I have an issue with money off vouchers in supermarkets

ALL of these incentives, discounts and points etc schemes are to make you the consumer spend more across their range of products. So no matter who the retailer is it is a lure for you to spend more on items they have higher margins on hence more profit.

Lidl did have some nice free incentives at a 2 euro price point to encourage you in to buy other items but that seems to be going more the way of Tesco and seems like Aldi will launch similar soon. They are all just about trying to build loyalty to the brand.

From when I hit super tough times back in 2009, I would encourage everyone to look at the special offers across all outlets and just buy those rather than being loyal to one. That is where significant savings are made on a budget as per @T McGibney below:
In our part of the world, Mr Price and Super Savers beat the others hands down for the quality mainstream brands, as more erratically do Lidl and Aldi.
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Yes it means visits to multiple stores but that is the best practice imho.

As for Toilet Paper wars, for me Lidl's offerings win in terms of quality, price point and personal comfort at ~€3.99. :D (But perhaps thats a separate discussion)
 
I have no real issue with the €10 off €50 type of voucher as it is most likely a gambit by Dunnes and Supervalu to encourage people to buy more to reach the thresholds and thus ensure their ongoing profitabilty per customer. At least all customers pay the same shelf price for their goods.

I do however have a real problem with Tesco's Clubcard prices which simply charges two different prices for the same product depending on the customer's willingness to engage with them. If they can afford to charge one price to their customers to whom they want to harvest data, they can charge it to all. Personally I feel, whilst it is legal, it is certainly not ethical. For this reason, I avoid Tesco as much as possible and take my custom elsewhere, despite having a Clubcard account..
 
tallpaul said:
I do however have a real problem with Tesco's Clubcard prices which simply charges two different prices for the same product depending on the customer's willingness to engage with them.
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It should be noted Supervalu and LIDL are starting to go down this route albeit to a lesser extent with 'Real Rewards Prices' and 'LIDL Plus price'.

ALDI is the only major supermarket that doesn't have any rewards type \ clubcard type scheme and the price is the price, no spend and save, no loyalty discounts.
 
tallpaul said:
I do however have a real problem with Tesco's Clubcard prices which simply charges two different prices for the same product depending on the customer's willingness to engage with them. If they can afford to charge one price to their customers to whom they want to harvest data, they can charge it to all. Personally I feel, whilst it is legal, it is certainly not ethical.
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I'm pretty certain their Clubcard scheme is discriminatory and thus probably illegal.

A non-ROI resident for example (and there are many of them working in the Republic) cannot get an ROI clubcard without both an address and a domestic phone number in the Republic, which means they are routinely charged higher than others for the same goods.

The same applies in Northern Ireland where for this reason I have stopped shopping in Tesco (and in Sainsbury and the Co-op, who operate similarly) whenever possible.

Asda by contrast do not discriminate between customers on price.
 
The 10 off really tests your ability to concentrate on adding and retaining numbers in your head over a period of time. I never get it right and often annoyed my trolley total is 147 instead of the 151 I counted and then have to send child running for box of weetabix.
 
JoeRoberts said:
I never get it right and often annoyed my trolley total is 147 instead of the 151
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Mrs C uses the calculator on her phone which normally keeps us very close to the voucher value
which is great when your trying to hit the voucher value exactly or otherwise known as "hitting the till jackpot"
but the odd time I do find her down in some section of the supermarket "cursing like a sailor" as she's mistakenly touched the erase button :)
 
I find the LIDL discount actually looks like a discount. Tesco are extreme. The only thing I buy in Tesco is the 3x2L 7Up for €5. Without the discount it would be €9+. If I don't have the phone or Clubcard, then I don't go in.
 
JoeRoberts said:
The 10 off really tests your ability to concentrate on adding and retaining numbers in your head over a period of time. I never get it right and often annoyed my trolley total is 147 instead of the 151 I counted and then have to send child running for box of weetabix.
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I do it in my head, could use the calculator in the phone but wheres the challenge in that! I love to get as close as possible to the limit, years of adding up rounds of drink behind the bar before fancy tills is standing to me now :)
 
What I find very disturbing is the data collection done by the retailers. We are with Supervalu and do most of our shopping there once a week. We use the loyalty card system and usually get either ten euros off for every 50 euros spend or double the amount for 100 euros spend. The entire list of bought goods is kept on the Supervalu system for at least two years. They basically keep a copy of your receipt- with date, time, payment method, vouchers used, deposit returns, etc. plus every single purchased item. They have a complete profile of your shopping habits and can do with that whatever they like. You can check that out if you visit your online Supervalu account.
Furthermore, there are cameras above every single till in our shop, filming the entire day in close up what is being done at the tills- check out person, customer, goods and payment transactions. All this is also stored for at least two weeks on the shops own data storage system. Depending on its data storage capacity, this can be more than two weeks.
 
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We visit Dunnes twice weekly and avail of the €5 off €25 spend.
I only purchase the items we need or those items that are good value.
It is easy to keep the €25 tot of items as you shop.

Once a month we visit Lidl. Only stock up with the items that we cannot get in the other supermarkets. We often purchase multiples of one item here that we know are cheaper than the others.

We also visit Tesco about once a month and only target buy certain items here.
 
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