Save Money On Your Shopping (mysupermarket.co.uk)

Member Name: blonde_girl774

Product:	mysupermarket.co.uk
Date:	24/10/09 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Accurate Prices, Easy to Use & Quick.

Disadvantages: Practicality of Four Separate Shops?

There seems to be so much competing going on between the leading supermarkets at the moment that I often don't know which one to choose for my weekly shopping. As I'm always on the look out to save money, as I'm sure many of you are, I feel it's important to choose the best supermarket to spend my money in to ensure I'll save as much as possible. One site that I've been hearing more and more about, mainly from television adverts for the leading supermarkets, is mysupermarket.co.uk which is one I've recently started to visit quite a bit. My Supermarket is basically a shopping and comparison site which offers you the chance to shop from four leading supermarkets on their site. They aim to get you the best possible price for your trolley by selecting the products that you want from each of the four supermarkets and then presenting you with the cheapest option. They are also an independent company from the supermarkets meaning that they are impartial and aren't paid for favour any of the four supermarkets. They put the shopper, that's you, at the heart of what they do and aren't influenced in the slightest by the supermarkets themselves. I first discovered this site back in August and since then have visited it numerous times to try and find myself the cheapest supermarket in which to complete my shopping.

The homepage to the site is fairly appealing with a light green menu running along the top of which ends with a search box. Below this is a claim that using the site is "The best way to do your supermarket shopping" along with what the site allows you to do "Compare prices and shop at four leading supermarkets all on one site. It's fast, free and easy - so start shopping and see how much you can save!" Now that really is what the site's all about to be honest, it allows you to manually search for and select the products you'd want to buy before telling you the price for each product at the four different supermarkets and then finally telling you where you can actually complete your shopping for the cheapest price overall. The supermarkets featured on the site are Asda, Ocado, Sainsburys and Tesco. So why should you use the site? Well it offers you the chance to save up to 20% on your weekly shop, to compare prices and swap to cheaper products if you want to, to encourage you to eat healthily by showing you the health information for various products and to show you up to date pricing information too. All in all this site seemed almost too good to be true when I first came across it, although it's quite a simple concept really it's one that could be hugely effective and indeed hugely helpful when it comes to saving money!

Now there's a couple of different ways that you can choose to shop in depending what it is you're looking to get from the site...

I just want to compare the price of a product...

If you just want to look up a couple of products and see where you'd find them for the cheapest price the best thing to do is enter the name of the product into the search box on the homepage. It's a good idea to enter as much information as you have including the brand name, the product name and (if you know it) the size. It takes about a second to bring up the search results and you'll be presented with either a page of possible results which match your search criteria or, if you were specific enough, the product itself will come up. All results are showcased in the same with, with a large picture on the left hand side of the page, the cheapest price on the right hand side of the page along with a small table which shows the four supermarkets and the price of that product at each of the supermarkets. Below this is other information such as the FSA traffic lights labelling information, the ingredients and the nutritional information too.

I want to actually shop on the site...

Once you reach the same stage as we were at above you can choose to "Add to Trolley." If you select this option you'll be asked to enter your postcode so that the site can find your nearest store, it will automatically resort to the store where your product is the cheapest at that present moment in time. Once you've done this your total for that particular store will be shown just above the menu at the top of the page. As you continue to shop in the same fashion as above if you find something that's cheaper at another store you can still add that to your trolley and it will add it to your trolley for that store. In the end you'll very often end up with four separate trolleys for the four individual supermarkets. A running total for what you've spent at each supermarket is continuously shown just above the green menu. When you're ready to check out simply select the supermarket and then press "Checkout" on the green menu.

I want to checkout and pay for my items...

In order to shop on the site you'll first need to register for an account with them. You'll be prompted to do this the first time you visit the site and click on the "Checkout" link. The registration process is quite straightforward and just asks for the basic information that other similar sites ask for. You'll also be asked to choose login details so that you can avoid this step when you next revisit the site. Once you've registered with the site you'll then be prompted to pay for your goods from the different supermarkets and also informed of any delivery charges associated with the companies. You'll then be transferred to the supermarket's own site to process your payment so you'll also need to have registered with them too. Prior to being transferred you'll also be informed of how much you could save by buying your products from other stores or how you could buy lower calorie products and given the chance to "Swap & Save."

Some other smalls points...

~ If you're not sure what product you want the site does provide categories which you can browse until you find what it is you're looking for. For example you could look in "Food and Drink," then in "Dairy," then in "Eggs" for example. It's easy to narrow down the categories through a small number of clicks and soon you'll be presented with a range of options that match what it is you're looking for.

~ The My Supermarket service is based on pricing information which they claim is updated daily. Now I'm not sure how realistic or how true this is but if they claim it then I guess it must be fairly accurate. I have used this site a couple of times and when I've been transferred to pay at the supermarket's own site I've never encountered any messages telling me my prices weren't correct according to the site.

~ On the homepage you will see you a link for "Save Even More With Top Supermarket Vouchers." This link will take you to a new page where you'll be able to see any vouchers for the four supermarkets on the site. These vouchers are quite frequently updated and include things like £10 off your first spend when you spend £50 and 15% off your first order when you spend £15. These will then reduce the amount you spend even further which is really good.

~ The site will remember what you've purchased after you've shopped here once meaning that shopping the second time around is never quite as time consuming as the first time. You can then quickly add your favourite products to your new trolley or simply delete the ones you no longer want that week. It's quite a useful facility and it will also alert you to where they're cheaper this week if they are cheaper at a different supermarket to where you bought them.

I think this site is absolutely brilliant, especially if you do your shopping online I'd certainly recommend doing it through this site to ensure you save money. The only problem is that you might end up ordering things from two, three or even four supermarkets and that starts to complicate things with delivery prices and delivery slots. If you like to do your shopping in the actual store like I do then this site is a good place to do a little research before you decide where to go, for example I knew I needed to buy a lot of alcohol one week for a party and therefore researched where would be the cheapest for the alcohol and then did my week's shopping there as I saved about £15 on the alcohol compared to what I would have spent at the other stores. The first time I visited the site I think I managed to find my way around within about two minutes, it's really straightforward to find what you're looking for and everything is quite self explanatory as well. Obviously the site is quite large as you will be able to find pretty much any product that you want yet it's really quick to conduct a search on and you'll be presented with your results within about a second depending on your internet connection of course. It's also a good place to find offers, for example I searched for Batiste dry shampoo on the site and found it at around £2 a bottle in three of the supermarkets, yet it was on offer of any four for £3 at one supermarket so that saved me quite a bit, you just need to watch as you will be tempted to buy in bulk on here!!

As for the downsides well obviously they do exist and I have mentioned the practicality of doing your shopping online at four different supermarkets to take advantage of all the lowest prices. You also need to be quite realistic, for example if Tesco is two minutes from you yet you'd save £3 on your weekly shop by travelling twenty minutes to Sainsburys then it's really not going to be worth it. You need to think about your petrol costs and also your time costs if you decide to do that, I certainly couldn't be bothered! I'm lucky in that I've got an Asda, a Sainsburys and a Tesco within a ten minute drive from where I live so I can access them all quite easily. I can't say I've ever let this site overly impact my shopping routine, apart from the first time I used it to do my shopping online I've never really followed it's advice overly when doing my shopping in store. I've always opted for where I think I'll get my shopping for the cheapest price overall rather than visiting all three supermarkets and doing a shop in all of them. You need to think about how practical is and the time it would take to do separate shops compared to doing just one. I would recommend visiting this site, if only to see how useful it could be, but I still think I'll stick to doing my shopping in just one supermarket each week. It's a really good concept and one that has been used to advertise different supermarkets on the television, they tend to like to claim they're cheaper than other supermarkets on a certain number of products, especially in these rather frugal times!

Thanks for reading.

Summary: An online shopping site which lets you see where's cheapest for your weekly shop.