Baiting

To separate Rant from Restaurant, I am writing more than one blog entry today. This is the rant, a short one; your beans on toast won't get cold reading it.

Baiting is a common feature of supermarkets today. Unfortunately, even the Consumer Association in a recent review of supermarket tricks conceded that is difficult to prove as an intentional strategy. Nevertheless, there is no doubt in my mind. Baiting, in case you don't know, is where a retailer publicises a special offer which, in fact, is not available and anticipates that you will instead purchase a strategically located and, naturally, more expensive alternative - another size or another brand. When challenged on availability of the alleged offer they will give you all sorts of disingenuous waffle about stocking difficulties, awaiting delivery or even completely wrong information about the offer dates.

Today it was Princes Corned Beef in Tesco. Theoretically 49p off and £1.49 for a small tin. Amazingly it was out of stock but adjacent to the resulting space was Princes LEAN Corned Beef in the same size for only £2.49. Funny that. You will find countless examples of this across all the leading supermarkets.

I think we can agree that they are all master baiters.