Competition watchdog is wrong to let supermarkets off the hook
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Version 0 of 1. So the supermarkets have won. Which? may try to put a gloss on the story, but the Competition and Markets Authority has largely dismissed the evidence of dodgy deals and bogus pricing, saying it is “not occurring in large numbers across the whole sector” and that retailers are generally taking compliance seriously. But it was never the case that supermarkets were breaking the law. Deals and promotions can be, and nearly always are, meticulously compliant with the letter of the law. Yet at the same time they can be entirely bogus. It is the law that needs to be changed. The CMA’s lamentable report was met with hoots of derision by shoppers. Take these reader comments after the Guardian published its report this week. • On discounts that disappear at the till: “On more than one occasion I have noticed discounted items have, at the checkout, been the original price. On pointing this out I was told ‘I am terribly sorry. The new price has not been put into the system’,” said dvdmartin. • On two-for-one deals being more expensive than single items: “An offer of ‘two for £1.99’ when a single item was only 88p. The person at the checkout, when I mentioned it, simply shrugged,” said michaeliforget. Or this from UltraBert: “3 x 660mm bottles of Estrella £5. Not bad I thought. After the offer? £1.50 each. Nice …”. • Fake half-price deals: “In most of the major supermarkets strawberries are marked ‘half-price’ or ‘two-for-one’ from mid-spring onwards. Of course, products should be cheaper as they come into season. It is just a con to pretend it is a special offer.” • Confusion marketing: “The last time I went in I spotted tinned tomatoes were cheaper in single tins than in a set of four,” said therealforeverblue, adding that changes in packet sizes are designed to confuse. “Cherry Tomatoes now 89p were £1 – size of packet now 365g was 500g. Work it out yourself.” Guardian Money ran a “daft deals” column for two years featuring these sorts of “offers”. We could have published one every day. More seriously we have highlighted the cynical manipulation of “half-price” offers, particularly in wine. Prices for low-quality wine are established at a fake high, then cut to “half price”. We also see it in sun cream – always “half price” as the summer approaches. Keep something at the back of the shelves in winter at an unreal “full price”, then restock for summer at the actual price and misleadingly, but legally, describe it as “half price”. Several workers in electrical shops allege this is rampant when selling white goods. One poster, who claimed he was a store manager, said: “One of the most simple faux ‘offers’ was the price step – let’s say you have a fridge at £300, the price then increases to £750 (the heavily inflated price is key) then will shortly be ‘reduced’ to £550 to much fanfare for a £200 saving! The stores are so good at what they do, it’ll be a long time before regulators even understand the problem let alone solve it.” Unfortunately the CMA reckons we can rely on local trading standards offices to police supermarket practices. Sadly, trading standards have suffered spending cuts and their fragmented, local structure is no match for the giant multibillion-pound supermarkets. Meanwhile, shoppers fed up with bogus marketing are voting with their feet, heading to Lidl and Aldi where pricing is simpler. I’ve joined them, buying wine at Lidl where it’s never “half price” just reasonable value. But I was most struck by a comment from Mestwicecutonce: “One of the biggest gifts for supermarkets was the demise of the price sticker. Items no longer have any fixed price, and prices can be manipulated very quickly. The days are gone when you could put a tin into the cupboard and notice that the identical one already in there from last week was cheaper. Very few people check till receipts and compare them item-by-item, week-on-week or store-by-store.” |