Chris Gray writes from London: Tell me honestly: were you surprised when you heard that two major supermarket chains in Britain were selling filtered tap water under their own brands of ‘still water’, cunningly positioning the bottles among the accepted top brands of proper mineral and spring water and making a profit of about 2,500 per cent on the operation? (Both chains, mind you, have rejected the notion that they were unashamedly selling tap water.) Come on, come on, put your hand on your heart and tell me that you were shocked to learn that supermarkets were taking their customers for a ride.

I bet very few of you out there were surprised. Because it is a given that supermarkets and the retail trade generally like, you know, to bend the rules a bit when it comes to making money. It’s not a proper business really, retail trade that is, and never has been. And it does not create proper jobs, relying on the lowest level of unqualified labour that needs no training and no knowledge and gets paid close to nothing.

Take the pricing con: what do all these price tags with 19.99 or 199.99 or even 999.99 on them actually stand for? The only point here is to trick people into automatically missing the point that 19.99 is actually 20 or that 199.99 is as close to 200 as it gets and that 999.99 is a grand. Goods should not be priced like that. It’s a con, pure and simple. And yet, the retail trade has the nerve to teach their managers that fooling people is a great way to move the stuff off the shelves quickly.

Let’s be brutally honest: the whole point of retail is to make you buy goods, whether you need them or not and in the biggest volumes possible and as often as possible, preferably 24/7. It’s all supposed to be about skilful marketing and promotion and not about price fixing and cheating. Although selling tap water does raise the level of con-artistry a notch or two. What next, urine mixed with lemonade for that added goodness?

And how about those two-for-one or three-for-two or even four-for-three offers? You know, you buy something and you get another one free. Or you buy two of something and you get a third one free – and so on. Why do you think that retailers don’t just cut the price of the items by half or by one third? Come on, take your time, think about it. Got it now? Good. It’s all done to clear the shelves as quickly as possible. They win and you lose because more often than enough you buy more goods than you need. Clever buggers, aren’t they.

Not forgetting all those so-called ‘great discounts’ when the initial prices are grotesquely inflated in the first place. It’s just another way of price fixing, a term that retailers don’t like to hear. It just doesn’t fit well the image of a customer friendly operation, does it?

And there are more tricks of the trade. How about confusing labels, for example, that don’t really explain what you’re buying, or very tight ‘use-by’ dates that force you more than often to throw out the produce and buy more. My personal favourites are the ‘new improved recipe’ brands in supermarkets that usually mean that the stuff is not as good as the old one was, but still costs exactly the same, or even more.

The change of packaging or of brand name also works well for the seller in respect of prices. Or selling smaller packaging and with the price again going up. And how about charging the same price for low fat and full fat produce when it should be different, as low fat foods lack the same goodness as full fat foods.

Another way of making the consumers pay more is setting the same price for, say, an item of clothing that has been made in China or the sweat shops of South East Asia as for the higher quality wear made in Italy, for example. There is a difference in quality, you know, a big, big difference. But does anyone pay any attention to where the clothes are made? Nope, they are just not bothered or are too busy to search for the labels that are now often hidden somewhere on the inside.

Top designer brands charge you a fortune for things that have been made by slave labour in some shitty sweat shop where they pay $1 a day. Or less than that. Shifting the production to places with cheaper labour but keeping the prices high is another way of price fixing.

Retail trade has become way too cunning in its selling techniques. So the customer has no other choice really but to stay alert. And read the bloody label, at least from time to time.

– End –

6 Comments

1. Ben says:

   August 20, 2012 at 7:46 pm

   Here here! Right on the money there. The little tricks they use are mind boggling at times, conning even the most discerning of us. Never mind the udiot traps (like in tesco not long ago i saw individual muller corner yogurts with a ‘deal’ of 6 for £3, costing 67p each when right underneath that the six packs are on sale for £2). But as for the water, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came out that volvic and evian were doing the same thing (funnily enough, evian is naive bckwards, coincidence? I think not)
2. longbettlisa says:

   August 20, 2012 at 8:39 pm

   Just as long as its cool that should be fine. Great post Chris some people think the water passes through all types of treatment before it hits the bottle. I know good water when I taste it. Londoners should be fine the next phase of the Olympics is soon to begin. I know where I will be going to fill up my bottle, thanks.
3. marvin nubwaxer says:

   September 1, 2012 at 9:17 pm

   people stupid enough to buy bottled water deserve to be duped. and remember, most of the plastic does not get recycled.
4. gmurnane says:

   September 5, 2012 at 9:12 am

   If they were price fixing, the profits of grocery chains would be a lot higher, wouldn’t they? Most make between 1% and 2% of their revenue in profits, which is very, very low if there’s some huge markup involved. Most of the cost increase from wholesale to retail is shipping, refrigeration, staff, wasted produce, etc.

   Open a grocery uninterested in profit, if you happen to want to save people that 1% to 2%, but good luck expending. (Or, more realistically, make a wholesale to retail repackager, where customers order fresh meat/vegetables/fruits ahead of time, which allows them to come much closer to wholesale price by removing overstocking problems. Dried goods last long enough that there isn’t such a problem with them.)

   I agree about the water, though. I paid an entire $5 for a reuseable bottle, that I’m going to use for a couple thousand refills or so.
5. Chris6102 says:

   September 10, 2012 at 6:16 pm

   All bottled water is a rip-off, 2500 percent profit is standard for that industry. Bottled water is taken from groundwater then undergoes some basic treatment and testing. Tapwater on the other hand is taken from groundwater and then undergoes some basic treatment and testing. If you can see the difference then you too should be outraged and have fun continuing to buy bottled water, no matter what brand sticker it has on it.
6. Halfy says:

   September 15, 2012 at 3:14 am

   Both Coke and Pepsi sell bottled water that is just filtered water. Not surprising that grocery stores do it too.
   Typically, tap water is cleaner than natural spring water. The bottled version of the tap water just has a few more filterings added into the process.
   Stil not worth nearly as much as you have to pay for it though.