Hyperrrrrrrr market

Hypermarket!!! Good at hiking up the price while deceiving us with "everyday low price"or whatever tagline that they can think of.

Just a few days ago, someone wrote a full page, or was it two full page about hypermarkets - on how the express lane can become a depressing lane because consumers do not care if they have items less than 10 or more, on how trolleys get hijacked especially those time when we all needed to insert a RM1 coin to utilise the trolleys and so on. And not to forget the pricing which may not seemed as competitive as how they term it and also the billing which doesn't seemed to tally.

Well, I had one good experience last night. I went to Tesco. Edrik wanted to treat us ice-creams and he told us his budget is RM6. So we needed to chose ice-creams within that budget. Fine, that is understandable.

3 of us were at the freezer looking into the ice-creams and checking on the prices making sure we do not choose something which is too expensive. In the end, we pick these 3:

Kit Kat Drumstick - RM2.16
Smarties Cup - RM0.96
Apple Sour - RM0.96

So total = RM4.08.

When we were paying the bill, the cashier said total RM5.10. I asked her how she derive with that amount. She showed me the small monitor in front of her.

Kit Kat Drumstick - RM2.70
Smarties Cup - RM1.20
Apple Sour - RM1.20

So I explained that wasn't the price displayed outside the freezer. Instead of being apologetic, she asked me if I am sure??!! She even insist that her prices are correct because that was what appeared on her screen. Well....I can't be that blind, can I? Maybe I made a mistake on 1 of the ice-creams but for all 3?? Her prices maybe correct because all she had to do was scan the barcode and tadaa...the price appeared. But someone has to key in the barcode and the prices first in order to get that to happen, isn't it. Someone needs to do the data entry.

Anyway, when she insisted in that manner, I wasn't happy anymore. I was giving her a very angry look already. I insisted that she checked the prices. So her supervisor came and I followed her to the freezer, identified my selected ice-creams and showed her the price labels. Grrrrr....

Finally, the supervisor revised the prices for me. Had I not complained, poor Edrik would be blindly paying an additional RM1 (there goes his pocket money for 1 day).

Now.....how many people actually check the receipts after paying? Last night, I bought 3 ice-creams. So it was easy for me to monitor. On top of that, we had to work within a RM6 budget, so whatever discrepancy there is, it is easily identified.

I'm sure some of us do our monthly groceries with heaps of items filled in the trolley. Total bill amount is probably over a hundred ringgit. Do we all check the receipts which entail endless list of items? Can we all remember the prices displayed on the racks? I doubt so.

I think we are all too taken in by some really good offers that these hypermarkets are promoting, thus we overlook on the rest of the items. There may be 1 or 2 really good buy, but it doesn't mean all the items sold by the hypermarket is particularly cheap. They lose some from here and make a lot from there.

In fact I found out some mini markets even offer better prices than these big players. It's about time we shop wisely. Do some comparisons. Be shopping smart!