Aldi is playing whack-a-mole against Tesco’s price matches, undercutting them only to find the supermarket whips the product out of its campaign while adding new ones.
The discounter has been undercutting Tesco as part of a fightback that launched last month with a TV ad mocking the price-matching schemes of each of the traditional big four supermarkets.
In some cases, it is rendering Tesco’s claimed ‘price match’ out of date and incorrect, since Aldi’s equivalent has been reduced.
Aldi’s Bon Appetit Pains Au Chocolat eight-pack was price matched by Tesco at £1.35 on 6 June. The item was cut by Aldi to £1.29 and had disappeared from Tesco’s campaign by 13 June.
Similarly, two flavours of Aldi’s Bramwells Snack noodles – chicken & Mushroom and Spicy Curry – disappeared from Tesco’s campaign between 6 June and 13 June, while Aldi dropped the price from 75p to 69p.
Two variants of Aldi’s Lunex Ultra sanitary towels – Night and Long – were ‘price matched’ at 45p by Tesco this week, while Aldi had reduced them to 42p.
In the case of a four-pack of 440ml Guinness Draught cans, the price dropped from £4.99 to £4.89 at Aldi, and the same thing happened in Tesco’s price match campaign between 6 June and 13 June.
Read more: Aldi denies loyalty app plans after scanners spotted
Aldi has been highlighting dozens of permanent price cuts weekly on its website as part of its ‘Prices Hammered’ campaign. It has pledged to invest more than £380m in price cuts this year.
Tesco said the products included in its campaign may vary week to week, with some removed and others added. It said prices were checked twice-weekly and the most recent check on the Lunex sanitary towels found them to be 45p in more than half of Aldi stores surveyed.
It also said that, because Aldi presented long-term price cuts by showing the old and new price, both online and at shelf-edge, it would treat them as promotions, which don’t count under the terms and conditions of its campaign.
An Aldi spokesman said: “Our customers know that only one supermarket offers Aldi prices on every product and that’s Aldi. Other supermarkets just can’t match us on that.”
The Grocer recently revealed how Tesco had quietly increased its Aldi price match lines from about 600 to about 750 since the start of the year, while Sainsbury’s had grown the number in its campaign by over 100 lines to about 680.
1 Readers' comment