placer) into the jar. And they can't push any more into the hole by its tail as it will break?

  • inherentchoice on 15/03/2016 - 15:42

    Does lite milk count? They actually remove the cream and sell it separately as cream.

    Even in "full cream" milk they take out a little of the cream so that it has the bare minimum percentage of cream required to legally be sold as "full cream". Pretty sure every brand does this though, not just the 2 buck chuck.

    • PVA on 15/03/2016 - 19:27

      they actually take the cream out of all and add measured amounts back in for full or lite or skim.

      the worst is flavoured milk, most is skim with thickeners added to seem that its creamy.

      • WT on 16/03/2016 - 10:51
        +1

        Mrs loves lite milk, i drink half, fill with water. 50% less fat and tastes the same.

        She no longer wants to buy lite.

        They do a similar thing with coconut milk. Just add fillers.

  • QuickToThePointless on 15/03/2016 - 16:36

    Fuel and alcohol vouchers

    These are beyond dirty tricks - more like price fixing and collusion

  • suchis on 15/03/2016 - 17:36

    They (Woolwoths and Coles) want it all.
    Car insurance
    Food
    Phone plans
    Pokies
    Newspapers
    Sushi bar
    Hardware
    Clothes
    Home ware
    Sports gear
    Liquor

    And with there small shops driving out the iga's and foodworks etc we are all going to suffer.

    Oh and petrol!

    Dangerous territory I think

    • shroomish on 15/03/2016 - 17:39

      the big supermarkets are like google/apple if you set up a market stall its more like linux.

  • Elppa8 on 15/03/2016 - 18:29
    +1

    Toilet paper. The one we regularly buy changed the sheet size from 11x10cm to 10.5x10cm. Same number of sheets but a reduction of around 4.5% in length.

    • shroomish on 16/03/2016 - 10:57
      +2

      yet my poo's have had no reduction in frequency or size

    • momov3 on 16/03/2016 - 23:23

      Quilton (Coles and Woollies carry it, so too Big W) - when it first came out the purple flower print ones were super fat rolls. I swear as of the time they marketed them as 'now even softer than before' the rolls are only 4/5th the thickness, and I lodged feedback to head office. I asked them if 'softer' actually meant thinner tissue. She said I was mistakenly comparing the 2 ply roll with the 3 ply roll. I know I was not. BTW - they are now selling 4 ply rolls. It's so thick you have to have custom built toilet paper holder. Targeted at those with extremely thick hides and dirty bottoms.

  • chefdillu on 15/03/2016 - 19:00
    +1

    Dove Shampoo & Conditioner Reduced from 700 ml pack to 640 ml but not the price

  • PVA on 15/03/2016 - 19:25

    anchovies… have a look how macdonalds does their sundaes - the soft serve ice cream is coiled on the outer of the cup with a big hole in the centre, then its covered with the point to end it off.

  • [Deactivated] on 15/03/2016 - 21:13
    +1

    Making expensive milk look the same as the cheap milk. At my supermarket, you can't tell which is which until you pull it from the shelf, or bend right down low to closely inspection as shelf is tilted. Was very annoyed the first week they did it and I came home with lots of expensive milk!

  • robertbruce on 16/03/2016 - 10:30

    Take the case of Paramount fish… A a slow increase in price supplemented by deleting the midsize tin, then Coles drops it's from it's shelves after buying IGA, then IGA sells it whilst Paramount buys Brunswich, then sardines prices increase at IGA and Coles…

    Not enough city dwellers realise that there is not a Coles or Woollies in most small towns, instead there is an iga…

    Fuel Discounts. Plenty of bowsers in the major citys but go to Maryborough, shop coles but there is no coles bowser in Maryborough, the coles bowser is almost an hours return trip away from Maryborough

    Or how about Bega cheese using thier supermarket supply contract to IPO, then they loose the contract, a big share price correction is coming there….

    Add insult to injury when the checkout machine recognisers you as a browser/shopper and calls you a thief beeping at you as you leave the store

  • robertbruce on 16/03/2016 - 10:38

    And Coles trying to push out Virgin Garden and Nature's Cuppa decaffeinated tea for their preferred deal with Tetley. Both the aforementioned brands have product advantages like untreated strings and or tags where-as tetley is full of bleach's

  • Thefreshprince on 16/03/2016 - 13:10

    Stores are presenting their products as "good deals"? What on earth it this world coming to.

  • Roney on 16/03/2016 - 20:12

    1kg Nestles Coffeemate seems to have shrunk. I used to fill two containers up to the brim, but now it's just over one and three quarter jars. Very sneaky.

  • momov3 on 16/03/2016 - 23:09

    What is a pizza without anchovies……Agree about the oil thing. So much oil and tasteless oil too, must they be drowned in oil? Anyway I drain the oil away and am left with a few strands of sad looking anchovies. ON my own, I can virtually nibble away 1 entire bottle of anchovy.

    • shroomish on 17/03/2016 - 09:56

      amen brother

  • momov3 on 16/03/2016 - 23:14

    I don't mind Coles being cheaty sometimes because it's so easy to collect FlyBuys that almost every week I have a $10 voucher stored in my card. They have all these double /triple flybuy points that can be applied all together and the points reach 2000 so quickly. It's Woollies that I will avoid these days. Eversince they ditched Qantas FF, I get nothing out of my shop. Spent $172 last week and received 21 cts in $ rewards. Woollies must think we are stupid.

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