Christmas comes early at Tescos

It amazes me how every year that Tescos in Oakham starts Christmas before they have even put the fireworks away. This year the run up started today and the Christmas tree appeared at the entrance to the store and hanging signs in the store itself.

Guess it was a good bet they would start the Christmas festivities soon, after all they started selling tins of Christmas chocolates and Terry's chocolate oranges back in early October. Every year they seem to sneak in the Christmas stuff earlier and earlier hope people will be tempted to buy.

Next the shops will be playing wall to wall Christmas music and the poor sales staff will have to endure the looped tapes over and over again, until soon they are so fed up with Christmas they can't wait for it to be over, and some customers will feel the same way soon.

Personally I just wish they would let us get at least through fireworks night before they start on Christmas. In fact mid November would be a better time, with just about 5 weeks to go before the main event. To me, the more the shops extend the run up to Christmas the more they spoil the time of year. 

Tescos Cat

The blog has been a little heavy on late, so may be it is time for something of lighter note. Anyone that has been to Tesco's in Oakham over the years will recongonise the cat pictured below, in a more heavy form, as one that use to that was a regular sight at the entrance to the store. To many she has become known as "Tesco's Cat". In recent years she has made the odd visit but recently she has been seen a little more regularly. 

She is now a lean and beautiful young lady who loves to be fussed as longs as you don't rub her tummy. Originally many people thought she was something to do with the supermarket but she actually lives near the supermarket and the last thing she needs is treats. I'm sure she gets enough of those and love at home. Although I'm sure she won't be around for to long before her owners workout how she is escaping she has made many people smile as they go in or come out the store. She is that sort of cat. She even has her own Facebook fan page she is so popular in the the town.

Boring Tescos

The refurbishment of the Tesco store in Oakham is now well underway with the store smelling of paint. I was hoping they were going to make the place a little more interesting but all they are doing is making it look more boring and drab, which I didn't think was possible.

There is some nice wood being put onto the entrance to the store and they have add some wood along some of the isles which varies the height shelves and pin points the more expensive items in general.  Other than that the seem to have painted everything white, so much so that under the glare of the lights the supermarket has become extremely bright and makes it look more like a warehouse than it did before. In fact if anything they have made shopping their even worse rather than better. It is just so bland like many of the things they seem to sell.

There are some new posters been attached to the windows on the outside of the store that made me smile. The first one was "Passionate about Food" which was I thought a little ironic in a supermarket that is often running out of food including many basic items such as eggs. In some cases these shortages go on days and in one case I can remember one common product being sold out for weeks. I like to plan menu what I eat before I go into the store not have to rethink meals because I can't buy what I need. The second one about "Great Value" from a supermarket that has pulled many of its value ranges from the shelves and who seems to be constantly putting up it prices or replacing items in its standard range with more expensive products in their premium range, which in some case aren't so good. Finally the third one has cleverly been place behind the trolley park where you can't see it at all, bet that one is a real laugh.

What I dislike more than anything about Tesco is the way they keep moving stuff around the store. They seem to think I want spend ages looking for stuff around the aisles and partake in their shopping experience. To be honest I couldn't give a dam for their shopping experience. I just want to be in and out as quickly as possible to get away from the place. I have far better things to do with my life they spend it shopping, especially in a supermarkets that are kill the high streets and the real shopping experience and local economy. They are at best dull and at worse annoying.

To be honest Tescos in Oakham are going to have to get there act together if they are going to carry being the major store in the town. Soon they will have even more competition in the form of Aldi and Sainsburys. I know from talking to staff in Melton Tescos that the opening of a new Sainsburys there has hit their trade hard and combining that with an Aldi in Oakham they are going to be squeezed even more.

It is my view, that with four supermarkets in the town one of them won't be around for long. The betting is it will be the Cooperative Supermarket that we lose and that would be a shame because it offers a far better shopping experience when you compare it to Tescos and to Sainburys in Melton too. The food is better for one reason and the staff are friendly too.

Oakham's "Rip Off" Tesco Supermarket

This weekend I was in the local Tesco supermarket in Oakham and I found an old lady standing round the fresh eggs looking rather bemused and lost. Then I realised why for the eggs she was looking for, as was I, were missing from the shelf and not even a sold out sticker to be found. I talked to her and she said that they had be discontinued in our local store as had many products in the same everyday value range.

 

Living on a low budget the old lady was saying how a lot of the range had disappeared from the store in the last few weeks. She was deciding what eggs she could afford and working out what she food wouldn't be able to buy because of the price of the eggs which she relied on as a food item. With 15 eggs in the everyday value range costing £1.34 the nearest she could get value wise would have been £3.00 for the same number of eggs, and then she would have to buy 20 at a cost of £4.00 because they came in boxes of 10.  That is well over a 100% increase in price!

 

Then I started on a mission to find out if the old lady was right while I did the shopping, and it came as a surprise she was right. Gone had all but one of the value breakfast cereals, not a sign of the value Chocolate Mousses, or the Garlic Baguettes, then there are some of the value Biscuit range missing, in fact a lot of the products in the Everyday Value range on the companies website are absent from the Oakham store, making it more expensive for those on a tight budget to shop, and this table gives you an idea of how much by:

 

Item	Value	Standard	Expense
Chocolate Mousse	4.5p each	15p each	233% more
Eggs	8.9p each	16.6p each	86% more
Single Garlic Baguette	32p	85p	165% more
Rice Snaps	18p per 100g	33p per 100g	83% more
Digestive Biscuits	30p	59p	96% more

 

While I was in the store I managed to ask  one of the staff what had happened to the Everyday value range and I was given an answer I didn't expect from a supermarket whose advertising is "Every Little Helps". Clearly in this case it means every little bit of profit they can squeeze out of the customer by not stocking the value range is more than welcome in the company coffers, even if it means people like that little old lady have to miss a meal or two. The reason I was given was that Okaham is an affluent area and it is the managements view that stocking the value range stops customers coming into the store and by removing it from the shelves and concentrating on the own brand premium products they will attract more customers.  

 

The reality is the poor people in Oakham who have no choice but to shop in the Tesco supermarket are being ripped off by the company. They are being denied food because they can't afford it. Due to the decision to remove value items the poorer people in the area will be eating less this summer. I really hope that the fat bellies that run the company and get massive bonuses are happy to know they are helping to starve the poor of Oakham while they sit and gloat on their profits.

 

Maybe a new slogan for the company is required, along the lines of "Starve the Poor, we feed the Rich". It looks like it is going to be hungry summer of the old and the poor in Oakham this year.