Monday, July 01, 2013

Tesco Oakham Rips of Rutland Residents.

Tesco Rip of Rutland Residents.



I along with others have noticed how Tesco Oakham has reduced it product range.

This is seriously effecting customers on low incomes and general customer choice.

Where until recently the customer had a choice,  Tesco is now offering in some cases one expensive product for its customer to take or leave.

We have very little choice in Rutland, there is  Co-op supermarket the prices are often much higher
than Tesco, Uppingham residents enjoy a Co-op from another Co-operative not East Midlands and their prices are even higher.

I personally hope the Co-op closes and sells to Lidl. Unlike the Tory Leader of Rutland County Council
Roger Begy many don't own a Jag or have the funds to drive to Lidl Stamford just like he say he does.

Tesco should bring back the Every Day Value Range to Oakham, ASAP  "every little helps"

Tesco Oakham has a very poor stock control system food waste is huge and often they also run out of essentials, possibly they think only stocking highly priced brand is the way to cover those losses?

I also thought own brands were meant to be most profitable for supermarkets?






http://roys-blog-moments-in-time.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/oakhams-rip-off-tesco-supermarket.html

SUNDAY, 30 JUNE 2013

Oakham's "Rip Off" Tesco Supermarket

This weekend I was in the local Tesco supermarket in Oakham and I found an old lady standing round the fresh eggs looking rather bemused and lost. Then I realised why for the eggs she was looking for, as was I, were missing from the shelf and not even a sold out sticker to be found. I talked to her and she said that they had be discontinued in our local store as had many products in the same everyday value range.


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Living on a low budget the old lady was saying how a lot of the range had disappeared from the store in the last few weeks. She was deciding what eggs she could afford and working out what she food wouldn't be able to buy because of the price of the eggs which she relied on as a food item. With 15 eggs in the everyday value range costing £1.34 the nearest she could get value wise would have been £3.00 for the same number of eggs, and then she would have to buy 20 at a cost of £4.00 because they came in boxes of 10.  That is well over a 100% increase in price!
 
Then I started on a mission to find out if the old lady was right while I did the shopping, and it came as a surprise she was right. Gone had all but one of the value breakfast cereals, not a sign of the value Chocolate Mousses, or the Garlic Baguettes, then there are some of the value Biscuit range missing, in fact a lot of the products in the Everyday Value range on the companies website are absent from the Oakham store, making it more expensive for those on a tight budget to shop, and this table gives you an idea of how much by:
 
ItemValueStandardExpense
Chocolate Mousse4.5p each15p each233% more
Eggs8.9p each16.6p each86% more
Single Garlic Baguette32p85p165% more
Rice Snaps18p per 100g33p per 100g83% more
Digestive Biscuits30p59p96% more
 
While I was in the store I managed to ask  one of the staff what had happened to the Everyday value range and I was given an answer I didn't expect from a supermarket whose advertising is "Every Little Helps". Clearly in this case it means every little bit of profit they can squeeze out of the customer by not stocking the value range is more than welcome in the company coffers, even if it means people like that little old lady have to miss a meal or two. The reason I was given was that Okaham is an affluent area and it is the managements view that stocking the value range stops customers coming into the store and by removing it from the shelves and concentrating on the own brand premium products they will attract more customers.  
 
The reality is the poor people in Oakham who have no choice but to shop in the Tesco supermarket are being ripped off by the company. They are being denied food because they can't afford it. Due to the decision to remove value items the poorer people in the area will be eating less this summer. I really hope that the fat bellies that run the company and get massive bonuses are happy to know they are helping to starve the poor of Oakham while they sit and gloat on their profits.
 
Maybe a new slogan for the company is required, along the lines of "Starve the Poor, we feed the Rich". It looks like it is going to be hungry summer of the old and the poor in Oakham this year.