# Increase in supermaket prices



## Fire away (10 Jun 2020)

Has anybody noticed fairly big increases in supermarket prices over the last 18 months or so including the German stores. I would guess at least 20% increase across the board


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## mtk (10 Jun 2020)

No haven’t noticed in Tesco anyway


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## Drakon (10 Jun 2020)

Haven’t noticed it either. But the discounts in Dunnes are fewer since the C19 pandemic kicked in.


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## odyssey06 (10 Jun 2020)

mtk said:


> No haven’t noticed in Tesco anyway



Actually have noticed increases in brands like Dettol and Andrex.
Plus less offers.
Plus many own brand items out of stock so paying extea for branded item.


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## messyleo (10 Jun 2020)

Less offers definitely e.g. a lack of the likes of glenisk yogurt big pots on special and dettol wipes etc on special. Honestly I imagine distribution costs and production costs are higher so I don't mind too much in these days. I haven't noticed an increase in RRPs really though - just in terms of specials.


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## Cricketer (10 Jun 2020)

I haven't noticed and - when it comes to Tesco at least - I keep an eye on them. It's amazing how many errors you can find on the receipt; usually an offer that 'didn't go through'. When I complained, I was told the pricing system was in India or somewhere far-flung. I replied by saying that may well be, but it's strange how the errors always seem to be in Tesco's favour. Check your receipt!


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## Familyman77 (10 Jun 2020)

Haven't noticed too much. What I have noticed is that when we get the online /delivery from the supermarket if the chosen product is unavailable they aren't giving any alternatives in lieu, instead they just dont deliver or if they do give an alternative of higher value they charge the higher price whereas it would have been at the lower price before


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## odyssey06 (11 Jun 2020)

Cricketer said:


> I haven't noticed and - when it comes to Tesco at least - I keep an eye on them. It's amazing how many errors you can find on the receipt; usually an offer that 'didn't go through'. When I complained, I was told the pricing system was in India or somewhere far-flung. I replied by saying that may well be, but it's strange how the errors always seem to be in Tesco's favour. Check your receipt!



Try to check the dates on the yellow stickers, some stores can be very slow at removing old offers even though the yellow sticker is still up.
In the past I've taken out phone to check if offer is still running, they used to have self price scanners in store which made it easier.
Also, have had issues where there's like 3 of a group of items say for €4 and they've put products into the section not in the offer (e.g. Club Orange v Club Zero).

Bit in general I find Supervalu worse at applying offers - current highly advertised offers especially.


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## Odea (11 Jun 2020)

In Dunnes Blackrock they only seem to have the more expensive brands for sale. An example, go to the ice cream freezer section and all you see are the expensive brands.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (11 Jun 2020)

The CSO, who survey thousands of prices in hundreds of shops in every county, haven't noticed it either.

Food and non-alcholic beverages [broken link removed]1.2% in the year to April.


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## odyssey06 (11 Jun 2020)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> The CSO, who survey thousands of prices in hundreds of shops in every county, haven't noticed it either.
> Food and non-alcholic beverages [broken link removed]1.2% in the year to April.



Do their surveys take into account, say if Tesco own brand products are out of stock?
Or are they price scanning RRPs?
There were definitely less offers during the crisis, definitely less own brand (cheaper) items available, and definitely price increases in Tesco on certain brands such as Andrex and Dettol.


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## Early Riser (11 Jun 2020)

Back in March multi-buy offers were largely cancelled to discourage stock-piling and panic buying. I am not sure to what extent they have come back.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (11 Jun 2020)

Early Riser said:


> Back in March multi-buy offers were largely cancelled to discourage stock-piling and panic buying. I am not sure to what extent they have come back.



In fairness the CSO never take account of multi-buy offers, only unit pricetag.

@odyssey06 - I am sure certain prices increased, but others decreased. It's a representative basket of consumer goods, many of which you won't buy personally.


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## Leo (11 Jun 2020)

Times article from early April addresses this, supermarkets claiming they're still running similar numbers of discounts.


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## Steven Barrett (11 Jun 2020)

Dunnes have definitely put up their prices on a lot of different products.


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## losttheplot (11 Jun 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> Bit in general I find Supervalu worse at applying offers - current highly advertised offers especially.



Our local SuperValu are great for putting up the posters for special offers and labelling the shelves. Not so great at remembering to update the tills to recognise the offer.


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## Cricketer (11 Jun 2020)

@odyssey06  Good point re. self-scan and - I can't believe I'm saying this - I have SEEN THE LIGHT! Self-scan is the business. I avoided it for years, thinking it was Tesco getting me to do the work for them. But: I can now check that offers have been applied as I go (no nasty receipt surprises) and speed of checkout is a big bonus. I'd recommend anyone to give it a go.


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## Mrs Vimes (11 Jun 2020)

Just to note that Tesco's self-scan devices are not always picking up the same price as the till does when the 2 are synchronised.

I noticed it some time ago when an offer which had shown on the self-scanner didn't come up on the till and the check-out person said the 2 systems are not entirely connected.

I used just check everything scanned as expected as I went but now also make sure to notice the total before handing over the scanner.


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## Cricketer (11 Jun 2020)

Well now Mrs. V., I take some of it back! I'll have to resume my scrutiny of my Tesco receipts (sigh). I have spotted at least ten mistakes in the past three or four years, every one of the errors in Tesco's favour. Maybe I am unlucky. Very unlucky.


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## Mrs Vimes (11 Jun 2020)

You'll spot quick enough if the self-scan total is €XX.XX and the visa-tapping machine is not


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## Gordon Gekko (11 Jun 2020)

The way Tesco set-out the multi-buy discounts separately at the bottom of the receipt is annoying. It just says “Multibuy discount 0.98c”, for example, without telling you what it is.


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## Cricketer (11 Jun 2020)

I'll report on how it goes. If anyone's interested other than me, that is.


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## joe sod (11 Jun 2020)

Fire away said:


> Has anybody noticed fairly big increases in supermarket prices over the last 18 months or so including the German stores.



Yes I have noticed it and especially in the german stores. Initially they were the cheapest for everything and everything was own brand german, then they tweeked their offering for irish consumers , introduced irish own brands and big brands and generally increased quality. Now they are increasing prices on those successful brands. These increases dont get picked up by the CSO because they dont include supermarket own brands in their index


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## NoRegretsCoyote (11 Jun 2020)

joe sod said:


> These increases dont get picked up by the CSO because they dont include supermarket own brands in their index



Really, what is your source for that?


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## joe sod (11 Jun 2020)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> Really, what is your source for that?



Well presumably they use McVities biscuits rather than "Tower gate" biscuits in their "basket of goods" as McVities is a brand sold in nearly all stores whereas "Tower gate" only in Lidl thats if they have biscuits at all. The granular detail of what exactly the CSO include in their index is stangely opaque. Maybe you can enlighten us as you are a CSO employee I think.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (11 Jun 2020)

joe sod said:


> Well presumably they use McVities biscuits rather than "Tower gate" biscuits in their "basket of goods" as McVities is a brand sold in nearly all stores whereas "Tower gate" only in Lidl thats if they have biscuits at all. The granular detail of what exactly the CSO include in their index is stangely opaque. Maybe you can enlighten us as you are a CSO employee I think.



I am not an employee and never was.

Indeed their methodology is not clear, but you're making the claims here.

But I'd be surprised if they excluded a category as large as own-brand products.


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## MrEarl (12 Jun 2020)

Hello, 

I find it more than a little interesting that the majority of people here feel that prices have gone up, while "official" monitors say prices haven't been going up. 

My initial reaction when I saw this thread was to say Yes, prices have definitely been going up. Again, I'm another regular Tesco shopper (although I'm starting to move away from them). 

Perhaps part of the reason for the apparent increase in prices is the significant reduction in bulk buy discounts (although they could have easily cut their prices on various goods, or given extra clubcard points etc, rather than penalise the customer). 

There's also the possibility that many of us are buying a few more treats, or premium items, which is pushing up the price. 

However, I still firmly believe that prices are being pushed up and the someone is taking an extra margin here - not just covering their additional costs.


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## odyssey06 (12 Jun 2020)

joe sod said:


> Well presumably they use McVities biscuits rather than "Tower gate" biscuits in their "basket of goods" as McVities is a brand sold in nearly all stores whereas "Tower gate" only in Lidl thats if they have biscuits at all. The granular detail of what exactly the CSO include in their index is stangely opaque. Maybe you can enlighten us as you are a CSO employee I think.



Also, are they actually going to the shops & buying a pack of Tower gate biscuits, or looking at the (unchanged) price tag on the empty shelf and instead buying McVities.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (12 Jun 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> Also, are they actually going to the shops & buying a pack of Tower gate biscuits, or looking at the (unchanged) price tag on the empty shelf and instead buying McVities.



They don't buy anything  

They look at the price tag on the exact same product where possible every month.


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## odyssey06 (12 Jun 2020)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> They don't buy anything
> They look at the price tag on the exact same product where possible every month.



So the extra euros I spent on branded products because Tesco were out of stock on cheaper own brand equivalent won't show up in any CSO report.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (12 Jun 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> So the extra euros I spent on branded products because Tesco were out of stock on cheaper own brand equivalent won't show up in any CSO report.



Indeed.


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## Cricketer (12 Jun 2020)

Like trying to decipher what TSCMXDVEG is for example. My cynical self wonders if they are being deliberately confusing. I find Aldi receipts much easier to read. Not to mention better value!


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## Delboy (12 Jun 2020)

Being the numbers nerd that I am, I keep track of all my spending. Food spending in my household is up 24% on last year. Take out the eating out/lunches from last year and this year to balance out the covid impact, and that food shop increase comes down to 20%. 

Still eating the same type of meals, haven't changed the supermarkets we visit, no changes in family numbers except the kids are  year older but not that much bigger to be eating 20% more!

It just confirms what many say here and what I have felt for the past couple of years....prices in the supermarkets are going steadily up


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## Cricketer (12 Jun 2020)

@Delboy  I don't know if you can make such a definitive national conclusion from one shopper's self-observed experience. You may be right, but I'd like to see more evidence.


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## Delboy (12 Jun 2020)

It's a personal conclusion, yes. But it just confirms what I'd felt over the last few years both in the weekly shopping bill and in the amount of bags being filled for said bills

It does seem to ring true with other posters on this thread.

Tell me, do you feel that inflation over the last few years has been close to zero? Have you noticed that in clothes prices, supermarket prices, the price of a pint or a meal out, insurance costs, etc?


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## Cricketer (12 Jun 2020)

@Delboy Interesting question. I wouldn't have a clue about clothes prices. I am constantly surprised at the cost of eating out and frankly shocked by how expensive it can be in Dublin. My impression would be that those prices climbed once the great recession eased. I haven't noticed supermarket prices rising though a lot of junk foods seem smaller for the same price - a rise by another name though maybe not a bad thing if portion sizes shrink! Car insurance seemed to go up for 5 or 6 years until this year when mine fell a bit. One thing I would say; I don't know if it's just an Irish thing but I'm tired of friends complaining about the price of something (particularly alcohol) having already bought it. If you've bought it at that price then that's what they're going to charge! Shopping around also means not buying; that's a real message for the seller!


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## odyssey06 (13 Jun 2020)

Cricketer said:


> One thing I would say; I don't know if it's just an Irish thing but I'm tired of friends complaining about the price of something (particularly alcohol) having already bought it. If you've bought it at that price then that's what they're going to charge! Shopping around also means not buying; that's a real message for the seller!



The problem though is that most of the price of alcohol, unless you are buying premium brands, is tax or one form or another.
You can't shop around unless you shop in another jurisdiction. Our prices for alcohol are among the highest in the EU already.


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## joe sod (13 Jun 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> Also, are they actually going to the shops & buying a pack of Tower gate biscuits, or looking at the (unchanged) price tag on the empty shelf and instead buying McVities.


Thats the thing nobody knows what exactly they incude in their "basket of goods" they used to be alot more open about this years ago. I think inflation statistics are actually a very tightly controlled and probably manipulated statistic throughout the eurozone. It is in everybody's interests to understate it as much as possible thereby maintaining negative interest rates (because there is no inflation) and allowing governments to borrow as much as possible at those negative rates. It also controls the pesky unions looking for more pay rises because of rising prices, because there is no inflation, right.


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## Early Riser (13 Jun 2020)

The CSO outline their methodology on their website. 

_"............Personal visits are made to retail outlets by some 80 price collectors on a monthly basis.  Approximately 48,000 price quotations are gathered in this way. .............Most prices are collected monthly, some quarterly and others annually.  The CSO supplies general specifications to price collectors and price collectors are free initially to select a brand and in certain cases, size.  This allows for a wide variety of different brands of the same item to be priced throughout the country.  Once selected, the same item/brand is priced on a monthly basis in order to ensure matched price quotations.  If an item disappears, substitution can occur but that price is excluded until matched prices are available for the same comparable item for two consecutive months. .................The CPI measures in index form the monthly changes  in the cost of purchasing  a fixed representative ‘basket’ of consumer goods and services (i.e. Laspeyres formula).  Identical items are priced in the same outlet on each occasion so that changes in the cost of this constant basket reflect only pure price changes. The current basket of goods and services consists of 615 representative items which were predominantly selected as part of the December 2016 rebase.  The representative share of each item in the basket is proportional to the average amount purchased by all households in the State and foreign tourists ........"_






						Consumer Price Index - CSO - Central Statistics Office
					






					www.cso.ie


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## odyssey06 (13 Jun 2020)

A study from the UK, but this tallies with the anecdotal evidence on this side of the water:
_There was *a 15% fall in the frequency of promotions* during the first month of lockdown, research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found.
This, in part, *led to a 2.4% rise in the price of groceries in one month*.
Researchers said this was the equivalent of price increases expected for a whole year.
There was also *an 8% fall in the variety of grocery products on the shelves* during lockdown... 
Since then, prices had fallen slightly, but they still remained more than 2% higher than before lockdown, the report said.
"There was *more grocery inflation in one month than we often see in a year*," said Martin O'Connell, co-author of the report._









						Coronavirus: Special offers 'pulled from shelves during lockdown'
					

Shoppers faced a year's worth of grocery price rises in one month as promotions were withdrawn, researchers say.



					www.bbc.com


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## NoRegretsCoyote (14 Jun 2020)

Food and non-alcholic beverages are only 13% of the CPI basket.

The CSO make this hard to find, you have to download and trawl through an [broken link removed].


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## Early Riser (14 Jun 2020)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> Food and non-alcholic beverages are only 13% of the CPI basket.
> 
> The CSO make this hard to find, you have to download and trawl through an [broken link removed].


 
Probably roughly corresponding to the % of household expenditure on this category? 

_"As a proportion of total household expenditure, Alcoholic drink and tobacco fell from 4.9% to 3.3% from 2009-2010 to 2015-2016, while the proportion relating to Food fell from 16.2% to 14.7%.  The proportion of total expenditure on Housing increased from 18.2% to 19.6% over this period."_ 





						Household Expenditure - CSO - Central Statistics Office
					






					www.cso.ie


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## NoRegretsCoyote (14 Jun 2020)

@Early Riser 

Indeed, they have to re-weight the basket a bit.

What people claim they spend on alcohol and what Revenue take in as excise is quite different


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## Gordon Gekko (14 Jun 2020)

If you owned a supermarket and suddenly lockdown commenced where almost everything else is closed, you’d hardly be instigating promotions.

I always laugh at people giving out about the price of alcohol; alcohol is ridiculously cheap. I can buy bottles of Heineken for 75c. I can remember buying booze when I was in my mid-teens; our price point was £1 (i.e. €1.27) which would only buy you something like Fosters. There was the odd cheaper brand like Bavaria which would be 69p / 90c. Premium brands like Heineken were too expensive at circa £2/€2.50 a can

As for wine, there is usually decent enough stuff available on a ‘6 for €50’ basis in the likes of Tesco.

It’s difficult to argue that booze is expensive.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (14 Jun 2020)

Early Riser said:


> It’s difficult to argue that booze is expensive.



Not really. According to Eurostat alcohol in Ireland is the second most expensive in the EU.

Remember this is for off-sales *and* on-sales.


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## Gordon Gekko (14 Jun 2020)

So


NoRegretsCoyote said:


> Not really. According to Eurostat alcohol in Ireland is the second most expensive in the EU.
> 
> Remember this is for off-sales *and* on-sales.



So completely irrelevant to a discussion about supermarket prices then...


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## NoRegretsCoyote (14 Jun 2020)

@Gordon Gekko 

Not really. From memory the weights are about 50/50 between on and off sales but a long time since I checked.

I doubt Ireland is 77% above EU average for alcohol overall if off-sales aren't well above average too.


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## odyssey06 (14 Jun 2020)

Gordon Gekko said:


> It’s difficult to argue that booze is expensive.



It is expensive relative to buying equivalent products in UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and say California.
Both your basic wines and top ones.
Both basic spirits and aged ones for example.
Look at the price of Irish whiskey Red Breast it is expensive in ROI, reasonably priced in N Ireland.
Jameson in cheaper in Calais than Cork.

And there were less promotions on beer in the current crisis, though that may have been due to shortage on supply as more drunk at home.


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## Gordon Gekko (14 Jun 2020)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> @Gordon Gekko
> 
> Not really. From memory the weights are about 50/50 between on and off sales but a long time since I checked.
> 
> I doubt Ireland is 77% above EU average for alcohol overall if off-sales aren't well above average too.



I pay €6 for a bottle of Heineken in a pub and 75c for a bottle of Heineken in a supermarket.

Statistics which include pub sales are completey irrelevant in the context of discussion around supermarket prices.


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## joe sod (14 Jun 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> And there were less promotions on beer in the current crisis, though that may have been due to shortage on supply as more drunk at home.



Thats one of the theories about the lasting effect of the coronavirus that it will really kick off inflation this time due to supply shock, some ingredients and components will be in short supply due to the disruption to the supply chain. Of course we all know about the demand shock but that has been resolved by money printing and people getting paid even though not producing. Now demand coming back with the ending of furloughs but supply still constrained due to difficulties and costs in meeting the requirements for producing with social distancing.


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## NoRegretsCoyote (14 Jun 2020)

Gordon Gekko said:


> Statistics which include pub sales are completey irrelevant in the context of discussion around supermarket prices.



My apologies for taking the thread beyond anecdote.


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## Foxy007 (15 Jul 2020)

Tesco also tend to put the wrong product on the shelf.  And yes I am that person who will tell them brandishing a receipt!


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