Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

[mjhale]

[snip]Latest pricing trick at Safeway:

Only putting certain "varieties" on sale on items. Yes, the ads have always said selected varieties, but typically all of the items are on sale in a given product family.

We have this out on the east coast as well.

One time they had Suave shampoo on sale. My brother and I both love the coconut variety but only a few types were on sale. The girl ringing me out gave me the discount on everything though when I questioned this...

Safeway on the east coast is also making extensive use of Buy x Get x Free promotions and also get a product for some really low price except it is must buy 3 or 4 of said item or group of items. I suppose this works if you have a big family but I'm one person. I'd rather get a sale price on one or two of an item and not be locked into buying a whole slew of things that may go bad before I can use them. Oh and when you divide out those Buy x Get x Free "deals" they aren't that great of a "deal" because of Safeway's very high regular pricing. So far, Giant still seems to be sticking with sale prices that aren't heavily reliant on these tactics.

[Bradford011]

Harris-Teeter does much the same, buy 2 get 3 free. But many times even 60% off is still not a great price.

You really need to know the average everyday prices to know when a sale is really a bargain or not...

[storewanderer]

Harris-Teeter does much the same, buy 2 get 3 free. But many times even 60% off is still not a great price.

You really need to know the average everyday prices to know when a sale is really a bargain or not...

How does that work? I recall 5 years ago Harris Teeter if it said "buy 1 get 1 free" the item simply came up at 50% off with the loyalty card. Did something change when they moved to the Kroger system? Different Kroger divisions handle "buy 1 get 1 free" differently. Some like Dillons also had that items will scan at 50% off thing, but that may have changed. Smiths and Ralphs always required the purchase of both items on a buy 1 get 1 free to get the sale, with one scanning full price and the second scanning .00.

[Romr123]

I haven't seen a BoGo scan at 50% recently. Just bought cereal at Rite Aid---B1 G2....rang as full price, zero, zero. It seems generally POS systems now are sophisticated enough to handle the full price, zero zero handling. The development on the POS systems seems to be similar to how they can handle shopping cards, discounting when card is used/not discounting if no card is used.

[storewanderer]

I haven't seen a BoGo scan at 50% recently. Just bought cereal at Rite Aid---B1 G2....rang as full price, zero, zero. It seems generally POS systems now are sophisticated enough to handle the full price, zero zero handling. The development on the POS systems seems to be similar to how they can handle shopping cards, discounting when card is used/not discounting if no card is used.

Same here, I was surprised when I saw it at Harris Teeter because their POS was obviously equipped to handle the full price/zero price way but deliberately scanned each at 50% off instead.

Rite Aid used to do that 50% off thing too, but stopped probably 20 years ago. Lately at Rite Aid the inventory is so low I frequently can only find one item to purchase in these sales. The employees will price modify it to half off (or whatever the proportionate discount is) with no question.

Albertsons used to have a really screwy way of handling buy 1 get 1 free in the 90's. They'd have an item that was say 2.69 buy 1 get 1 free. The first item would scan at 2.50 then the second at 0.19, or some other arbitrary amount. It made no sense based on how it was tagged.

[Bradford011]

Harris-Teeter does much the same, buy 2 get 3 free. But many times even 60% off is still not a great price.

You really need to know the average everyday prices to know when a sale is really a bargain or not...

The first five items ring up at normal price, then at the end when you hit the total button three of them will be taken off (limit is usually ten of any sale item).

Have to make sure the prices are taken off, sometimes they aren't...

[pseudo3d]

Ultimately, unless people are idiots, I ponder how Albertsons expects to stay in business.

Reading these posts, I fear they could start to collapse to death like Kmart... I fear we could have a breakup like the old ABS...
That, or maybe Publix should buy their Texas and Mid-Atlantic stores.

If only Loblaws could buy Albertsons for a good price.

Albertsons has a large lock in various markets especially on the West Coast. There is little other competition, you have to drive to get to it, that competition may be in many ways substandard, and in general customers are basically forced to pay these prices or go to a major inconvenience to obtain groceries elsewhere. This is the mentality Safeway operated under for years and for years ran with the best margins in the business due to this mentality.

One thing I would like to comment on is they have changed some bakery items in the past few months and these items are now in my "inedible" category. Their carrot cake slice has turned into a very dark carrot cake (color) and it has few carrot pieces, few raisins, and such an overpowering cinnamon/ginger it slightly burns the throat going down and is just awful- basically garbage. Their commodity quality bakery 20ct cookies just flat out taste bad (it took a few purchases of me actually throwing them away to finally come to terms with this).

It is possible Albertsons is forecasting out a few months on these price increases and just wants to do one round of increases now.

Wait, so the Albertsons cookies from the bakery I've heard good things about is now total garbage? Yikes!

[Alpha8472]

I saw that the 20 count cookies at Safeway were on sale for $1.99 for a 4 Day Sale, and I bought one package. They were rock hard and truly awful. It was a total waste of my money. I just want to toss them in the trash. Who came up with these recipes? Do they not have a taste tester? Or is the recipe purely to save money and sell something that people will mindlessly buy. I now know why they have piles of unsold Bakery items on display at the front of the store.

I went to Sprouts and actually found some decent cookies.

Safeway muffins have always given me a stomach ache. There is something about the recipe that makes me ill. I once bought muffins that were totally filled with mold. Apparently, the store was relabeling expire Bakery items and several packages were totally filled with mold. Years later that Safeway Bakery was closed down for mold removal. It took them long enough.

[Romr123]

Yet the Vons in Palm Spring makes some delicious jalapeno cheese bread (short baguettes with cheese and jalapenos browned on top) which is an incredible buy every day at $1.99...sometimes pricing is just so "not thought through"...it would be a reasonable value at $2.99...

[veteran+]

Yet the Vons in Palm Spring makes some delicious jalapeno cheese bread (short baguettes with cheese and jalapenos browned on top) which is an incredible buy every day at $1.99...sometimes pricing is just so "not thought through"...it would be a reasonable value at $2.99...

Which store?

On Palm Canyon? (I used to manage that store before the remodel)