[nffc]

Another day, another tonight programme, this time it was the turn of Tesco to come under Maitland's beady eye. Specifically their pricing policy...

Basically, their research found that shopping for fruit, veg and meat was cheaper from local markets and butchers etc, than the supermarket. In addition, they noticed that Tesco, when announcing "£3 0m price cuts" were in fact including cuts on items such as organic watercress and actually putting the price of items such as teabags UP! [meaning, of course, the cost of the average shop would probably rise after the cuts!]

They investigated the claims of Tesco's advertising of special offers, basically, they hike the price up by over 100% for a short while, usually 25 days, then put on something like half-price offer, in fact, the price is MORE than the original price prior to the hike- so it's in effect confusing customers that they're getting a good deal, when in fact they're not. And of course, if they've charged it for >28 days, it's perfectly legal.

They also found that Tesco had more ASA complaints upheld than all the other major supermarkets put together- but then conceded that a minority of these were actually from members of the public as opposed to their competitors.

This provokes serious thought about whether the supermarket practice is ethical.
- Is it just Tesco that is doing this? Realistically, I would expect it to be commonplace and they're just singling out Tesco as an example. They didn't really mention other supermarkets though- would have been interesting if they had but then, there's only so much they can report on in 30 mins.
- Is this action misleading customers? At best, it's morally dubious. Of course, it will all be carefully above board legally, no doubt.