A number of leading retailers including Boots, Superdrug and big supermarket chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been accused of offering unfair and misleading loyalty pricing for members.
Consumer watchdog Which? investigated the prices of almost 12,000 products on a single day, looking at how each product had been priced previously, to work out the ‘typical’ non-member selling price.
It uncovered “questionable” pricing strategies, including some examples where the non-member price was raised shortly before a loyalty offer was put in place.
In one jaw-dropping example, Boots put an Oral B iO7 electric toothbrush on sale with the offer ‘non-members £400, members £150”. Which? found that it had only been £400 for 13 days – before that, it had been priced at £150 for all shoppers.
It was a similar story at the big supermarkets, where Which? found both Tesco and Sainsbury’s were advertising loyalty prices alongside ‘non-member prices’ which were significantly higher than the standard prices elsewhere.
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Which? also found that some products are left continuously on loyalty promotion, while others never return to their original non-member price when the promotion ends. At Boots, a massive 89% of the 1,755 products checked were on promotion for more than half of the six previous months.
Another example was a Tesco promotion for Stella Artois beer, which had a non-member price of £16.99 and a member price of £13. However, the £16.99 price only came into play for seven days before the loyalty promotion started – prior to that the price had been £15.99 for the previous six months.
Responding to Which?, Boots said all its promotions, including Price Advantage, were assessed against applicable laws and guidelines set out by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute.
Tesco said its Clubcard promotions “follow strict rules which include considering how they compare against prices in the market”.
Which? retail editor Ed Clark said the UK’s consumer watchdog should clarify rules on pricing and loyalty schemes and that it should be “ready to use its new powers” to take action against non-compliant retailers
Despite the concerning findings, Which? found that on average membership schemes did help garner savings – Superdrug (33%), Boots (10%), Morrisons (25%), Sainsbury’s (24%) and Tesco (23%).
