When I go into the local grocery store I expect to find quality food at low prices. Since I live within range of 3 grocery stores I have taken the time to shop at all 3 and found the one that best suits my needs. HOWEVER:
Why in God’s name do I have to fill out paperwork to join a $(*@&^% club? I don’t want to join a savings club. Just give me low prices. What is the purpose of me having to fumble in my wallet each time I shop to pull out some stink’n plastic card for you to scan that is supposed to guarentee me low prices? Why not just offer me the dang low prices?!?!
And I can’t tell you how many times I go to the Buy one, Get One free shelf only to find out when I get to the register (that if I hadn’t been paying attention) the &$*#())# item wasn’t free?
Yesterday There was a display of 8 different General Mills Cereals. All were at the same price of $3.99 BUY ONE GET ONE FREE. So I picked up a cinnamon type and a fruity loop type.
Low and behold when I get to the register I was being charged $3.99 for each box. Apparently you have to BUY ONE GET ONE FREE OF THE SAME TYPE. Well how about freaking putting up a sign stating that instead of misleading the public!
How about when you offer Buy One Get One Free they actually scan that way. I bought kaeiser rolls last night…Buy One Get One Free and if I had not been watching the girl at the register I would have paid full price of the rolls. Of course the girl was clueless and didn’t know why it rung up at full price. I’m sick of it.
I shouldn’t have to memorize prices, load groceries on the belt and watch the cashier at the same time.
And why should I have to cut coupons? What purpose does this serve? It is a stink’n piece of paper that has no value. Just offer me the groceries at the lowest possible price.
Well, the purpose of the cards is to track your purchasing trends and selling that info to junk mail folks. In return for this invasion of privacy, you get a lower price. Sounds fair to me.
A lot of the stores don’t bother with the paperwork right there at the register, in my experience. They ask me if I have a SuperDuperSavingsClubCard, and when I say no, they say, “Okay, I’ll give you the savings anyway and give you a card - here’s a form for you to fill out and return to the store later.” I throw out the form, though. Card works fine.
1 - you fill out the paperwork so they can track your shopping and then know what demographic you fall into to help them with their advertising.
2 - BOGO items are generally buy one of this and get another of this free… Having worked in a grocery store for a decade I have yet to see them allow you to mix and match the BOGO items unless very specifically stated.
3 - I’m not sure how literally last night is. What is the first day of the week for the store you shop in? If you go late enough on the night before their weekly sales kick in you end up shopping as the employees are putting up the signs and tags for the next week’s sales. We tried very hard to make sure everything in the computer was manually changed to match the new signs but we aren’t perfect…
4 - Coupons are issued by the manufacturer and not the store 99% of the time. The coupons are the manufacturer’s way of saying “hey lookie here … we have this product … buy it! Oh and if that didn’t grab your attention you can buy it and save $” Coupons are just advertisements for products.
5 - You can always check your reciept before you leave the store (Always a good idea no matter what store you are in) and then voice your complaints with customer service to get your money back if you find something that was missed while you were unloading your cart.
6 - Of course the cashier doesn’t know why the item rang as it did. There are thousands of items in the store… you can’t memorize all the prices of the hundred things you bought - do you honestly think she can keep track of every item in the store and keep up with the weekly changes in price of all those items? That’s what her scanner is for. DON’T BLAME CASHIERS FOR THINGS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL!
But it seems the higher end grocery stores are doing the same thing as the lower priced ones. Forcing you to join a club and get a stupid card in order to save money.
I did notice that the higher end grocery stores do not offer the BUY ONE GET ONE FREE.
I heard that the regular grocery store carts cost $100 each.
The grocery store I shop at just bought about 10 new carts that are designed as speed cars. They have a place to put extra kids and have hard plastic all over the cart in the shape of a car. I wonder what it cost for them? How much they raised the food prices to cover such a stupid thing. Why is a stink’n shopping cart design so important? HOW ABOUT LOWER FOOD PRICES!
I mean $5 for a box of cereal?!?!?!!?! $3.29 for a gallon of milk ?!?!?! Come on let’s be reasonable.
I’m not sure how literally last night is. What is the first day of the week for the store you shop in?
____I caught the sale at the proper time. The store just does not advertise CUSTOMER FRIENDLY
Coupons are issued by the manufacturer and not the store 99% of the time.
____No this grocery store issues their own coupons at check out and you have to cut them out of a strip to use them
I think she should have a responsibility of knowing what is on sale each week. (Just like waiters do for specials of the day) Is it my responsibility to watch that she rings up each item properly and unload my groceries?
Um that shopping cart is so important to the mothers who shop with more than one child and don’t want to have to:
1 - put a child someplace unsafe like standing on the end of a cart or inside the large basket (where her groceries are supposed to go)
2 - try and drag 2 carts through an already impossible to navigate obstacle course.
3 - have small children running around grabbing things and knocking them over or harassing other customers.
Some stores do put coupons on their flyers as an extra gimmick to get you into the store. That’s why I said 99% of the time. All coupons are extra advertising though.
If you’ve ever really thought of how many items are on sale each week you would realize that the cashier (who is probably a part timer with either a day job or school to attend or kids to raise) does not have the time/inclination/motivation to memorize the hundreds of items on sale each week. The bakery alone is likely to have 30 ‘sale’ items. Then there is fish, deli, meat, produce, grocery (hundreds of items here alone even in the smaller stores.)
The specials the waiter has to memorize are all on one freaking sheet of paper… and he can keep that in his pocket to refresh his memory between customers.
I think $3.29 for a finite amount of liquid coming out of an animal is insanely reasonable.
I also think $1.29 for a dozen eggs is way too cheap.
But now we’re getting into farm subsidies which is about a billion percent off topic.
There are dozens upon dozens of grocery store gimmicks you don’t complain about because you probably don’t even know they’re happening.
They layout of almost every well designed store has been configured to make you spend more money. You walk in and see either the produce section or flowers. This makes you think of freshness and gives you a positive impression of the store right off the bat.
Milk and bread, two staple items, are always on opposite ends of the store, thus making you walk across every aisle to get both.
The tempo of the music determines how fast you shop.
They’ve even had studies calculating how much more money per minute you’ll spend for every minute over 20 in the store.
Not really. My hunger determines how fast I shop. The music is always some crappy Muzak. If it’s supposed to make me shop more slowly, it fails miserably.
I go out of my way to visit the one supermarket chain (Shoppers Food Warehouse, for those of you in the DC area) around here that doesn’t have a Happy Shoppers Club thing - I already have an inch high stack of cards (video stores, library, buy 10 sandwiches get one free, video games, etc.) that are kept in my car because my wallet’s not big enought to carry them; I don’t really want to add to that pile.
A couple years ago, Giant Food (which is my favorite name for a grocery store, because it makes me think they have 10’ asparagus or something) did a big advertising campaign when they started one of these programs - the focus was “getting this card will save you money,” when the actual meaning was “get this card, and you’ll get the same savings you got before we started this program.”
I know of a lot of gimmicks the store uses ** Enderw24 ** but the store I chose didn’t seem to use them (very much) THey don’t play music. The layout actually suits my needs except that the bread and milk are so far apart.
It is just that lately they have been playing these games forcing me to flash that stupid savings card each time I shop.
Last week I saw an Oscar Mayer display that said OSCAR MAYER MEATS $3.XX Buy One Get One Free. So I bought the ham and turkey. As I was at the register I noticed they rang up at not only the wrong price, but they were not BOGOF. I questioned the cashier and found out you had to BOGOF of the same meat. (MY GRIPE IS THE STORE SHOULD HAVE MADE THAT CLEAR) I wasted time trying to select the best buy.
SInce the price didn’t ring up right they had to send someone to price check it (TAKING UP MY TIME) to find out that I was indeed right on the price and she was still clueless why it rang up wrong so then she had to call a manger to clear it out.
The neat thing about those cards - they never compared my driver’s license to the information I provided. So they’re tracking the purchases of an imaginary person.
Indeed, if they want to keep me longer, they’d play some decent music. In fact, they should create an general atmosphere that is pleasant, rather than so antiseptic and cold.
This leads me to a question – What the hell is that supermarket odor? My guess is bread, plastic, and freon.
Okay, so it’s happened with cereal . . . it’s happened with lunch meat . . .
Just out of curiousity, how many different products do you intend to test before you finally conclude that “Buy one get one free” means “Buy one, get one of the same type free” unless otherwise specified?
When it happened with the meat it made me leery and that is how I knew to watch the clerk when it came time for the cereal. NOW I KNOW. I don’t think these BOGOF is worth my trouble!
Are you kidding me? The store probably has hundreds of sales during the week and you think she should know every single item? Right:rolleyes:. Why not give the poor cashier a break? She works a hard enough job as it is for more than likely not much more than minimum wage.
As far as the big carts, I don’t particularly care for them, but since the stores I shop at have larger aisles (Ukrop’s and Kroger), I’ll happily deal with them if it keeps children occupied and not in my way while I’m shopping. I do think they could have been made slightly smaller, though. However, I’d rather see a child safe in those than get hurt in one of the regular grocery carts.
