Tip for online Supermarket Shopping

EDIT: Just discovered this can be useful for shopping "in person" as well as Internet shopping, see my followup below (http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=221577&postcount=12)

Well if all you lot know this already, and have been keeping it to yourselves, I shall be very annoyed!

I was surfing the net last night and wound up on http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ - which had a bunch of very useful, and informative, stuff.

Amongst which was a link to http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/

I'm blown away by that.

I'm an on-line Tesco's shopper. We live in the countryside, so a fiver to get groceries delivered is no hardship, particularly allowing for the hour, or so, it would take to trog there and back.

Anyway, my first MySupermarket experience went as follows:

Selected Tescos. Was asked to enter my Email address and Tesco's password. A bit nervous, but I doubt Tescos will deliver to any other address - so if someone hacks it the worst I can expect is Tesco's delivering 10,000 bags of sugar, and me politely asking the driver to take them back!

My favourites popped up. But MUCH better laid out than Tescos. Nice big pictures of everything, just like browsing the physical shelves.

Slight downside was that their "departments" are not laid out quite the same as Tescos, so my printed Favourites list, on which we all mark-off what has run out / we want, wasn't in the right order. But I forgave them that for this trip [Note: Need to see if MySupermarket will print a Favourites list in THEIR shopping sequence].

Anyways, I just put a Tick on my printed list next to each item as I processed it.

So ... my order is now entered. Proceeded to "Trolley Checker". This is the good bit:

For any items in my basket, where it can, MySupermarket lists alternatives that were better value. Smaller sizes that were on BogOff (and even bigger sizes that were better value per weight/volume), and other/own brands etc. I made some conservative choices - e.g. the kids aren't going to thank me for swapping Mars Bar Choc Ices for Solero (even though its a 71p saving!!) but Chedar cheese is Chedar cheese, especially as its only used for Welsh Rarebit here.

I then had a look at "Offers for you" which is a pretty intelligent list of things on special offer, based on the products in my Favourites. Bought a few more items that were not marked up on my shopping list as "needed" but which, as they are on special offer, it was worth getting for the store cupboard.

Based on the fact that I do an on-line grocery shop about twice a month, and allowing for the fact that I have bought some items in bulk and won't need to restock for a while, I reckon this exercise could save me £500 - yes FIVE HUNDRED QUID! - a year.

Then I smugly checked what my basket would have cost at Asda, Sainsbury and Waitrose (Occado) and was pleasantly surprised to see that Tesco's was cheapest. Mind you ... I expect if I went through the same "optimisation" process with any other stores I'd probably get similar savings, but at the start of my "optimisation" both Asda and Sainsbury had been cheaper, Yeah!

I tried the exercise with Sainsbury. It said that the total saving on possible offers was 25% - that's very blinking significant!

First up, I had 5 x 1L bottles of Pimms [summer parties coming up] in my basket - because MySupermarket had calculated that the Tesco 1L bottles were more cost effective than their 70cl bottles, and had "swapped" them on my order.

Guess what? Sainsbury's 70cl bottles are cheaper [per litre] than their 1L bottles!!. A £9.82 saving on that item alone. Yikes!

And they have Wall's Magnum Classic on BOGOFF, so by doubling my quantity (from 1 to 2!!) I can save a notional £1.87

I was impressed that in moving my Basket from Tescos to Sainsburys some seemingly very intelligent substitutions had been made ("Tescos own brand Hot & Spicy Pizza" changed to Sainsbury's own brand equivalent)

It was harder to optimise my Sainsbury basket with the "Trolley Checker", because many of the substitutions were just not what-I-wanted, particularly now they were twice-removed-cousins, but none the less making "reasonable" substitutions saved me 40 quid! But this still left Sainsburys 10% more expensive than Tescos.

From that I conclude that just switching your basket from Supermarket-A to Supermarket-B isn't going to net you a saving, you need to more aggressively re-select products etc. But I think if I had optimised my Tesco's basket and Sainsburys was STILL cheaper then I might have had some wiggle room.

(Im sure our grocery bill is well above the national avergage, sorry about that and not meaning to be demeaning, but I still think its a superbly well thought out site, and concept, and hopefully it will save you money too)

Hopefully you will have a similar beneficial experience; either way I'll apprecaite your feedback.

 

Brilliant is'nt it Kris. Ive used it for a while now. We went to Ireland a few weeks ago on 1p flights, which we were tipped off about on this site. 02

 

Hi,

they pulled these now but you could get online money off voucher codes. Found this site when taking the bank on about charges. One of the best-but sometimes the site is so overloaded you tend to have missed a lot of the freebie stuff if you don`t check it daily. The forum atmosphere is very similar to here in that there are as many different kinds of people as there a grains of sand on a beach so you get a fuller balanced picture.

 

I used online shopping twice, once from Sainsbury's and once from Asda. On both occasions the items actually chosen were not what I'd have chosen had I done the shopping myself - bananas were very ripe, for instance, whilst nectarines were hard as a rock.

If I was to do it again, I'd only order things that didn't have a choice, like drinks and canned stuff.

 

I have friends in the village who use these on line supermarkets and they all curse them.

The van drivers hurtle round our village like they are in the Grand Prix so have been reported by the villagers.

A lot of their stuff is so close to the eat by date that it is already going off before they have got round to eating it and quiet often some of the stuff they ordered isn't even in the order so they end up having to go to the local shops to get the items that wern't delivered.:rolleyes:

I was round my friends house the other week when her grocery was delivered and while helping her to pack them away she had a bag of new spuds that she hadn't asked for and to top it all a lot of the spuds were green.:eek: I had to point out to her that if she ate too many of these green spuds she could end up with any upset tummy.:eek:

When we go round our local Supermarket they are now all youngstres pushing round the trolleys so I don't think they are going to be as picky with the items they select as would an older e-shopper:rolleyes:

We do our shopping every two weeks and even that can get to be a pain at times.We have our old Bosh Fridge Freezer in the garage so are ab le to keep a lot of fruit and vegetables that we can't grow ourselves in there

I have heard Martin Lewis on the radio and seen him on the TV and I must say he is very good although he does tend to talk very fast.It is nice that he is the peoples Champion in helping us all fight back against the big people of this country.He is is very good at what he does.:thumb: I used to like watching Alvin Hall?the coloured American guy but don't see him so much on the TV now,though I believe he has a spot on the radio

 

"I'd only order things that didn't have a choice, like drinks and canned stuff."

Indeed. We only get "bottled water and loo rolls" [as my DW puts it!] from on-line supermarket shopping, and use the time that we used to spend one-stop-shopping in the Supermarket to buy quality fresh produce from local butcher and farm shop.

But I would challenge any career-supermarket shopper! to find all the bargains that MySupermarket had done. Now then, I'll just drop them a line about my commission!

(Forgot to mention that I seem to have also received something called iPoints for shopping via M.S. No idea what they are, but "every little helps":D )

 

My tip would be to ring up shortly after a delivery and say that items are damaged when they're not.

Yougarts are a good one as they can also be used to "ruin" other items.

Naughty, I know. :D

Ant.

 

I've just saved that to desktop and will have a good look at it later. Thanks:thumb:

 

I would never trust them to be as picky as I am when it comes to sell by dates and the condition of "fresh" fruit and veg.

[gumpy old f@rt mode]
If you haven't got time to do your own shopping in person then you need to change your priorities and make time.
[/grumpy old f@rt mode]

 

If you buy non-perishable goods it is very worthwhile to do. I have often suspected they use on line shoppers to get rid of stuff near it's sell by date. It is great for heavy, bulky essentials.

 

I will have to have a look at that although tbh I am usually just happy with the e-coupons I find.

For example doing my tesco online last night and I used this code...

£12 off £80 spend -XX-B47M
£13 off £100 spend -XX-CLK6

both were still valid yesterday...and this isn't unique to this months shop.

http://tescovouchercodes.blogspot.com/

If i get stuck I tend to have a look on this page too:thumb:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1015057&page=4

 

Just discovered that http://www.MySupermarket.co.uk/ can be used for NON Internet shopping too.

Choose the items you want, let it help you with choosing money-saving alternatives, and the print out your "shopping list". It will remember the items you buy as "Favourites" so that you can shop more quickly next time. (I would imagine its pretty tedious the first few times finding all the different things you want, but if you are not an online-supermarket-shopper it may well still be worth it.

May also be worthwhile to help work out which supermarket chain will provide the best value for a given shopping-list

 

"I am usually just happy with the e-coupons I find."

Well this will save you money in addition to your coupons (by helping you find special offers that you might not know about, or different sized packs that are more cost effect per weight/column), plus you will also get iPoints (whatever they are!) in addition to Club-points / Nectar etc.

They'll be paying me to shop there soon :p

 

Kirsten, the supermarket site is a very interesting site and I shall use it although I like to go to the shop rather then have them deliver it to me.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

 

http://www.tescopoly.org/

worth looking at in my honest opinion before you give them your money