Supermarkets Admit Price Fixing

Originally Posted by BBC News

Supermarket firms Sainsbury's and Asda have admitted that they were part of a dairy price-fixing group that earned about £270m extra from shoppers.

The supermarkets, along with a number of dairy firms, have agreed to pay fines totalling some £116m after an Office of Fair Trading (OFT) probe.

Cases against Tesco and Morrisons will continue after no deal was struck.

The OFT said that in-store prices went up after the collusion, but the amount received by farmers did not increase.

However, the firms insist that the farm gate price paid for milk did rise and that they were not ripping off customers.

The OFT said the collusion saw customers being charged 3 pence extra for a pint of milk, 15p extra per quarter-pound of butter and 15p per half-pound of cheese, the watchdog said.

The real question is, where is the £270million going to go, you can bet your life its not going to the farmers who so desperatly need it! More stealth revenue for the government no doubt!

I think this whole scandel is disgusting, once again in the UK, the authorities let the consumers be ripped off! The only people who have lost out are the consumers, the supermarkets paying what they took illegally is hardly punishment...

BBC News Report

sad mate, totally agree, the goverment needs to do some thing about these fat cat companies, all the profit they make, and land that they are buying up, its quite worrying

Its like in the CO-OP im 100% certain that the prices are fixed £2.13 for 6 pints of milk its not about inflation or price rises there just greedy barstard...

lol it will come to surface that tesco are the worst for it... they cheap out on everything and squeeze as much cash as possible out of everything they can... takes the piss... we struggle to use the equipment in the store only to find they are way below budget... our department should have 15 ppl on it but only has 5 lol

Is this not just normal business:

You purchase a product from a supplier,
you choose how much profit you want to make,
you mark up the item for sale to acheive that profit,
you sell the item for the advertised price,
you do not force the customer to purchase the item,
you pay you overheads and reap the profits.

I dont see the problem.

Yes, but the supermarkets involved have agreed amongst themselves to raise the price of the said products and keep them that way. That is price fixing.

Originally Posted by The_WadFather

Is this not just normal business:

You purchase a product from a supplier,
you choose how much profit you want to make,
you mark up the item for sale to acheive that profit,
you sell the item for the advertised price,
you do not force the customer to purchase the item,
you pay you overheads and reap the profits.

I dont see the problem.

This isnt like that though, this is all the big supermarkets setting a price so the market has no/little competition, which is against the law. This law is in place to protect the consumer and supplier from being ripped off.

It is worse with things like milk etc, because people generally dont have a choice as these are essential items that they have to buy. This is why the supermarkets chose these items to price fix.

Making 3p extra out something doesnt sound like a lot, but given each supermarket is selling millions of that item per week, it puts the amount of money they have made from it into context.

its disgusting this

think of the poor farmers, only trying to earn a living

Think of Tony_1985 he's only tryin to make a living

lol yeah

skint now cos of those supermarkets