The Consumer and User Organization has found that some manufacturers are reducing their packaging by small percentages, while maintaining the price or even lowering it to confuse the consumer.
If your shopping cart seems to be getting more expensive lately, it’s not just due to inflation. Some manufacturers have been reducing the weight of their packaging, while they did not reduce the price to the same extent.
The OCU, which does not stop working, has made a study of prices in supermarkets where they have detected price increases in 55% of the products. Interestingly, in the remaining 45% there were price drops.
This, which might seem like good news, is actually somewhat misleading. Those prices have fallen, but the net weight of those products has also fallen..
It occurs in many products, such as the Pescanova hake loin package, which seems to have reduced its price by 5.6%.
Its weight, on the other hand, has been reduced by 10%. This means that each gram of hake is worth more and, with this ruse, in fact they have raised the price by 3.2% instead of going down as they want to imply to the consumer.
But it’s not the only case, the OCU has compiled some more examples of these alleged price drops in well-known products:
- The Cola-Cao canister (loses 40 grams).
- The Tulip margarine (50 grams less).
- The Activia yogurts (5 grams less).
- The Gallo spaghetti and macaroni, have increased the price of 15.2 and 15.7% respectively after reducing its content by 10%.
A practice that endangers our pockets
In this year 2021, the price increase according to the CPI has been 0.6%, without taking into account the bad arts that the manufacturers that we have discussed have made. According to the OCU, the real change would be an increase in shopping basket spending from 1.1 to 1.8%.
Such a rise, at a time like the one we are in, could endanger the economy. Currently there are supply problems in some countries.
There are also a significant number of people with few means who lose purchasing power every day with this type of practice.
We can only try that you are better informed and warn you of what is happening. Be careful what you buy and always look at the packaging, so they don’t give you a hare.