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Maruno Ulfdrengr & Zwarte Woef

Having a moment in the supermarket, thinking of multiple things I can cook but all have stupid discounts needing to buy tons of it... Trying to put myself over "I shouldn't be paying foo much"...

Dutch supermarkets suck so much. Why can't we just have normal prices and discounts instead of normally heavily overpriced and absurd discounts only?

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@maruno as someone who occasionally likes to cook - what exactly is the situation in the Netherlands, why is it like this?

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@maruno because the supermarkets are cathered to families who buy in large quantities, and the one-and-two people households are just margin work for them
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@maruno and also the monopolies. those don't help either
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@uvok You know the prejudice the Dutch are stingy? :P As with everything there is a source of truth and we somehow massively psychologically fall for "a good deal" even if the prices itself are just adjusted yo make those possible. If you compare the average price of something here with the normal price in Germany you will find they match. :P

So things like 1+1 free have been a thing for a long time here and that evolved more and more in the disadvantage of the normal consumer. Things gotten absurd, now something like 50% off you need to know in your head: oh wait, no this is a very bad deal, got to wait for 2+3 free or more... The thing is you need many, many products to 'unlock' the right price... And I personally already dislike 1+1 free on fresh produce cause I can't use it before going off, just do 50% off...

We even got a website now to track when is a good time to buy your products, take a look and see that even some things are almost permanently in some deal with the same average price but different rules: https://www.ahprijsindex.nl/product/595194-andrelon-extra-glans-shampoo

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@miifox It's more psychology play here I think, other nationalities also have families and they don't have this weird game going on. Just lower normal prices and less absurd discounts.

What does happen here is that small households are NOT actually margin works, sell a couple of a product for 3x the margin cause they can't buy 6....

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@maruno I actually wonder whether it's a good idea to work in the nl then ... ;)

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Maruno Ulfdrengr & Zwarte Woef

Edited 19 days ago

@uvok It's one of the downsides of The Netherlands though you can mitigate it by visiting multiple shops and 'hamsteren' (hoarding) when there is a discount of a product that keeps. And of course supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl are more reasonable. But I don't like visiting multiple shops and sometimes want to get more fancy ingredients, so I go to Albert Heijn ('premium'). :P

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@maruno i think i recall reading an article about a similar issue in austria, where the supermarkets would play games with extreme discounts and price hikes. that would actually support the theory it's monopolist behaviour, as according to that article that was the issue there. but don't quote me on it, it's been a while.

fact is we have litle force to fight it back. i live quite close to the belgium border but the border supermarkets seem to have adapted in price (or belgium is just that much more expensive than i recall), and food is not something we can just go without for a little while.
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@maruno

@uvok Thanks, stole it for my friends in the NL

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