Hence my "in general".

My money is on.... well, you can guess.

Unlucky?

<insert emoticon for Family Fortunes wrong answer here>

Hmmm, well there is a woodturner up the road ... maybe he could do a decent candlestick.

Some of the early Beaujolais can benefit from a light chillin'.

You mean you have to pay for it? That doesn't surprise me!

This was a bloody Shiraz.

Sounds like an arab metal band

Feckin' hundreds of them.



Mainly by jacking up prices then cutting by a penny or two a time, prime example is putting 20p on the price of Cranberry sauce in November then advertising it has slashed the price by 15p in December.



Not in my experience and I guarantee I have shopped in more of them than you ever will...

Utterly disgraceful.
I'm shocked.

But we could just call it "choice".

I really try not to respond to these “big, bad, UK retailer” threads! It really makes me laugh how the same old things are rolled out each time. OK, I’m not impartial – I work for Tesco – but let’s see a balanced view.

For example, let’s consider the Joanna Blythman book that gets rolled out every time there is a thread on here about retailers. Yep, I’ve read it. It’s a good read actually. I like investigative journalism. I also enjoyed MacIntyre Undercover, by Donal MacIntyre, especially his investigation about the Chelsea Headhunters. In fact, I gave the MacIntyre one to my youngest son to read only recently, who asked me “Dad, why is it that when we go to watch Man United, why do we not see all the fighting that the book says happens all the time?”. “Well”, I told him, “the reason is that MacIntyres’ book was written about his time undercover tracking football hooligans in 1999/2000”. It’s not relevant now. In much the same way, Blythmans’ book is pretty much 10 years old (published 2004, so investigated and written well before that) and relates to a completely different retail environment and a completely different Tesco.

If we go back to 2004, when the book was first published, Tesco had 83 Tesco Extras in the UK, also 20 superstores, 4 Metros, and 138 Expresses. That’s a grand total of only 245 stores. That compares with 3054 stores in the UK alone now. A bit different, I think. Should we be looking at a business and how it treated suppliers 10 years ago, and assuming it’s still the same now? No, we shouldn’t. Should we compare the distribution footprint then and now as being similar? No, we shouldn’t.

Of course Tesco would be voted the worst – it’s a numbers game. They are the most popular supermarket in the UK, and one of the most successful UK businesses of the last 20 years. Ask any Premier League football supporter other than a Manchester United supporter who they dislike most, and the highest percentage response would be Manchester United! Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City would be up there, just as ASDA, Morrisons and Sainsburys would be, but the smaller clubs could be compared to your Booths and Waitrose, etc! (Not a bad analogy, if I do say so myself!)

Anyway, must dash – that big, bad Tesco have sent me to Bangkok for a month to do some work: it’s now 16.45hrs, 36 degrees, and there’s a Chang beer with my name on it sat on a bar near Sukhumvit Soi 4!

I'll give you brownie points for the fastest self-contradiction going.

Sorry but are you seriously contending that as Tesco's market share and strangehold on the market has increased, they have become more responsible towards suppliers? If so, that must be the very first time that has ever happened in the history of commerce

Didn't say that, Cod'ead, no.