The Great Hidden Supermarket Scam And Common Sense

 

In Britain, our villages and towns used to have High Streets with butcher’s shops, grocers, greengrocers, bakers, florists, chemists, newsagents etc etc. The High Street was the hub of the community, a place for people to meet and chat and gossip while they shopped. Now, many of our High Streets are either full of empty shops or full of takeaways and charity shops – because the businesses that once made them thrive have been destroyed by the presence of the big supermarkets that lured us away from the High Street with their convenience (EVERYTHING UNDER ONE ROOF!) and their lower prices (HA!) and now we have no option but to shop in the big supermarkets because the little shops have all but disappeared.

The big supermarkets are taking over our lives. They know too much about us. They know what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, what medicines we take, the household goods we buy, what we read and watch and listen to. And that’s not all. Off the top of my head, they do insurance, banking, even funerals and probably many other things that I’m not aware of and can’t be bothered researching. They receive a great portion of our money. Most people do their weekly/fortnightly shop in one of the big supermarkets, spending all of their allocated shopping budget there.

But that isn’t enough for the supermarkets. They have a way of extracting even more money from us, of ROBBING US BLIND, but no one has picked up on it yet because every time the supermarkets are pulled up about it it’s passed off as a ‘mistake’. But it’s happened to me too often (every single week) and in too many supermarkets (every single one of them) for it not to be a carefully executed SCAM. And by ‘scam’ I don’t mean the type of selling techniques some people call scams, such as ‘Product Placement’ or the wafting of enticing smells around the store, or the piping out of soporific music to lull us into buying stuff we don’t need. I mean a proper scam being carried out on a massive scale and raking in an immense side-profit for the supermarkets.

If you’re anything like me (poor!) you’ll be used to shopping cannily and mindfully, aware of the price of everything you put into your trolley, living on bargains, deals and Buy One Get One Frees. Some people shop differently, they can afford to buy what they want to buy without thinking too much about the cost. Some people do both, they buy more or less what they want while keeping one eye on the bargains. Whichever way you shop, however much or however little you have to spend, the supermarkets are taking more from you than you think.

This is how the supermarkets rob us —

Buy One Get One Frees that don’t deduct the price of the free item. A regular occurrence – when you complain they say it was a mistake, the offer hasn’t been added to the ‘system’ yet.

Buy One Get One Frees that aren’t actually included in the offer even though they’re displayed in a way that makes you think they are – placed directly above the offer label – but the exceedingly tiny small print on the BIG offer label doesn’t list that particular variety or flavour, for example Dolmio Pasta Sauces, Buy One Get One Free, includes (and this is the tiny print) Garlic & Mushroom, Tomato & Herby Stuff, Mediterranean Veggie Stuff – but NOT the popular Low Fat Dolmio Sauce that’s prominently displayed above the label. When challenged about it the staff say ‘ You’ve made a mistake, the offer doesn’t include that variety on the label,’ but they know full well most people presume the supermarkets have at least a modicum of honesty and wouldn’t stoop so low as to display an offer label beneath an item that isn’t on offer. WRONG.

Special Offers or Rollback items charged at full price, for instance this week I was robbed of £1.95 when two bags of apples that had been “rolled back” to £1.00 were charged at £1.35 each, and a Tikka Masala ready meal, on offer at £1.00, was charged at its full price of £2.25. That’s £1.95 extra added to the small amount of money I have to spend on shopping. By what amount is someone doing a big family shop conned out of? Again, the staff say, mistake, mistake, the ‘system’ is to blame.

Meal Deals – starter, main, dessert for £5.00 or £10.00. Not deducted, each item charged at full price. I’ve had this happen in Tesco, where, luckily for me, they give you all your money back AND the item – but how many people did they con before and after me? Enough to make the cost of my free meal more than worth it, I bet.

Reduced Items – Most supermarkets have Reduced sections for items almost past their sell-by dates. Don’t grimace, they’re not POISONED –  here’s a common sense tip – buy fresh meat, chicken, mince etc (if it’s still within date and it looks perfectly okay – use your COMMON SENSE), freeze it as soon as you get home and you’ll save a bomb. But be aware that if the reduced sticker hasn’t been put on top of the barcode the items are charged at full price.

How many of you throw away your till receipts without even a glance? How many of you wait until you get home, put all your shopping away, make a cuppa to have with your iced bun, before sitting down to have a cursory look? How many of you check your till receipts BEFORE you leave the supermarket?

The supermarkets are fully aware most people don’t check their receipts before they leave the store. That’s how they get away with this scam – they rely on the fact that people don’t check, and if they do check it’s when they’re at home, where, when they notice a discrepancy on the receipt, they think, “Oh, I can’t be bothered going all the way back just for a pound, it’d cost me more in petrol,” and they throw the receipt away and forget all about it.

And if you do check before you leave the store and find you’ve been overcharged, what happens? You go back to the till to tell the cashier but odds are they’ll be in the process of serving (robbing) another customer so you’ll have to wait for them to finish. When they do finish, you explain what’s happened but the cashier can’t rectify it, s/he has to ring for a supervisor who is SOMEWHERE in the store. Five minutes later the supervisor arrives. The cashier explains, wrongly, what your quibble is. You explain. The supervisor asks for the item, you dig through your shopping bags to find it, then the supervisor goes off for a little trek round the store to find the item and prove you’re a liar. While s/he’s gone, the cashier starts to serve the next customer who has enough food in their trolley to feed the five thousand. Five minutes later the supervisor comes back and waits for the cashier to finish cashiering the big trolleyful of food before s/he tells the cashier to do a ‘return’. The cashier doesn’t know how to do a return so the supervisor decides it’s a good time to teach him/her. S/he gets it wrong. They start again. You wonder how long you’d have to serve in prison for assault and battery with a cucumber. Finally, the cashier hands you YOUR pound coin, the pound coin they tried to steal from you, with no apology, just a mumbled ‘It must have been an oversight, a mistake,’ and a look that’s probably defrosted your frozen chips.

All designed to put you off asking for your money back next time it happens.

But was your pound coin worth all the time you had to wait? Was it worth the huffing and puffing and the dirty looks you received from the staff and the customers waiting to be served? Too right it was worth it because apart from the fact that the money was yours, if you add together all the pound coins and fifty pences and twenty pences they’re stealing every single hour of every single day from every single customer that passes through EVERY SINGLE STORE IN BRITAIN, (and abroad), it tots up to a great deal of loot, a huge pot of stolen money that ends up in the pockets of thieving fat-cat supermarket bosses. Your money in their pockets.  

 

 

COMMON SENSE says check your receipt before you leave the store and when you find you’ve been overcharged make them give you your money back, even if it’s only ten pence. And if you think I’m over-reacting, humour me and keep checking the receipts, week after week, and you’ll soon see how much you’re being conned out of – multiply that by almost everyone in the country and it’ll give you an idea of how much extra they’re dishonestly raking in.

And remember, IT’S NOT A MISTAKE, IT’S A SCAM.

Same Sex Marriage And Common Sense

 

I’ll begin this first attempt at a common sense post by saying I don’t know much about politics but what I do know, and the events of the last few years, have led me to declare that I’m not a mealymouthed Liberal, or a Nazi Tory, or Labour (ha! the Oxymoronic party) – I don’t support any of the big parties. Why? Because all politicians are cut from the same cloth nowadays, public schoolboys harking back to the playground, all good chums who believe in one thing and one thing only – themselves. I’ve stated in my other blog (and it’s true) that I once voted for Colin Firth’s chest, and I’ll do so again at the next election except I might switch to Ian Somerhalder’s chest, it’s buff and he’s younger than Colin. 

So, with no loyalties or allegiances to hinder me, this morning I started reading various online news articles in the search for a little common sense in Britain. I didn’t find any. I began the search with Nick Clegg, (because the thought of David Cameron’s face made me feel sick), and I discovered Nicky-boy is in trouble for ALMOST calling opponents of gay marriage exactly what they are – bigots.

Read this article for the full story — BIGOTY NICK

Now I don’t give two hoots that these people are offended by almost being called bigots, (for whatever reasons they feel offended – being called out on their religious bigotry or their personal bigotry, it’s the same thing either way), and I don’t give two hoots that Nick Clegg MIGHT have spoken the word if it had been down there on the sheet of paper. No, what I do care about is the intolerance we show to each other in this so-called civilised society.

If people have a problem with other people marrying the person they love, why won’t they just ignore it and concentrate on their own lives instead of poking their noses into what shouldn’t concern them in the first place and then squawking their heads off about it to all who’ll listen with the sole intention of stirring up bad feelings? It’s no one else’s business who marries whom. I married a stamp-collecting clean-freak. Does that make me unnatural and evil? Or him? (Actually, don’t answer that, he’s not a good example).

Human beings are human beings. It shouldn’t matter if someone is straight, gay, bi, or celibate, black, white, brown, or green with blue spots. What should matter is that when two people love each other enough to want to marry they can do so without the petty mentalities of others trying to spoil it.

Common sense dictates that when love is in the air only the stupid and the ignorant want to replace it with hatred. 

 

If you think my view is a simplistic one, you’re correct, it is. And why shouldn’t it be? Why complicate it with argument after argument when the only important thing about the whole subject is LOVE.

Love thy neighbour?

 

P.S.  If people don’t like being labelled as bigots maybe they should have a good, long think about why they’re being perceived as bigots in the first place. A bigot, as defined by my little free desktop dictionary, WordWeb, is “A prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own” — which, in my opinion, makes EVERYONE a bigot at some level, myself included (I’m always right).

Any thoughts, anyone?

 

A Shiny New Blog About Common Sense

 

What is common sense?

 

The online COLLINS DICTIONARY defines it as

“plain ordinary good judgment; sound practical sense”

 

 

The online MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY defines it as

“sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”

 

 

DOTTY HEADBANGER defines it as

“a vital missing ingredient of society today. We all know what common sense is. We all recognise it when it’s put into practice and we all recognise its absence not only in our dealings with red tape and petty bureaucracies but in situations that previously upheld the laws of common sense but have now been corrupted with rules and regulations and procedures that turn logical, simple situations into nonsensical nightmares”

 

 

I like common sense. It’s kept the human race alive and at the top of the food chain for thousands of years in a world full of big, fast, snarly beasts with sharp claws and pointy teeth. Here’s an example –

A man and a deer are being chased by a wolf. The man and the deer are running side by side (yes, I know the deer is faster, give me a bit of slack here). They’re both knackered, they’ve been running for ages. They both have the survival instinct – neither wants to be eaten. Up ahead is a bush. The man thinks, ‘There’s a bush. I’ll hide behind it.’ The deer thinks… actually, we don’t know what he thinks but we do know that as the man dodges behind the bush to hide, the deer keeps on running, driven on by his base survival instinct which doesn’t contain one jot of common sense. The wolf follows, catches and eats him.

survival instinct + common sense = survival.

Moral of the story — if we don’t bring back common sense we’ll all be eaten by wolves.

 

*******

 

I’m no good at writing articles, they usually come out as big, unstructured rants with few details to support what I’m trying to say, (such as links, quotes or statistics). But I don’t care, I’m going to have a bash at it on this blog. If I don’t provide statistics and if my arguments aren’t as carefully considered as they should be – well, so what – common sense will let you know if what I’m saying is right or wrong.

But if, after I’ve given it a couple of tries, I can’t formulate my thoughts and feelings in a way that makes sense to anyone but me I’ll leave the articles to the guest bloggers I hope will materialise soon and I’ll chip in on the comments. Common sense tells me that’s the right thing to do.

So welcome to Common Sense Is Dead. Let’s see if we can resurrect it.