Splitting multipacks

Hollister11

I was in a little corner shop today, just buying a can of coke. The can was one of those " not to be sold separately cans"
I don't mind If their the same price as usual, but today it was €1.30.
Absolute rip.

endacl

Did you buy it?

brian_gall85

Believe it or not, but some of the multi pack cases of coke are actually more expensive for the retailers to buy than a case of single cans.

We split the multi packs only if we're low in stock of the regular cans.

L1011

Nothing to stop them doing this beyond any agreement they've made with their wholesaler. They may not be saving a cent on it either.

Penny Tration

Centra on Abbey Street are selling cans of Boost from multipacks.

Cans of boost sell at 79 cent. They tried to charge me 1.75 :eek:

rubadub

There was a recent thread about multipack bars. Its seems the manufacturers can easily legally prevent some items being broken up and sold individually. All they have to do is leave off legally required information off the can/wrapper and instead only print it on the mulitpack.

Legally required info could be ingredients, weight, volume etc -it varies from product to product. e.g. if a bar is under 50g it need no weight listed, but still must have other things.

So if they manufacturers really want to prevent it in most cases they can, only themselves to blame.

ScouseMouse

rubadub wrote: »

There was a recent thread about multipack bars. Its seems the manufacturers can easily legally prevent some items being broken up and sold individually. All they have to do is leave off legally required information off the can/wrapper and instead only print it on the mulitpack.

Legally required info could be ingredients, weight, volume etc -it varies from product to product. e.g. if a bar is under 50g it need no weight listed, but still must have other things.

So if they manufacturers really want to prevent it in most cases they can, only themselves to blame.

This is true, but you are then relying on whatever government dept checks packaging, to take action. The last time I had ANY sort of inspection was a few years back and that was about scanning accurancy V price displayed.

In other words, don't hold your breath.

rubadub

superscouse wrote: »

This is true, but you are then relying on whatever government dept checks packaging, to take action.

If a coca cola rep came in and saw illegal sales going on I would have thought they could report it and so whatever relevant authority would be obliged to investigate (whether they think it is utterly trivial or not). Rather than it just being random inspections.

Was you inspection random? sounds like it might have been reported by a customer.

If they left off legally required info I expect they could put "cannot be legally sold singly in the republic of ireland, report any offence to XYZ", rather than the simple "part of a mulitpack, not to be sold separately"

I also expect retailers might be able to overlabel stuff. I get lots of foreign sauces etc which are overlabelled by the importers.

IHPhoto

I can never understand this. If the wholesale sold it and was paid for it, they should no longer have any say how the reseller sells it.

rubadub

IHPhoto wrote: »

I can never understand this. If the wholesale sold it and was paid for it, they should no longer have any say how the reseller sells it.

The whole idea is that the reduced price hopefully gets passed on. So the manufacturer charges less to the wholesaler.

People get annoyed since they think the retailer is getting the bulk of this money which is intended to be passed onto them.

The weird thing is they can easily have a say in how the end retailer sells it, by the labelling as I explained.

brian_gall85

You can label stuff whatever way you want, it's not legally binding and in a lot of cases who will enforce it anyway. The powers that be can't tackle the flow of counterfeit and non duty paid tobacco flooding the country, they're hardly worried about multi packs.

rubadub

brian_gall85 wrote: »

You can label stuff whatever way you want, it's not legally binding and in a lot of cases who will enforce it anyway.

The "must be sold as a mulitpack" has no legal meaning. But you CAN label it in a way which is legally binding, purposely leaving stuff off the label will mean if cannot be legally sold separately.

As for enforcing it I expect the manufacturers would make offical complaints to the relevant authority who I expect would then be obliged to do something, regardless if they think its petty.

mikeym

Usually on multipack labeled items theres no barcode.

L1011

mikeym wrote: »

Usually on multipack labeled items theres no barcode.

Nothing stops the store barcoding the items themselves though. Stores that do it are often small enough to use pricetags too.

Xterminator

i recently purchased iced tea in supervalu sourced from outside the English speaking regions they kindly put a sticker on the label with ingredients and calorie information etc.

So there is nothing stopping retailers from using multipacks without nutritional info, as they can pop a sticker on the bottle/can etc.

what i cannot fathom is why the OP thinks this is a rip off? surely if they keep their costs down, they keep the retail rpice down, and you pay less? Its a win-win in my option for the retailer and the consumer.

X