We're paying higher prices, specials are confusing and loyalty schemes aren't delivering overly significant rewards.
Those aren't just the musings of a frustrated supermarket shopper - but are some of the findings in the Commerce Commission's first annual grocery report, issued on Wednesday.
Rewards schemes were only giving a return of between 0.71 percent for Flybuys and 0.75 percent for Everyday Rewards.
Between 2007 and 2019, the average weekly spend on grocery food increased 7.3 percent every three years but the latest data showed a leap of 28.9 percent.
The commission's report said supermarkets would point to their own rising costs as the reason for price rises.
But it said margins had continued to grow - all of the major supermarkets had experienced an increase in price-cost margins, which meant that retail prices were increasing faster than the cost of the goods.
The report said supermarkets "continue to achieve higher levels of profitability than we would expect in a workably competitive market".
It was not likely that Costco would be able to expand to the point where it could become a serious third supermarket contender, it said.
The report said the Warehouse could be an option - its network of shops meant it was in a good position to encourage shoppers to split their shopping in many cases - but it had said it had no intention of raising the capital needed to compete.
The "five things" don't work that well as a list, but they are:
- High prices aren't in your head
- Competition is not bringing down margins, or prices
- Other competitors aren't finding it easy
- Innovation, but is it what we want?
- Would fines make a difference?
I have a loose definition of "week". This is the first thread in almost a month...
Anyway, a while back I asked about gateway routers, and @thevoyagekayaking@lemmy.nz recommended the Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE. I eventually built up the courage to spent that much money on it, and it arrived this week.
After a few challenges I managed to get it set up. It has now replaced my ISP router, and I've also replaced the Pi-hole with the UDM's options for local DNS entries and ad blocking. I also have set it up as a VPN client with Wireguard and ProtonVPN, and I can choose which devices are routed over the VPN and even customise it per domain so streaming services that don't like the VPN can be excluded.
I have a 300Mbps connection that normally averages about 280Mbps, and ProtonVPN lets me keep this speed (I'm on a paid plan).
The internet in general feels more snappy too, lower latency. I'm pretty happy with this purchase, and keen to get some cameras plugged into the PoE as soon as my wallet has recovered.