I asked to speak to a manager in the supermarket today, to
enquire as to why their tobacco and liquor prices had already gone up, given
that it was only a week since the duty had been increased in the Budget.
The manager wanted no trouble. He took out his purse right
away.
Oh no, that’s a line from Albert and the Lion...
Erm... what the manager actually said was that they have a high
turnover of tobacco and liquor, and that the prices had gone up when the new
stock had arrived last Sunday – the new stock having the higher duty applied to
it. Fine, except he then admitted that all the stock already in situ was also
being sold at the higher price ‘because it would be impossible to separate the
new stock from the old.’
That argument doesn’t really ring true, does it, since all
they had to do was hold the new stock back until the old stuff was gone. So
what this means is that Sainsbury’s are making extra profit by selling old
stock at an unjustifiably inflated price – which isn’t illegal, but it’s certainly
unethical.
And this is the kind of thing that most people don’t realise is
going on, because most people don’t understand how duty works and nobody explains it
to them.
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