So Tesco have been fined £300,000 after a bogus half-price offer on strawberries. The punnets were originally £3.99 but only for a short period, whereas the ‘half-price’ offer of £1.99 ran for 14 weeks and netted Tesco a profit of £2.3million. This was found in court to be incompliant with Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act 2008.
Do you think Tesco (or any other giant) will learn from this misadventure when despite being fined, it still made a cool £2m profit?! Doubtful!
At thebestof Wrexham we champion Buy Local for these very reasons! Supermarkets have undercut and mislead consumers for years – remember the price fix over bread a few years ago – and they haven’t learned.
I really feel it’s our duty as consumers to support our local independent shops. Perhaps they may be a bit dearer than the supermarkets at times, but isn’t that worth it for:
In fact many butchers in Wrexham price match on Tesco and other supermarkets, so there’s really no excuse not to go there to buy better quality, traceable, local meat!
According to the Daily Mail, the ‘fresh’ food we buy at supermarkets can be anything but, having been treated with heat, by freezing or chemically altered to reach its destination.
Apples can be shipped from all over the world in refrigerated containers, taking as much as 6 months to reach our shelves, with special gases used to delay overâripening. And bananas take at least 11 days from Central America to reach Britain by ship, so on arrival they are treated with a plant hormone called ethylene gas to ripen them.
Apparently, supermarket chicken is four or five days old by the time it reaches the shelves. The same article states that in 2011, Tesco was reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming that its shops sold ‘fresh bread, baked from scratch’. It appeared that instead it often shipped in ready-made or part-baked loaves and just gave them a turn in the oven.
Supermarkets will unfortunately, always have a place, as in our busy lives, their opening times and all-in-one-place convenience will always have people through the door.
As a busy mum however, I’ve reached a compromise of ordering online from my local supermarket for the general household stuff - but I get my meat at the butchers and my fruit and veg from a market stall.
Not only am I doing my little bit for Wrexham’s independent retailers and avoiding any potential chemicals – but it’s much tastier too!
> Pledge your support to Buy Local now!
Sources: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2397291/Tesco-fined-300-000-misleading-customers-half-price-strawberries-offer.html and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370130/Just-fresh-fresh-food-supermarket.html
