Branded Food Rip Offs!

JLouM crisp and dry cooking oil £6 , it use to be £2.50 18 months ago

martinlufc5637 wow

MelissaLee1 we use Aldi beans now, there not that great, but kids like them so we will stick with those

martinlufc5637 I always would get Branson beans still love them but won't pay the price for them now we get Aldi ones but not the cheapest one

Jerseydrew Are you in Jersey? Guessing by the name. They have different expenses don’t they? I have Co-op membership and there are some good offers every week. Most of the time we shop at Sainsburys (nectar), Tesco and Asda. We are doing Aldi this week but it’s more awkward to get to.

eyeballkerry I tried their premium crisps and they were garbage almost no flavour at all and a little soft however there are lots of great items at Lidl and lots of awful items its just learning what you like. Also there are some items which I think are utter garbage and below the quality I will accept that on this forum some people seem quite happy with so it may not be poor quality just not to some people's tastes. One thing I hate in Lidl's is their watery ice cream which has a very bland flavour that means its not really a treat at all. Their cheap tinned tuna is terrible its like mush and I've had their tinned sardines which were really messy an unappealing inside, other times they have been good. I went into Lidl's yesterday as I had a £2 off £20 on my lidl plus app and was surprised how expensive some items were especially fruit and veg and also there were a few misprices which annoy me.

Cider vinegar was priced at 99p on the shelf for 350ml but the only cider vinegar there were 500ml bottles so I picked up two thinking they would be 99p as it was the only price shown but at the till they were £1.39 so just got one. If I hadn't have asked for a price check I would have been ripped off. Things like that really annoy me and are dishonest.

A lot of stuff now is actually more expensive in Lidl, maybe because they import so much of their stuff and its now less competitive to buy from European suppliers but what is annoying is they seem to be putting the prices up on British sourced goods which are actually cheaper in other supermarkets like Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys. It's like UK goods are subsidising imports. I couldn't buy goods like tomatoes, cucumber and a few other items in Lidl as too expensive. The cucumbers weren't a terrible price but they were just so small as was the iceberg lettuce which I did buy even though I resented their tiny size. Overall a good shop thanks to the £2 off and I only spent £20.63 minus the £2 to maximise the value of the voucher. Also there was meant to be a discount on the deluxe coffee using the lidl plus app but it didn't work I noticed later. I tried the indonesian blend instant coffee and its not great to be honest, I won't be buying it again. Its not as nice as the standard freeze dried coffee you pretty much get everywhere and is half the price by weight.

BonzoBanana We need to start a different chat where people can be honest and rate the products they have purchased. I have still got to try the mango chutney, fajita dry mix and walnuts. There is no reason the walnuts should taste any difference, but watch this space.

Mango4 More and more people out of necessity are buying shop brands and this has meant the volume sold of the big brands is less which adds to their costs so they are under pressure to increase prices due to lower volumes so they end up being even less competitive. I don't buy much in the way of big brands at all. It's not a lie to say I could spend £60 on a shop and not have a single big brand item in that shop. My trolley is mainly normal level shop brands and value shop brands plus unbranded items like fruit and veg. Of course many shop brands now are fake brands that don't directly identify with the shop on first look. Most of the big supermarkets now are copying Lidl and Aldi making up fake brands which people seem to perceive better. However its only really Aldi and Lidl that do fake brands that cosmetically match the big brands.

BonzoBanana So surely it would make sense for the Big Brands to lower prices to up their sales not , price themselves out of the market entirely . Thou I know many of the big brands also make the supermarket own brands also, so i guess they are still getting sales that way.

JLouM I love HP brown sauce, I had it on everything, now having to do without it, it's gone to £4.30, was £1.98, it's not that I can't afford, it's principal, I cannot justify that cost, still looking for decent replacement

martinlufc5637 I don’t eat brown sauce just bbq. But Aldi might do one of those too. Try it if you have one near you, it’s so much cheaper and quality is still good.

JLouM I've tried aldi's, I didn't like it, I've tried quite a few different ones, I wasn't keen on any of them

martinlufc5637 Ah that’s a shame.