Wouldn’t it be great if you could rely on special offers to be just that? Our research has shown that people are worried about food prices, shopping around for a bargain and relying more on special offers. People should be able to expect that products ‘on promotion’ really are. But this is not always the case and we believe some offers may be misleading.

We trawled through more than 700,000 prices for products on discount or part of multibuys across more than 300 products to establish whether or not special offers were really all that special. Based on mysupermarket.co.uk data, we found several problems.

In some cases, the price was increased for a few days before being “discounted” for several weeks. We also found products that hadn’t been sold at the higher “was” price immediately before going on offer and several examples of products on special offer much longer than they were at the higher price during our tracking. So, arguably the ‘special’ price is in fact the standard one. Perhaps most incredibly, we found products that became more expensive when sold as part of a multibuy rather than when sold individually before the promotion started.

Unit pricing isn’t always provided properly either. It should be a brilliant tool to help people see which products are best value for money, but often it’s not helping. A Which? survey in November found that eight in 10 people are aware of unit prices and more than half use them. For those not using them, the main reason was that it was too time-consuming and difficult to compare when measurements aren’t consistent.

It’s particularly frustrating that the unit price doesn’t have to be given for special offers. So even if you are sceptical about a promotion, it’s hard to compare it with standard prices on similar products. Our research has also found problems with the prominence and legibility of unit prices, inconsistent use of units for similar products and instances where it just isn’t given.

The supermarkets have told us that the special offer problems we found were just mistakes. But we think it shows that the current Pricing Practices Guide isn’t working. It leaves too much open to interpretation and too many exemptions. Similarly, the guidance to the Price Marking Order (as well as the enormously complex Order and its related legislation) means unit pricing isn’t helping people in the way it was intended.

It shouldn’t have to be such a challenge to work out what really is best value in the supermarket. Our research shows it’s time for the supermarkets and the government to take a fresh look at pricing to ensure it is simple, straightforward and doesn’t mislead.

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