Online supermarkets to provide clearer pricing after complaints

Supermarkets offering grocery shopping online have agreed to give customers better price information, following action by the Office of Fair Trading in the UK.

According to the OFT it has received a number of complaints about how the supermarkets price goods for online sale.

Asda, Sainsbury and Tesco have agreed to provide clearer information about their online pricing. In some cases prices charged for groceries on delivery were different from those advertised on the websites.

The supermarkets (apart from Waitrose's online shopping service Ocado) use guide prices on their websites to show the prices of goods in-store on the day the order is placed.

However in most cases, the actual prices customers will pay will be the in-store prices on the day when goods are assembled for delivery.

In-store prices may change between dates of order and delivery causing the confusion.

The OFT believed that the supermarket websites did not make it sufficiently clear that the prices shown were guide prices and what relation they had to the actual prices that would be charged.

As a result Asda, Sainsbury, Tesco, Waitrose and Ocado have now agreed to provide greater transparency about their online shopping schemes.

The OFT is still recommending that customers doing their supermarket shopping online check prices at the point of delivery against guide prices quoted at the time of ordering.