Tesco Brand Guarantee

Do you ever remember to use the vouchers attached to the receipt of your supermarket shopping? You know, the ones that say ‘your shop was £1.53 cheaper in another supermarket – get this off your bill next time you shop.’

No, me neither.

It’s annoying, because I know they’re just doing it to get me to go back again, and I fall for it every time, only to then forget the voucher, which was the reason I went back there in the first place.

That’s the thinking behind the new Tesco Brand Guarantee.

The Tesco Brand Guarantee compares your branded items with the prices of the same items in Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, and if it was cheaper in one of the other three, it deducts the difference there and then. The beauty of this approach is that you, the customer, have to do nothing at all, it all just happens, as if my magic, and if there was money to be saved, you save it. The downside is that the T&Cs are a little complicated, so if the whole ‘do I have to pay for my carrier bag if it has raw fish in it’ question has you puzzled, you’ll want to read this bit carefully.

How does the Tesco Brand Guarantee work?

To qualify for the Brand Guarantee, you have to have a set of conditions apply to your shop:

• You have to have at least ten different items. Nine tins of beans and a loaf of bread don’t count.
• At least one of these item has to be a branded item – something like Heinz Beans or Walkers Crisps – so that it can be compared like for like with the other supermarkets.
• Tesco then compares the total value of just the branded element of your shop, and this gets deducted.

When I lay it out like that, it doesn’t sound that complicated really, and it would apply to pretty much everyone doing any kind of normal shop. It does seem to confuse people a little bit though, and neither the woman on my checkout today or her supervisor had really grasped it! Checkout lady thought that only one product was ever compared, and her supervisor told me the majority of my ten items had to be branded.

Still, just as the carrier bag switch didn’t turn into chaos at the tills, I’m sure this won’t either.

The one thing I did notice, as I was walking up and down the aisles, looking for bargains, was that I almost wanted to avoid offers, to really test the guarantee. I only put one carton of half price Ocean Spray cranberry juice in my trolley, knowing that the discount on that would cancel out any over-pricing of other products. I think I’m over thinking though – the main thing is that overall, you don’t spend more than you need to, and that can’t be a bad thing. Plus the Tesco Brand Guarantee does check offers and discounts at the other supermarkets too, so it all balances out.

At the end of my shop, my branded items were automatically compared and I had saved the grand total of 17p, so nothing needed to be deducted from me bill.

I was told that I could go online and check exactly what I had saved where if I wanted to so, in the name of research for you, I did.

You can now see exactly what I bought, and judge me accordingly. As you can see, I didn’t actually buy many branded products, and so that one carton of cranberry juice probably did make all the difference!

Will you be drawn to Tesco by the Brand Guarantee? What top tips do you have for saving money on your food shopping?

The offers excludes ROI and Morrisons in NI, Tesco Express and petrol stations, and some products and promotions. There is a maximum deduction in any one shop of £20.

Disclosure – I was given a voucher to spend at Tesco to test out the Tesco Brand Guarantee but all thoughts are my own.