Food Accuracy / The Challenging Tricks By Which The Anti-Boridis Useful Scoundrel Sweeps

THE absence of shelf checks and the restriction to random crossings of prices from the lists given by retailers to the Ministry of Development allows speculators to maintain the nightmare that consumers are living, with theater-of-the-absurd prices that allow obscene profitas shown by the examples he presented in Open The president of the Working Consumers Union of Greece Apostolos Rautopoulos.

THE same package as cereal where the 2023 had a product of 375 g. with a price of 4.12 euros (10.97 euros/kg), the 2024 contains 330 gr. with a price of 4.79 euros (14.51 euros/kg), that is price increased by 32.3%. This increase was hidden by the product reduction by 12% to be limited to an appreciation of the product unit “only” by 16.3%.

THE same packaging as potato chips where the 2023 had a product of 140 g. with a price of 1.58 euros (11.29 euros/kg), the 2024 contains 130 gr. with a price of 1.92 euros (14.77 euros/kg), that is price increased by 30.8%. This increase was hidden by the product reduction by 7.14% to be limited to an appreciation of the product unit “only” by 21.52%. Profiteering does not only use product quantity change or fraudulent offers, it even goes to straight up “absurd” pricingwhere the same amount of product appears to be sold more expensively in larger units of product, i.e. where reducing packaging costs should have the opposite effect.

For example, the same yogurt for sale in a package of 500 g. cheaper than in the 1,000 g package. (3.66 euros/kg and 4.08 euros/kg respectively), although the lower packaging costs should lead to the opposite ratio.

Respectively, the same cookies in package of 200 gr. is sold cheaper than the offer of the three packs of 200 g. although the second one also has a 1 euro discount (7.25 euro/kg and 7.33 euro/kg respectively – without 9 euro/kg discount)

The auditors do not go to retail premisesthey do indicative checks via computer, said Mr Rautopoulos. “That’s what we’re saying, to carry out on-the-spot checks”as he pointed out.

It is recalled that just yesterday the Minister of State Makis Voridis appeared to justify the price increasesalthough the latest figures from Eurostat show that from the product price paid by the Greek consumer only 13% goes to the producer while the remaining 87% concerns charges on the way to the shelf. “They are all doing something, if direct contact between producer and supermarket was that simple then wouldn’t the supermarket have got them all out of the way? Why doesn’t he take them out?”, as he said.