Supermarket shoppers: a word

Last week I was talking to a man who set up a luxury foods company. His wife runs it. They make high quality products with no additives, preservatives etc., which you cook from frozen. They have spent the past five years building this company up from nothing. They have worked around the clock and been through the wringer. This year it has all come together, and their efforts are finally paying off. Their products are now stocked in all the major UK supermarkets.

But the supermarkets have a standard rule that I hadn’t heard of until now: every time a product is returned by a customer – and customers are allowed to return products, even if there is nothing amiss with their purchases – the supermarket “charges” the maker of that product a whopping £80 ($150)! For the smaller producers, these charges are a source of concern: they can really eat into profits.

In the past I have taken advantage of generous return policies, e.g. returning more expensive products if I had changed my mind, or if my husband had come home with the “wrong” thing. But now I know about this policy, I’m only going to take something back if it fails to meet muster.

I like to keep within my budgets, but dilly-dallying like that isn’t fair on our small producers, so many of whom work hard to make ends meet.