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Our recent blog on deals that were not deals struck a chord with many shoppers. Patrick Collinson reports on the prices which mean less will cost you more
When buying in bulk makes you poorer
Geoff Jones from Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys wrote to highlight the price of Tesco's extra virgin olive oil, amused by the supermarket's "eccentric pricing". On the store's shelves, the 500ml bottles retail for a very reasonable £1.99. That's equivalent to £3.98 a litre. But look on the shelf below and you'll find the bigger 750ml bottle, priced at £3.53 – that works out at £4.71 a litre. Mysteriously, as Jones points out, the price then drops back to £3.98 for the full litre bottle.
Tesco's lemon juice is another puzzler. Anne Barry from Chichester highlights how Tesco charges £1.19 for its own-brand 500ml bottle of lemon juice. But if you buy the 250ml bottle, the price is only 48p. So never buy the 500ml bottle, just pop two 250ml bottles in your basket.
Thanks to Susan Craig from Mynydd Isa, Wales for her "particular bugbear". At her local supermarket she found Persil washing powder at £4.50 for a box that does 25 washes. But further along the shelves, a huge bright yellow sticker promoted the better value 50-wash box. "But it cost £12.00! So in actual fact I can save myself £3 by buying two of the smaller boxes – which I incidentally prefer because they fit in the cupboard under my sink!"
Londoner Peter Knipe, while in North Yorkshire, popped into a branch of Sainsbury's. "I saw the bottled water at 99p a bottle, although you could opt for the special offer, three for £3 …" He was also intrigued by the "long queue of people in search of a bargain who were snapping up tasty buns marked at four for £2". Yet there was no bonus for buying four, as they were sold elsewhere singly at 50p each. "The assistant told me that most customers bought four."
When 25% extra gives you nothing more
Do those bags of pre-packaged fruit and veg that shout "25% extra free!" really give you that bit extra? Ed Richards of Blandford Forum, Dorset, is sure they don't. "They never seem to display the pack weight so that one can compare with the same item sold loose. I always find the scales, weigh the pack, then compare. I find it's hardly ever beneficial to pay for the pre-packed stuff. (And I'd rather not have all the extra packaging.)"
Meanwhile Catherine Griffiths in Anglesey says the small print "per 100g" information under the actual price "can be completely inaccurate and now I don't dare trust these figures. (Is this breaking some consumer law, even if it's an honest error?)"
Fake two-for-one and half-price deals
Sharp-eyed "DanJO" posted on guardian.co.uk his experience of how his local supermarket prices Radox shower gel. "The shower gels are £1.94 each for a while just before the two for £2 offer … [it then] drops down to 95p each without any offer not long afterwards. Bottles of coke do something similar. The Sure For Men ones rotate between offers but over the course of about six months went up by about 80p on its baseline price. Presumably, an inflation rate of something like 33% would have raised eyebrows if it happened overnight so the offer toggling masks it."
Readers are highly suspicious of the supermarket half-price wine deals. Guardian.co.uk poster Afcone wrote: "All supermarkets do this: 1) Take a £3 bottle of wine. 2) Sell it for £8 for a day or two. 3) 'Reduce' it to £3. For maximum effect, they limit this with a sign saying 'maximum six bottles per customer', knowing full well that people will, on average, actually buy more by putting a limit on it."
Shops and supermarkets constantly exploit our desire for a bargain, even when none exists, says Monsterchild on guardian.co.uk. "I've worked in retail all my life and can say with absolute certainty that if Shop A has a widget in the window for £100, and Shop B has the exact same widget advertised as 'Half Price! – was £200, now £100', Shop B will sell twice as many widgets."
When buying on eBay costs more
"Penninebliss" wrote: "I recently sold a camera on eBay (new, still in box). Another seller had the same camera as a 'buy it now' (no auction) for £18. Mine sold for £27, but the buy-it-now camera at £18 was unsold. I watched in amazement as the bidding kept pushing up the price, yet none of the bidders bothered to check the prices of identical items to see what would be best value. The philosophy of the majority of buyers seems to be: if it's eBay, it's cheap, and if it's a 99p start auction it must be a total bargain. I laughed all the way to the bank!"
The evidence of eBay buyers who pay over the odds came from Halo572 at guardian.co.uk. Last week he saw 11 bids for an "autobiography" of FBI special agent Dale Cooper, the fictional character from the TV series, Twin Peaks. The bidding pushed the price of the used book up to £8 plus £1 delivery. But had these net-savvy bidders simply clicked over to Amazon, they would have found scores of sellers offering it for just 1p plus £2.80 for delivery.
"It was the same with the Kindle on launch – people were marking it up and putting it on eBay as some people wouldn't wait. Even after the shortage ended [and it was easily available at Amazon] people were still selling it at a premium."
It's not just eBay which pulls in the suckers. Michael Walton, emeritus professor of drama at the University of Hull, has fun tracking the price of his own book, Living Group Theatre. It is available new on Amazon (UK and US) at any time for £63.60. Yet he's also found it on sale, used, for £163 on another US site.
Bizarre flight pricing
Nichola Bell wrote to say that booking the return leg of a flight in a foreign currency is cheaper than buying it in sterling. Indeed, a look at Ryanair's pricing proves the point. The return leg of a flight from London to Dublin for 2 October (3.40pm) is priced at £85.95. But exactly the same flight, if bought as a single in euros, is €89.88 or £78 – a saving of £7.95, and enough to more than compensate the exchange charges.
Afcone added: "Why does a flight with Air Canada to Vancouver cost 15% more than a flight to Seattle, changing in Vancouver?"
… and the deals that really confuse you
This intrigues a lot of readers. It's when a retailer sells the large pack not just at a lower per-unit price, but for less than the smaller pack price.
Dave Foddy from Northwich in Cheshire explains: "About 10 years ago at Hilton Park Services M6 southbound, I went in for some AA batteries. I found the required pack of four and took them to the till, where I was asked if I wanted eight. When I said I only wanted four the assistant told me that eight were cheaper. I said that I understood the economies of bulk buying, but only wanted four. It was then explained to me that to take a pack of eight out of the shop required handing over less money than for a pack of four. I still don't really understand."
At guardian.co.uk, Jonbryce found a similar example. His local Sainsbury's, he says, was recently selling a 500ml bottle of Irn Bru for £1.09, while the one litre bottle was £1.05.
Bizarrely, Susan Craig – our reader who spotted the Persil example, emailed us a second time to say the pricing had, since she first wrote, become even more perverse. Now, the smaller 25-wash box had gone up to £6.40, while the 50-wash box had gone to £6. "Now where is the logic in that? I'm confused.com!"
Patrick Collinson
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