How to make the most of supermarket brand price match vouchers

A question about : How to make the most of supermarket brand price match vouchers

Tesco, Sainsburys and probably others give you a voucher at the till which tells you how much you saved compared to other supermarkets, or if you paid more, the voucher will give you that much off your next shop within a fortnight. Sounds great (if you remember to use it), but here’s the thing: the amount on the voucher is the total difference between the prices of the branded goods you bought there and the cheapest that they’re available at other supermarkets. Some items you will have paid more on, some you will have paid less.

Now, the trick is, if you can manage to separate those out into two different transactions, you will get one voucher with all the discount on and one telling you all that you’ve saved. E.g. if you saved Ј4 on some of your branded goods and paid Ј3 more on others, traditionally, you would just have got a voucher saying “You saved Ј1”. This way, you would actually get a voucher worth Ј4.

The extreme couponing version of this would be to check all the prices across all the supermarkets yourself, but the simpler alternative I’d suggest is that as you shop, any time you pick up a multi-buy branded discount, or anything which is clearly a really good offer, put it in a separate basket inside your trolley. Those are unlikely to be cheaper elsewhere. When you reach the till (this is much easier if you’re shopping as a couple), one of you buys everything in the trolley, which will generate the discount-giving voucher. They hand this to the other, who uses it against the stuff in the basket (which would only have given you a “look how much you’ve saved” voucher anyway). If you’re shopping alone, I guess you’d need to take the trolley to the car and then come back for the basket.

As a bonus, you don’t risk forgetting to use the voucher next time, nor are you forced to come back to the same supermarket to gain from it.

Best answers:

• I've been in Sainsbury's with my mother, got till spits and handed them to her to use straight away and not had probs. However as I don't have a Nectar card (OH does) I swipe hers when we shop there together and she gets the points and till spits.
  My mother often uses a credit card to get points for purchases and a debit card to get cashback so she will do everything but one item on credit card, then have a next customer thing and her one item. No-one in Sainsbos ever bats an eyelid at that. Sometimes she is able to make the item something she or I have had a till spit for.
• Great idea OP and you've explained it very well. I have been doing this for awhile now and it's definitely worth it.
• I can confirm that unfortunantley this doesn't work in Tesco. The vouchers are only valid from the day after your shop. I tried this once when I had a voucher for something like 18p and having done my shop realised I had forgotten something. I went back for the forgotten item and not realising the voucher wasn't valid I tried to use it when paying but it wasn't accepted.
• I'm going to have a look at my usual Tesco online shopping order and see if this would work. I have a delivery saver plan and usually spend Ј85/week. The minimum spend for 'free' delivery is Ј40 so it could work I don't mind waiting in on two days, it might be quite handy to split it into two shops so I can get two smaller lots of fresh milk, bread etc.