And people tell me that train fares are complex ...

My total bill for food as Sainsburys on Sunday was £142.17 - down to £140.75 because of 2 short-dated product reductions. Multi-buys and promotions (including nectar) brought that down by £10.64 to £130.11.  A further "gift voucher" redeemimg points from my credit card took a further £75.00 off - I have a lot of points from travel and transport that brought the amount I paid down to £55.11. Buy the's not quite the "net end" of it - I earned 130 nectar points which are worth 65p and I earned 165 reward points on my credit card which is worth another 55p. So that's net spend of £53.91 - oh were it not so complex. I have also come away with two money off vouchers for "next time" - £13.50 for an instore shop by 26th October when I spend a further £100 (which I won't be going by that date) and £18.00 off with my "first online order" if I spend £60 by 9th November. I guess it would be my first as it's Lisa who's place an order once before with Sainsbury's and that resulted in a delivery where I found myself pressured by the delivery bloke to unload from his crates; Iceland and Ocardo work much better for me personally.

At least the tax (VAT) where it applies is added in to the self edge / declared prices; I thing those are the items marked "*" on the printed receipt - £26.25 in total so that's £4.38 in VAT.  Then there was a box of cans of John Smith's - 18 cans of 440ml at 3.4% alcohol - so that 279ml of pure alcohol at £9.61 per litre - which I make a further tax (alcohol duty) of £2.70

Our shopping, by the way, is irregular; done when needed and a lot of the stuff listed here will still be bing consumed quite some time in the future - do not use this to gauge my budget.

 
Yes - they are !  But...........I think train fares have got that way through "old age", "lack of attention" and umpteen abortive attempts to "improve" the railways and their fares  - rather than the mendacity of the rail companies.

My opinion of the supermarkets' pricing system is considerably less generous. One example which I spotted only this morning.......
I was after some Persil Bio washing capsules, the "Trolley" website (recommended) told me that the cheapest High St place was a Waitrose offer at £9 for 48 = 18.75p each. (Amazon is the same price). In another High St supermarket this morning I saw Persil Bio capsules with a banner saying "£4.25 off - was £8". The new price was 25p per capsule - the old "was" price came to an eye watering 53p each - I don't think  even Trainline could match that one !  25p per capsule for smaller pack is actually not too bad a price.............but the "advertising" is "devious".

I think that it is still legal to use such a price "comparison" gimmick if just one store in the chain has displayed the item at that price for a relatively short period of time. I have severe doubts that the £8 price was ever on the shelf in my local store ! So charge that price in the Outer Hebrides branch and fleece the rest of the population with a non-existent "offer" ! 

One has to wonder if the product manufacturers are somehow helping this along.............Persil capsules come in packs of 48/36/26/24 and 15...........don't forget to take your calculator with you !

I am referring solely to the complexity here, not the level of the pricing.

Am I a cynic .................... YES !

PS: I went to Waitrose !

 
The big difference I see is that given the shopping basket and extra input, such as coupons, the supermarket worked out the lowest price to be paid.
The railway would have offered a price for the journey that would not necessarily have been the lowest price,

 
At the "base product" selection level, I noted one product on the bottom shelf at sixteen pence per hundred grams, and a similar product - on the level to catch my eye - at sixty pence per hundred grams.  Differences?  One honey flavoured, and fancily wrapped with a famous brand name on it.  I'll kneel down to the lower shelf, and add a spoonful of honey ... and go for the product that's around a quarter of the cost.     And, yes, the marketing displays seem to have become more dominant and the processed /prepared foods in plentiful supply even as there are bare shelves (as there were on Sunday afternoon) with many of the more basics.



Rail comparisons?   We may disagree as to whether the railways as a public service should have a duty of care to offer you the lowest priced product or product combination that meets your needs, but they don't always do so.   Yesterday - a story in another thread - they had the supermarket equivalent of a bare shelf of the basic product.  Not because they had sold out - but because they had withdrawn the lower cost product after they had advertised it, and people had gone to their shop (station)  to buy it.

 
There are some similarities, but supermarket prices are nowhere near as byzantine as train fares.

It's only relatively recently that supermarkets with loyalty scheme prices lower than the 'real'* price have included the price per unit, be that weight or liquid volume. That makes it easier to compare prices across brands.

*Of course the 'real' price is what the supermarket thinks they can charge for a product. They have no uniform profit margin. And with loyalty prices, bonus points, bogof, general promotions, price matching, reduced to clear... there is never any price stability.

I tend to look at the unit prices to compare brands and/or pack sizes before deciding what to put in the trolley. For example if Coca Cola is on offer I'll buy that. If Pepsi is cheaper per unit that goes in the trolley. If neither is on any sort of promotion, I'll buy Sainsbury's own brand. Sometimes, if there is a premium cola on offer at a price I'll countenance then some of them will go in the trolley and I'll buy a smaller amount of Pepsi/Coke/Sainsbury's. I have zero brand loyalty.