BULKY BARGAINS?

When is a special not a special? The practice of supermarkets offering specials on selected grocery items if they are purchased other than as single items is nothing new, but the more recent trend of only offering the special price if purchased in ever increasing numbers has been aggravating me for quite some time.

Having to purchase two loaves of bread to get the special is one thing, but when it starts to stretch to four or five items to get the special price it’s beginning to become a bit of a joke. Perusing the specials for this week, I find Woolies have gone a bit over the top. I always have a supply of the small tins of flavoured tuna in the cupboard, but to get the special price this week I have to buy ten. Now come on Woolies, if you can afford to sell them off at 10 for $10, then you can afford to sell them for $1 each, which would probably net you more income anyway because more people would buy them.

Then there’s 2 blocks of chocolate (do we really need 2), 4 bottles of soft drink (way more sugar than we need), 3 packets of pasta & sauce, 5 tins of baked beans (Blazing Saddles flashback), 2 packets of Tim Tams (even more sugar), 2 packets of disposable nappies, 4 tins of cat food, 2 packets of potato chips, 5 Lean Cuisine meals and the list goes on. Now, it’s obvious none of these things are going to be wasted, but I often wonder at the reasoning of the supermarket chains on this insistence to buy in bulk. No supermarket is going to intentionally lose money, so you can bet your boots they’ll make a profit even if an item is reduced, and whether you buy one or more.

For those trying to balance the weekly grocery budget, especially those on low incomes, Centrelink benefits or pensions who need to take advantage of specials just to get through the week, purchasing those items is not always an option. Buying multiples of one thing means you have to leave other things behind, and for those who don’t need ten tins of tuna in one hit but would rather buy one so they can spend their grocery budget wisely, the choice simply is not there. I know I feel robbed if I buy only 1 item of a bulk special, and feel somewhat discriminated against simply because I don’t have sufficient funds to buy more.

A bargain is a bargain, and Woolies certainly have some good ones this week, but items are either on special or they’re not, so if they are, how about a return to giving customers the choice to purchase according to their own need.