My jelly...
One of my best friends complains the best I have ever know... he got annoyed when his local Sainsbury put up the price of jelly, so he wrote a letter of complaint... he's not a simpleton, he just liked to complain

Subject: Jelly
Comments:

Is someone able to offer an explanation as to why the price of Sainsbury’s Basics Jelly has increased in price by 100%?
Last month I enjoyed a flush of well-timed good fortune, when the cost for a packet of Basics Jelly decreased by £0.01. I mentioned as much in a letter to my mother, saying how it's not all doom and gloom and maybe we can weather the financial storm. I chose not to contact you seeking an explanation as, rather selfishly, this was clearly in my favour and b) the decrease in cost is fairly small. So imagine my incontinent rage on recognising the once £0.07 Sainsbury’s Basics Jelly is now the £0.14 Sainsbury’s Basics Jelly. I could only purchase one packet of Sainsbury’s Basics Jelly. I usually buy three. I haven’t been had jelly for two weeks. When jelly was £0.08 I would purchase three packets a month at a cost of £0.24. The earlier mentioned price decrease provided a financial boon, three packets at a cost of £0.21. Now, even using my original budget of £0.24 (which would once stretch to three packets) will now only buy me one.
If fuel increased in cost by 100% there would be some kind of explanation. So why not with jelly?

I look forward to a swift and accurate response.
Mr Ben

Subject: RE: Our Products - General information

Dear Mr Ben

Thank you for your email. It is important to us that every email we receive is fully investigated before we reply. I hope you will understand and accept my apologies for he time it has taken to respond.

I am sorry you are unhappy with the price of our Basics jelly. I understand how disappointed you must be that the price has risen by 100%.

We know how important it is to offer our customers high quality products at great prices and we work very hard to make sure we achieve this. We continually review our prices and check over 15,000 prices against our competition each week to make certain we are always competitive.

In the current climate, prices are moving up and down quite quickly and many raw material and production costs have also increased. We have held the price of the jelly for a substantial period. While we try to absorb the increases for as long as we can, we have now had to pass some of these costs on to our customers. I am sorry this means you can now buy only one jelly each month.

When raw material costs move down, we change our prices immediately so that customers can enjoy the benefits as quickly as possible. We passed on the VAT reductions early in December for this reason. We are working hard to make sure we always offer a good mix of offers at any time. I hope that you will spot a deal that suits you on your next visit to our store.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. I hope I have been able to explain the reasoning behind our price increase. Further to this, I hope the price of the jelly comes down as the global financial position improves and you are able to enjoy three jellies each month.
Kind regards


Customer Manager
(CornishStanley can't post hyperlinks, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 16:44, 4 replies)

Thanks, that made me smile.
If only people could be so polite a d reasonable about all of life's problems.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 17:43, closed)

In fact there is quite a sneaky reason for their doing what they did
Supermarkets like to show off that they've been lowering prices. Though as you'd expect prices to follow a pattern similar to the consumer price index you'd hazard a guess that this is LIIEEEEES.

So,
Jan 1, packet of Swan Cunts, 0.50
Feb 1, ", 0.49 - 'We've lowered thousands of prices!'
Mar 1, ", 0.48 - 'We've lowered thousands of prices!'
Apr 1, ", 1.50
May 1, ", 1.49 - 'We've lowered thousands of prices!'
etc.
(Frozen_Banana Shaved against the grain; thoroughly unrewarding., Thu 2 Sep 2010, 19:09, closed)

Devious
They also do stuff like randomly trebling the price on a particular item (it's usually some random vegetable) for a day or two. Enough people don't bother checking, and even if a few do it's a very rare person who keeps a detailed mental list of historic price trends on everything they buy.
( Scrumper, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 19:33, closed)

genius
I particularly like their reply I bet it made someone's day replying to that
(mr_spongmonkey, Fri 3 Sep 2010, 12:35, closed)