Wonder if the management of the “local” Little Waitrose stores, part of John Lewis, would ever guarantee to price match against their own big brother Waitrose main stores?

We ask this noting that some prices charged in Little Waitrose outlets are far higher for the same item than those charged by a large Waitrose. As an example one favourite product of ours is the 150 gramme jar of Waitrose own brand crisp and sweet cocktail gherkins, sold at the Waitrose in Swaffham, Norfolk for £1.19. The same item is on sale at Little Waitrose in Tottenham Court Road for £2.09, or more than 80% more. Continue reading →

Texas-based grocery store chain Whole Foods Market Inc., which has 413 stores in North America and nine in the UK has admitted overcharging its customers, again.

Last year Whole Foods agreed to pay $800,000 (£515,500) in penalties after overcharging in California stores. This year the problem was detected in its New York stores, where an investigation by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs found mislabelled weights on packages of all 80 of the products they checked. Continue reading →

Those wanting to help airports make even more money out of them can opt to buy their currency at airport kiosks just before they fly, rather than shopping around for it in the days before they go.

A recent article in The Daily Telegraph showed that those using airport kiosks could get around £9 worth of euros or dollars more on every £100 exchanged if they instead used specialist outlets or online traders, or £90 on £1000. Almost as good were retailers like Marks and Spencer, and even some banks. Continue reading →

The three most popular British meals in Britain are, in descending order, fish and chips, a roast dinner with Yorkshire pudding and a fry-up breakfast.

This is the result of a survey commissioned for the Discover Cornwall food and drink guide, which placed at positions four to ten bacon butties, apple crumble, strawberries and cream, bangers and mash, cream tea, shepherds pie and crumpets. Most popular pub grub, after bangers and mash was ham, egg and chips (11), toad in the hole (16), Cornish pasty (18), steak and kidney pie (19), pork pie (20), ploughmans lunch (22) and scotch eggs (30) Other popular sweet items were ice cream (13), sticky toffee pudding and custard (17), bakewell tart (21) and rhubarb and custard (24). Continue reading →

Edifying to read that Sir Martin Sorrell of advertising firm WPP is trousering a pay package of £43 million, with the support of 80% of WPP shareholders.

Apparently only 20% refused to back the nice little earner for 2014 at the firm’ general meeting last month, after shareholder advisory consultancy Pirc pointed out that the “excessive” package was 37 times Sir Martin’s base salary.

Sadly most of the shareholders don’t seem to have considered the simple mathematics that for that price they could get 43 top advertising people delighted to earn £1 million a year, any one of which could possibly do as much, or more for the firm than the overpaid Sir Martin. Or how about giving 86 top people £500,000 each?

Over the last few years we’ve added to our collection of DVD’s from trips to the entertainment exchange shops of CEX, and we’ve always been happy with our second-hand purchases.

Earlier this year however we decided to try out their postal service, whereby you order online and pay for the items ordered, plus a one-off delivery charge of £2.50 for the order, which CEX then arrange to have sent from the stores with the items in stock. Accordingly we were happy to order and pay for three items costing 50 pence, £4 and £8 and a box set costing £10, a total of £22.50 plus the £2.50 delivery charge, making £25. Continue reading →