Manufacturers and supermarkets certainly don't make it easy for you to compare prices. Here are some of the difficulties we encountered:
Bulk bins
These are often placed well away from the packaged groceries - so it's hard to make comparisons.
Price increases
Price increases can be disguised by reducing the pack size while keeping the same price. In August a 350g pack of Milo cost $4.49. Three weeks later a 310g pack at the same store cost the same - $4.49.
Odd pack sizes
Pack sizes can make comparisons difficult.
It's easy to work out that it's better to buy 50 Dilmah tea bags at $3.54 than to pay $7.19 for the 100-bag pack. Or that two 100g packs of Nescafé ($5.49 each) cost less than one 200g pack ($11.49).
But it's harder to do the mental arithmetic on whether Weet-Bix is cheaper in the 750g or the 1kg pack. And you'd need to take along a calculator to find out whether the 500g block of cheese on special is a better deal than the 700g block.
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