Posts Tagged ‘supermarket’
Tesco Points Vouchers – How to use them to your best advantage
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Tesco is probably one of the best supermarkets for collecting points from at the moment, offering 1 point for every £1 spent in the store or petrol station as well as in their online stores, and with extra points offered if you shop using their credit card as well. One point is equal to a penny if you spend it on regular food goods so that’s not too bad. However, there are ways that you can make each of those points worth either 2p or 4p depending on how you use them.
First of all there are Tesco deals vouchers. These have been around for a while now and so many people have already come across them. Tesco allow you to exchange each £2.50 worth of Tesco points voucher for £10 of deals voucher, making each point you earned worth 4p. You have to choose which deals voucher you want when you order them, but there’s quite a variety of choice from vouchers for days out at places such as Legoland or the zoo, to vouchers which can be spent at restaurants such as Bella Italia, Café Rouge or Harry Ramsdens. They can also be turned into vouchers for jewellery at Goldsmiths, or Air miles as well as a variety of other places.
Alternatively, the new way of using your points vouchers is to use them in store on specific departments where you can now exchange them for ‘in store deals vouchers’ worth 2x the amount of your original points voucher so £5 becomes £10 and each point is worth 2p. The departments that you can do this for are, Toys, Clothing, Baby & Toddler, Cosmetics & Skincare, Tesco Mobile, and Wines. To do this, all you have to do is to either use the tesco online system to exchange them using the codes on your vouchers which you can do here or you can exchange them by post by printing out this order form and sending it off to them as it tells you to. Done online the vouchers normally arrive in about a week, and done by post a little longer. Then you just use them in store to buy items from the relevant department just as you normally would, and hand over the voucher at the checkout. The only difference being that you get twice as much for your money.
Tags: discounts, loyalty cards, save money, shopping, supermarket, tesco
Posted in Savings | 1 Comment »
Buying Independent V Buying from Big Chains – The Big question
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
I personally find it quite hard to decide whether I should buy from the big supermarket who sells things cheaply because they have huge buying power so can get the best deals, or whether I should pay a penny or two more per item but support my local small sellers who would go under without the support of the local people.
On the one hand I have to think of my own pocket don’t I? I mean, if I can save a few pence here and there buying from the supermarkets, I can afford to treat my family to a few extras along the way, and that’s a good thing for us.
The conflict for me is that if we all think like that, then the little shops go out of business just leaving the big chains who then have a hold over us because there’s no one to challenge them. Add to that, the choice issue – with a small seller, if you want something specific they can often get it for you, but a big chain can’t do so because the people working in the shop have nothing to do with the buying process.
The same problem occurs for me when I think about other products too – buying a TV or a Washing machine for example, do I go to the big chain store where they have loads of tellys on display but that’s all they have. Or do I go visit the independent dealer who can’t afford to have them all there on display because it costs too much and he doesn’t have the space, but he can actually offer you a much wider choice range because he can choose to deal with any manufacturer and can get any of their range of products even if he doesn’t normally carry it.
Personally I generally try to choose the smaller independent dealer for the big items like Stereos, Fridges and computers because I think that I get much closer to what I actually want that way as well as supporting the local economy. When it comes to supermarkets however, I’m afraid I tend to go the other way I go for cheaper and all under one roof – mostly for ease to be honest. It’s much harder to have to go to 20 different small stores than to go to one large one each week. Do you have something different that influences your thoughts? I’d love to hear if you think differently to me!
Tags: independant, shopping, supermarket
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Buying reduced food at the supermarket
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Shopping for food is an expensive task, and a fairly thankless one because you have to do it over again every week. It’s especially tedious when money is tight.
There is however one way you can sometimes cut your costs substantially, but it does mean being prepared to spend some extra time and effort on things.
Every fresh food item in the UK has to have a sell by date on it. This is the date after which the supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell it. (This only applies to fresh foods, items in tins and which have best before dates work rather differently). Every day the supermarkets will have a staff member who will go round and find all the fresh food items which are going to go out of date that day, and reduce the price on them. This is to help stop wastage. If they have to throw the item away they get nothing for it. If they can sell it – even at a reduced price – then they will get something.
You can take advantage of this knowledge by watching in the various supermarkets near you to find out when they make their reductions. Most supermarkets will have two times. The first time is normally when they reduce the items down by a percentage – this varies from place to place, some will be halved, some will only reduce by 10%. This first reduction is normally done fairly early in the day. The second reduction is normally done late in the afternoon or early in the evening, and at this time they will reduce the already reduced items down some more, generally to a really low price, and if you’re around when this happens, you can take advantage and buy a lot of food very cheaply. So take the time to get to know when your local supermarkets make their reductions.
Things like bread, milk, cold meat, and much more can be frozen – if you freeze it on the day of purchase, and it’s use by date is tomorrow, then when you defrost it you will have 24 hours to use it up exactly the same as you would if you just used it when you bought it from the supermarket. The same thing applies to most products that can be frozen, check to see how long they have between the sell by and the use by date… if it’s the same date, then if you freeze it, when you defrost it you will need to eat it the same day. If it’s three days difference then you will have three days when you defrost it and so on.
You do need to be careful when doing this is to make sure you can use the item before it goes out of date, OR that it’s suitable for freezing and you have the space to store it. If you buy ten loaves of bread because they’re 10p each but only have space to freeze four of them, you’ll find yourself wasting the rest.
Tags: discounts, money saving, shelf life, smart shopping, supermarket
Posted in General, Savings | Comments Off
Discount Supermarkets
Monday, April 27th, 2009
When people talk about supermarkets, generally they’re talking about places like Tesco, Asda or Sainsburys (the big three). But there are lots of others, some of which are known as discount supermarkets. These discount supermarkets are stores such as Aldi, Netto and Lidl. The thing is, are they any cheaper, and if they are, does the quality of the products hold up?
It’s a good question really – after all why would they be considered discount if they weren’t cheap? Well in fact the reason that places like this can get away with charging less for some of their products isn’t just to do with the quality of the products. In fact, it’s got a lot to do with the layout and look of the store. Large well known places like Tesco make everything nice and neat and tidy, they take items from the storage rooms and transfer them from crates onto the shelves in nice neat stacks. Discount supermarkets often don’t make things quite so pretty, they take the crate and stack that on the shelf rather than taking the products from the crate first, or even just put a stack of crates in a gap on the floor and don’t even bother with shelves. This helps them to keep some of their overheads down and means that they can then pass the saving on to the customer.
Another factor that can contribute to keeping the prices lower, is that although generally they will always have certain key items, they won’t always have the same brands of everything, opting to buy whichever is cheapest at the time, and meaning you may have to opt for a brand you don’t normally buy if you want that product.
So, in conclusion if you don’t mind the store layout being a little shabbier, and you’re not too picky about brand names, then it’s probably worth giving places like this a try and seeing how you like their products. Many of them are of just as high quality, and the financial saving can make it well worth while. One thing it is worth noting though is that most of these discount supermarkets also make another big saving by charging for their carrier bags, so if you don’t want to waste money having to buy a few bits of plastic to carry everything in, make sure you pop a few of your own bags in the boot of the car to use instead.
One thing worth keeping your eye open for in this sort of store is oddball items that one wouldn’t normally expect to find here – from tents to computers, power tools to pushchairs. If a deal is good, the discount supermarket may buy a one off job lot of a product and once it’s gone, it’s gone, but while it is there, it’s often a lot cheaper than it could be bought elsewhere.
Tags: aldi, asda, BView, discount, lidl, money saving, netto, sainsburys, save, shopping, supermarket, tesco, voucher
Posted in General, Savings | 2 Comments »