Pricewatch »

• “Totally ruthless” Tesco?

  September 9, 2009 @ 10:12 am | by Conor Pope

  Paul Cullen has an interesting story about Tesco being held responsible for the near total collapse of a large-scale vegetable co-op earlier this year. An Oireachtas committee was told that Tesco withdrew its business from the Dublin Meath Growers (DMG) just two months after it opened a €5 million facility to meet demand from the retailing giant. Employment at the co-op subsequently fell from 80 to just two or three voluntary members after Tesco pulled out. At yesterday a representative of the co-op accused the the multiple of being “totally ruthless”. Tesco rejected the claims and said DMG had simply lost out to a competitor.

• Why won’t they tell us?

  February 5, 2009 @ 8:09 am | by Conor Pope

  Why are Ireland’s big retailers so reluctant to tell us how much money they are making? The Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment committee was told yesterday by the head RGDATA that the shops should be legally compelled to disclose their margins so we could judge whether they are profiteering. Tesco Ireland and Aldi yesterday refused to give the committee details of their profits in Ireland. Tesco chief executive Tony Keohane said the company did not separate Irish profits from others in its international division but said returns in the Republic were lower than in the North. Aldi said its profits were “normal” whatever that means. Paul Cullen has more.

• What do you think?

  March 3, 2008 @ 5:09 pm | by Conor Pope

  Last week the National Consumer Agency published an extensive survey of grocery prices. It found that while there was virtually nothing between the major supermarkets when it came to the prices for branded goods, significant savings could be made by shopping around and buying some groceries in the big discounters, Aldi and Lidl, some in the big chains like Dunnes and Tesco and more in small independent retailers such as your local greengrocer or butcher. I wonder, though, is that really practical for time pressed consumers? Do you think people are prepared to shop around for their shopping in multiple outlets or have we all got too lazy to bother with that and are happy enough to pay higher prices for just for the sake of convienence? I’d be interest to know what you think.

• Giving with one hand. . .

  January 28, 2008 @ 8:14 pm | by Conor Pope

  I got a letter in the post from Tesco this evening. “Save up to €64 with the attached money off coupons”, it said. “Right so,” I said to myself, “I don’t mind if I do” and began carefully detaching the four €16 coupons from the cover letter (they can be used when I spend over €160 in my local Tesco). It was only then that I realised that the first €16 voucher was valid from the 14th to the 20th of January and the second one expired on January 27th, two days ago. So, Tesco’s tardiness in sending me the money off vouchers has cost me up to – to use the phrase so beloved of marketeers everywhere – €32. A cynic might suspect that the vouchers arrived late on purpose thereby saving Tesco a few bob.

• Cut price

  January 21, 2008 @ 11:21 am | by Conor Pope

  Richard in Naas got in touch with a money-saving tip which has shaved a fair amount off his annual grooming bill. He saved more than €9 on a pack of eight Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor blades by buying them on eBay. “Tesco, which appears to be the cheapest retailer for them, sells the razors for €19.49,” he writes. “I got them off eBay for about €10, including postage.”

• Hardly Tesco’s finest moment

  January 2, 2008 @ 8:01 pm | by Conor Pope

  Shopping in my local enormous Tesco (in Finglas) this evening was a pretty miserable experience. The vegetables on display were withered and horrible looking, most of the shelves that were supposed to have “fresh” stuff on them were barren and three of the fecking things I bought had passed their expiry dates (one by six days), something I only found out as I went to a) feed one them to my baby and b) cook with the other two. How sloppy is that?

• Bad timing from Aer Lingus

  December 31, 2007 @ 6:34 pm | by Conor Pope

  In early September, Pete Morriss booked a flight with Aer Lingus to Rome which was scheduled to leave the next month. The flight had a departure time of 2.50pm, which suited his needs.
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• Chicken confusion

  November 28, 2007 @ 12:21 am | by Conor Pope

  A reader from Dublin 3 recently bought an organic chicken in Marks & Spencer; while it was absolutely fine, paying for it left a bitter taste in her mouth because of what she calls its “blatantly misleading” price tag. The chicken in question had a large red label on the packaging proudly announcing that there was 25 per cent off per kg; underneath the outsized red sticker, in finer print, shoppers were advised to “see price ticket for details” The price ticket had the usual use by date, weight and price which was €9.36.

  “At the till I was charged the €9.36,” writes our reader. “I queried this with a staff member, who said that the reduction was already included in the price.” She reasoned that “then there wasn’t 25 per cent off the price as stated; he agreed that it was misleading but that was the way it came in to them and there was nothing he could or would do for me. I went ahead with the purchase, as how else do you really complain about these things?

  “Surely this is blatantly misleading: there is no 25 per cent off the stated item. A number of people came up to me on the way out and said they had similar incidents with M&S and got nowhere either,” she says.

  We contacted the store ourselves to find out more and received the following statement: “The product was reduced from €9.99 per kilo to €7.49, ie less 25 per cent. The product had a shelf ticket stating that reduction with a slash ticket. Whole chickens are a catch weight line, therefore the customer pays for the weight of the chicken multiplied by the price per kilo.

  “M&S don’t show a slash price on each individual product as they are all different weights but they do on the shelf ticket. The price on the chicken is the total price the customer pays, which is calculated on the actual chicken weight multiplied by the discounted price per kilo.” Hmmm.

  The response was almost as confusing to Pricewatch as the in-store labelling was to our reader and did not address at all the central complaint she was making, which was that having a large red 25 per cent off sticker emblazoned on the packaging has the potential to, at the very least, create the impression amongst shoppers not inclined to study the fine print on the shelf ticket that there is 25 per cent off the marked price of the item.

  We contacted the store seeking further clarification but no one was available to elaborate on the original response.

• Spotlight on groceries

  October 8, 2007 @ 2:59 pm | by Conor Pope

  A survey comparing Tesco prices in Ireland and the UK caused a bit of a stir when it was released by a rival supermarket in Britain last week.

  It showed that Tesco stores in the Republic were on average 15 per cent more expensive than in the UK. The reaction from anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Irish prices probably stood somewhere between “Only 15 per cent?” and “So what’s new?”.
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• Carbon labelling

  May 31, 2007 @ 7:25 am | by Conor Pope

  The British government is developing a new eco-label to help shoppers work out the affect the food they buy has had on the environment. According to the Guardian this morning the new labels will contain info on the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the production, transportation and disposal of food. While Irish shoppers will be able to piggy back on the move as a lot of the new labels will find their way on to shelves here, it would be nice to see our own Government be similarly proactive when it comes to indigenous products. It won’t be, however, as it is not the best at issuing directives aimed at improving the labels on the stuff we eat.

• Are we there yet?

  May 28, 2007 @ 7:19 am | by Conor Pope

  How far will your dinner have travelled before it finds its way on to your plate this evening? And does it really make any difference if it has come from the other side of the world or the other side of the garden? More and more people are becoming convinced that the miles your food puts in are of singular importance and, in an unlikely alliance, environmentalists and some of the biggest retailers in the world have started working together to bring production closer to home.
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