Consumer group Which? said it has found “concerning” loyalty scheme pricing practices at a number of high street chains and supermarkets. This includes a number of products being listed at member-only promotional prices for more than half of the year, according to the group’s investigation. It comes as the UK competition watchdog is currently analysing whether displayed savings are genuine.
Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was looking into whether non-member, or regular, prices may have been artificially inflated by supermarkets to make their loyalty prices appear more attractive, but its initial findings indicated retailers are unlikely to be misleading shoppers. On Thursday, Which? said it had analysed the pricing history of almost 12,000 products at health and beauty retailers and supermarkets over the past year to uncover how genuine the loyalty savings were. As part of this, it found that one in six (16%) Superdrug products on a loyalty offer had been at the non-member price for less than half the time.
At Boots it was one in 10, and for supermarkets, it was 10% at Tesco, 5% at Sainsbury’s and 3% at Co-op. Which? said it also identified cases where prices were raised to a higher price for a relatively brief period before going on “offer”. It said that at Boots an Oral-B iO7 electric toothbrush (blue) was at a non-member price of £400, while the members’ price was £150.
This product had only been £400 for 13 days beforehand, prior t.