When household budgets are under pressure and food prices are among consumers’ top financial worries, it is not good enough for supermarket shoppers to be duped into thinking that they’re snaffling a bargain.
With summer holidays on our minds, most of us are familiar with the barrage of permanently “half-price” suntan creams on sale in a well-known UK high street chemist. It is similar to the popular supermarkets’ discounted wine offers which make it impossible to know the “real” price.
The consumer group Which? has been slogging away for seven years to end the ubiquitous “dodgy multi-buys, shrinking products and baffling offers”, with help from eagle-eyed Guardian readers who, through our own campaign, have provided evidence of hundreds of bizarre deals.
That culminated in it lodging a super-complaint in April with theCompetition and Markets Authority, which on Thursday published its long-awaited response.
Ducking the opportunity to launch a full investigation into the issue - and not even naming and shaming the worst offenders - the CMA instead published a whitewash of a report which, while admitting there was evidence of “poor practice that could confuse or mislead shoppers”, concluded this was not on a significant scale. However, it admitted more could be done to simplify the way individual items were priced, particularly with complex unit pricing. The unit price is the price by weight or volume that allows shoppers to compare the true cost of items, even if they come in different sizes.
Its solution to the problem is limp-wristed, to say the least. The CMA will beef up compliance - fines are payable when consumer law is broken - improve clarity for shoppers and simplify regulations. Bafflingly, it seems to be relying on regional trading standards – services that have been slashed to ribbons as a result of local council funding cuts – to co-ordinate complaints and uphold consumer protection.
We’ve been here before, of course, in the days of regulation by the now defunct Office of Fair Trading. An invaluable opportunity to finally say “bogof” to dodgy pricing deals seems to have been missed. But consumers who can’t trust their own maths have an alternative to hand which they have already been taking advantage of - discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl.
Aldi pointed out on Thursday that it is committed to “everyday low pricing” rather than misleading and confusing gimmicks, with less than 10% of its products on promotion at any one time, compared with 40% across the market. What you see is what you get. It is a similar picture at Lidl, which following last year’s offer of bargain-basement French wines has cleaned up in the high street premium wine market.
Authoritative trade magazine The Grocer, observed in an editorial recently that the move by Which? “comes across not so much as a ‘super complaint’ but as a silly whinge.”
It added: “The important point here is that the consumer has already figured all this out. She’s sussed the supermarkets. It’s why the discounters are going like billy-o. It’s why the big four [supermarkets] are in the mother of all pickles. It’s why Tesco has recorded the largest loss in retailing history.”
There has been no suggestion of industry collusion but there is no denying the power of the supermarkets, who have long defended their practices and are wary of scrutiny, even if the traditional UK giants are now feeling the pinch.
Retail ombudsman Dean Dunham, who mediates disputes between retailers and shoppers, came close to lifting the lid when he said: “The problem is that the current rules are merely guidelines, which present retailers with a lot of wriggle room. And consumers find it very hard to present concrete evidence that retailers have failed to offer products at one price for the statutory number of days before reducing them. They don’t walk around with time-dated digital cameras strapped to their heads.”
Now there’s an interesting thought ...
