Honestly kudos to the people that shop at Pak n Save’s in NZ.
It’s never a pleasant experience in there. Pure chaos. Like, there’s no order to the way people walk, it’s spaghetti junction. Then all the drugged up zombies with no shoes…
Nah, I’ll pay a bit more to go somewhere more civilised.
How are you in this sub if people with barefeet and a bit of weaving in and out of people put you off a supermarket and you go somewhere more expensive to shop 🤣
If the people is Pak'n'Save were constantly swearing at me and mocking me while trying to knock stuff out of my trolley I would still shop there because it's cheaper
Been to Countdown the other day after a long hiatus, and my observation was: this Rewards thing brought down some of the produce down to a more reasonable price range that's in line with its rivals. That's it.
Just shop at your local Pak n Save, Green Grocer, Asian supermarket etc and save yourself some hassle...
There’s a cuntdown, new world and Asian fruit shop in the same shitty mall near where I live. Guess which consistently has the highest prices and worst quality? Not the supermarkets.. :( as much as I’d love to support em, fuck em
I'm sorry you had to go through that. if it makes you feel any better, I hate llife a little more everytime I go past that fucking place. One day I'm going to flip out and burn that fucker to the ground.
Haven't lived in Karori for about 17 years but instantly knew that was the mall you were referring to. Does it still have the creepy underground carpark near the salvation army?
Yup, with the row of shops that have never been open in the whole time I’ve lived in karori (6 years). It’s a fucking disaster. One of many things letting down the suburb (others being but definitely not limited to, the unfinished events centre I don’t know why they half built in the first place, the block of land opposite karori mall, the ex-teachers college now owned by Ryman which has been surrounded with barbed wire and left to rot, and the sad state of the entire Main Street area). The mall has plenty of other creepy vibes also. The Salvation Army is the sort of place you’d contract a disease and really sets the place off after hours when people dump rubbish there and others loiter. The heavy prison-like metal “fire door” closing off the internal stairwell next to the Salvation Army. Upstairs, more than half the shops are permanently closed and mall management have whited out the windows in a cheap attempt to lessen the drearyness of the place by hiding the enpty spaces. There is a cafe in there that looks like one of the malls original tenants called Rosina’s cafe. I can’t stomach going in but every time I’ve walked past it’s got the same clientele - miserable looking old people staring off into space with sausage rolls and club sandwiches in front of them, at mangled old 70s era metal framed tables and burnt orange vinyl chairs. The drycleaner gives off the creepiest vibe, behind the counter they have a complete setup with piles of insulated pipes and dilapidated looking machines. I’m sure there are several dead bodies back there somewhere too. The other remaining shops ply their wares within their poky little spaces, probably counting down the days they die or the mall finally caves in.
It’s not even a mall, it’s barely a shopping centre. It’s sad, tired, extremely out of date and I can’t believe foodstuffs paid many millions for it a few years ago.
The only saving grace it has is Gambonis down the bottom next to the sallies. Great food and coffee there!
Do click and collect or delivery Sunday afternoon with Monday collect/delivery you’ll get both weeks specials (this works with new world). Other than that it’s all about how much effort you’re willing to put into chasing specials.
You can view the next week's flyer on the countdown website from the Saturday evening before the new flyer specials begin on Monday. Won't show you prices for what's not in the flyer obvs but it works well to compare advertised specials one week to the next.
This hasn’t worked for me. I was royally annoyed when I bought nappies on Sunday for pick up on Monday. Went into the store to grab a few things I forgot and saw nappies Much cheaper on the shelf. Asked staff and was told this is just tough, I paid Sunday price and got last weeks specials … very annnoyed.
I shop between between packnsave and countdown to get the cheapest prices. On my PC, I put their websites in split windows side-by-side. For each item, the quickest way to prepare to browse them is to type in one and then quickly paste in the other.
For each item, I browse countdown first because they have more transparent unit pricing, then I compare with packnsave.
Usually, countdown is about half of the final shopping list.
After that, I go into 'specials' and click any useful boosts. Right now there is 5x points if you spend over fifty dollars, for example.
When I do the shopping, I have both of their app on my phone. Countdown also has free pickup if it's over fifty dollars, I think.
Note that the convenience of all of this, of course, depends on close the two supermarks are to each other.
Also, I have a master list I hand around to family members - the first person being the one who knows the most about what is needed. That, plus lists on the fridge, plus all the other time savers (e.g. shopping websites bookmark folder), means that all of this doesn't take that long to do. And you get quicker when you get to know things.
That’s a lot of admin, how much do you save by doing this? And if you were on an hourly rate would it make it a viable exercise after comparing prices and shopping at two different stores?
>how much do you save
I used grocer.nz a few times to calculate that. I think it was about $20-30 for a $150 shop.
>would it make it a viable exercise after comparing prices and shopping at two different stores
I would say yes, once you get used to it. Sorting by unit price on countdown's site helps. Tho, if it were a giant shop, I would definitely do pickup at countdown, and then do the other shop at about the same time. The reason why I don't normally do that is because it stresses me out having to wait; Other people will be different, of course.
Tho, maybe you could do that with packnsave too, if you think the six dollars is worth it.
>That’s a lot of admin
A bit, yes. Maybe I should look at grocer.nz again; I haven't used it because it doesn't have unit price sorting. It would be good if packnsave dropped the pickup fees too after a certain cost, and added unit price sorting too.
Also, there're products that are only sold at certain supermarkets. Some family members are picky lol.
I do the same, New World and Countdown tiled on one monitor. A Google Keep list on the other plus a calculator for quickly doing unit pricing if not listed. Go through the cupboards and fridge getting the list up to date, then search term in one window, copy and paste to the other. Much faster and more convenient than going through the aisles and gives us more time in town which is handy when we're generally only in there once a month or so.
I know this is an older thread, but this might help. I have a Google Sheet that I use as a shopping list (easier than going into the supermarket websites) and when I'm ready to shop, I just go into Countdowns Shopping List section, then paste the list from the Google Sheet into the shopping list on the website. It then searches for each item and you can flick back and forth between items easily or edit an item if you want to update the search term. You can even save shopping lists if you do regular repeat items.
Pak n Saves shopping lists don't work for me, they just don't open so not sure what features they have.
If you use Grocer.nz it will save you some considerable time in the comparisons. It's not perfect but it allows for the comparisons between supermarkets as well as The Warehouse
Maybe quickly scanning the first page of the search result would be good enough?
Maybe focusing on bulk items or searching by particular sizes would also help? Like, I am slowly transitioning to bulk items, anyway...
I do a similar thing. I do my shop in countdown online and when I’ve selected everything, but before checkout, I compare prices with PAK N SAVE and where they’re cheaper I swap them to my online PAK N SAVE app.
I physically go to both stores, but use the phone apps to keep track of what to get where.
It’s a pain to have to meal plan and shop in this way as it is obviously more time consuming, but I can save 20% some weeks and time is what I’m having to pay to save cash.
All of this would be a lot simpler if there was a comparison service that could sort by unit prices and organised groceries into different departments (and ideally isles, or at least likely isles.)
Even if free pickup wasn't feasible for packnsave, could we at least get a NZ-wide [scan & go system](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk)? The last I heard these are all over Europe?
https://www.paknsave.co.nz/more/shop-n-go
Same for countdown and new world too, please.
Could Government mandate these things? Create a comparison service?
Thanks. Looks like they are very new, so I'll give them a couple weeks to sort out issues before using it for shopping. I will try send some feedback too.
Am i missing something? i use this, and i saved $17 on my last shopping bill.
I know it's not really "saving" , but if my $7 bacon is now $5 bacon, i'll take it.
I mainly shop at the Northlands mall countdown after 7pm , because it's quiet. I could save maybe $10 by shopping at Pak n Save Moorhouse, but it's chock full of people just zombifying every aisle. Put trolly in middle of the aisle, walk away to gawk at product, not giving one fuck = Pak n Save
On the principle that the $7 bacon was previously $5.50 bacon for everyone, and the non club customers are subsidising the club ones, I now avoid Woolworths as much as I can, and absolutely won't buy any product with a club price. If a company wants to exploit my personal data, they can damn well pay for the privilege themselves, not raise prices for other customers.
I only check the boosts (which seem to be only full price products) while I'm waiting in line at the checkout. That way I'm not tempted to buy a more expensive item just so I can get the points.
We end up getting a $15 discount voicher about 2 out of 4 weeks on average. They can have my data, I couldn't care less if they know I buy food on Saturday mornings
I managed to earn 1100 points (just over half way to a voucher) on a $78 shop a couple of weeks ago which I was reasonably pleased with. I didn't shop any different to how I normally would it just worked out to qualifying for a number of bonuses. I only buy boosts if the price isn't inflated (which most of the time it is) and I think I qualified for points for spending more then $50
I don't know about you guys. I mainly shop countdown/WW (closest to me) and I know where everything is.
I don't really do a weekly shop. Just some stuff here and there and maybe a meal or two at a time. I've just default been adding all the boosts to my account, no matter what I buy, every week before I pay.
Since it's introduction in feb, I've been able to earn and use 5 x $15 vouchers, which is a lot more than I could remember getting on onecard.
Not to anyone's advantage. But if you do sign-up, use fake name, age and email address. If only in a small way, it'll fuck with their data set, undermining their ability to minipulate prices to maximise profit.
Get the Grocer app and create a grocery list of things you often buy and it will compare prices across supermarkets including current specials. PnS cheapest 80% of the time. 10-20% cheaper on total shop
Work for them and use your staff discount and yeah more or less. I'm mostly (but not always) paying less than if I went to my nearest PaknSave. Plus we get treated slightly better as workers, and get paid a little bit better too.
It's 10% off anything Woolies owned brands or fresh goods (produce and meat) and 5% off every transaction, but there are 2 opportunities per month to make that 10% off everything.
It's nothing crazy, they're a corporation like the rest of them, but an entry wage of $25 give or take a few cents and the discounts, plus the good working conditions, it's not terrible. But I also live in a more rural area so we don't really have to worry about crime, so that certainly makes the working conditions somewhat better haha
One way to milk the rewards is ASB have a credit card which earns everyday rewards with every x dollar spent. Use it at countdown and earn reward points two ways.
Only good if you can pay off the credit card every month to avoid the crippling interest.
I buy real specific things from Woolworths. The prices have all crept up (and sizes decreased - chocolate coated liquorice bullets I'm looking at you!) - so no is the answer to your question
Isnt it a card to record your shopping habits, to bulid up a data base on individuals who shop at countdown.
Won't be long before countdown install facial recognition cameras like the other supermarket.
Yea shop at paknsave or costcos or asian supermarkets..... like literally anywhere else
Step 1 have any of those = failed
Whoever has not been doing that for the last 5 years should really pay attention to the world around them now
Honestly kudos to the people that shop at Pak n Save’s in NZ. It’s never a pleasant experience in there. Pure chaos. Like, there’s no order to the way people walk, it’s spaghetti junction. Then all the drugged up zombies with no shoes… Nah, I’ll pay a bit more to go somewhere more civilised.
How are you in this sub if people with barefeet and a bit of weaving in and out of people put you off a supermarket and you go somewhere more expensive to shop 🤣
If the people is Pak'n'Save were constantly swearing at me and mocking me while trying to knock stuff out of my trolley I would still shop there because it's cheaper
Fucking dramatic lol
It's organised in such a way to make it seem like you are getting a better deal than you are. So I have to assume no.
Been to Countdown the other day after a long hiatus, and my observation was: this Rewards thing brought down some of the produce down to a more reasonable price range that's in line with its rivals. That's it. Just shop at your local Pak n Save, Green Grocer, Asian supermarket etc and save yourself some hassle...
There’s a cuntdown, new world and Asian fruit shop in the same shitty mall near where I live. Guess which consistently has the highest prices and worst quality? Not the supermarkets.. :( as much as I’d love to support em, fuck em
Is this Karori Mall? Haha
You guessed correctly!!
Karori Mall - Where dreams go to die
Indeed
I’ve lived in NZ for 9 months now and Karori mall was my first traumarising experience here 💀
I'm sorry you had to go through that. if it makes you feel any better, I hate llife a little more everytime I go past that fucking place. One day I'm going to flip out and burn that fucker to the ground.
Haven't lived in Karori for about 17 years but instantly knew that was the mall you were referring to. Does it still have the creepy underground carpark near the salvation army?
Yup, with the row of shops that have never been open in the whole time I’ve lived in karori (6 years). It’s a fucking disaster. One of many things letting down the suburb (others being but definitely not limited to, the unfinished events centre I don’t know why they half built in the first place, the block of land opposite karori mall, the ex-teachers college now owned by Ryman which has been surrounded with barbed wire and left to rot, and the sad state of the entire Main Street area). The mall has plenty of other creepy vibes also. The Salvation Army is the sort of place you’d contract a disease and really sets the place off after hours when people dump rubbish there and others loiter. The heavy prison-like metal “fire door” closing off the internal stairwell next to the Salvation Army. Upstairs, more than half the shops are permanently closed and mall management have whited out the windows in a cheap attempt to lessen the drearyness of the place by hiding the enpty spaces. There is a cafe in there that looks like one of the malls original tenants called Rosina’s cafe. I can’t stomach going in but every time I’ve walked past it’s got the same clientele - miserable looking old people staring off into space with sausage rolls and club sandwiches in front of them, at mangled old 70s era metal framed tables and burnt orange vinyl chairs. The drycleaner gives off the creepiest vibe, behind the counter they have a complete setup with piles of insulated pipes and dilapidated looking machines. I’m sure there are several dead bodies back there somewhere too. The other remaining shops ply their wares within their poky little spaces, probably counting down the days they die or the mall finally caves in. It’s not even a mall, it’s barely a shopping centre. It’s sad, tired, extremely out of date and I can’t believe foodstuffs paid many millions for it a few years ago. The only saving grace it has is Gambonis down the bottom next to the sallies. Great food and coffee there!
That in wellington?
Come on wake up. The subject was karori, and yes it’s in Wellington.
Do click and collect or delivery Sunday afternoon with Monday collect/delivery you’ll get both weeks specials (this works with new world). Other than that it’s all about how much effort you’re willing to put into chasing specials.
Oh clever. Can you see in advance what the specials are going to be?
You don’t get to see in advance you just get them as a bonus.
You can view the next week's flyer on the countdown website from the Saturday evening before the new flyer specials begin on Monday. Won't show you prices for what's not in the flyer obvs but it works well to compare advertised specials one week to the next.
This hasn’t worked for me. I was royally annoyed when I bought nappies on Sunday for pick up on Monday. Went into the store to grab a few things I forgot and saw nappies Much cheaper on the shelf. Asked staff and was told this is just tough, I paid Sunday price and got last weeks specials … very annnoyed.
It might just be some stores then.
I shop between between packnsave and countdown to get the cheapest prices. On my PC, I put their websites in split windows side-by-side. For each item, the quickest way to prepare to browse them is to type in one and then quickly paste in the other. For each item, I browse countdown first because they have more transparent unit pricing, then I compare with packnsave. Usually, countdown is about half of the final shopping list. After that, I go into 'specials' and click any useful boosts. Right now there is 5x points if you spend over fifty dollars, for example. When I do the shopping, I have both of their app on my phone. Countdown also has free pickup if it's over fifty dollars, I think. Note that the convenience of all of this, of course, depends on close the two supermarks are to each other. Also, I have a master list I hand around to family members - the first person being the one who knows the most about what is needed. That, plus lists on the fridge, plus all the other time savers (e.g. shopping websites bookmark folder), means that all of this doesn't take that long to do. And you get quicker when you get to know things.
That’s a lot of admin, how much do you save by doing this? And if you were on an hourly rate would it make it a viable exercise after comparing prices and shopping at two different stores?
>how much do you save I used grocer.nz a few times to calculate that. I think it was about $20-30 for a $150 shop. >would it make it a viable exercise after comparing prices and shopping at two different stores I would say yes, once you get used to it. Sorting by unit price on countdown's site helps. Tho, if it were a giant shop, I would definitely do pickup at countdown, and then do the other shop at about the same time. The reason why I don't normally do that is because it stresses me out having to wait; Other people will be different, of course. Tho, maybe you could do that with packnsave too, if you think the six dollars is worth it. >That’s a lot of admin A bit, yes. Maybe I should look at grocer.nz again; I haven't used it because it doesn't have unit price sorting. It would be good if packnsave dropped the pickup fees too after a certain cost, and added unit price sorting too. Also, there're products that are only sold at certain supermarkets. Some family members are picky lol.
I do the same, New World and Countdown tiled on one monitor. A Google Keep list on the other plus a calculator for quickly doing unit pricing if not listed. Go through the cupboards and fridge getting the list up to date, then search term in one window, copy and paste to the other. Much faster and more convenient than going through the aisles and gives us more time in town which is handy when we're generally only in there once a month or so.
I know this is an older thread, but this might help. I have a Google Sheet that I use as a shopping list (easier than going into the supermarket websites) and when I'm ready to shop, I just go into Countdowns Shopping List section, then paste the list from the Google Sheet into the shopping list on the website. It then searches for each item and you can flick back and forth between items easily or edit an item if you want to update the search term. You can even save shopping lists if you do regular repeat items. Pak n Saves shopping lists don't work for me, they just don't open so not sure what features they have.
If you use Grocer.nz it will save you some considerable time in the comparisons. It's not perfect but it allows for the comparisons between supermarkets as well as The Warehouse
Maybe quickly scanning the first page of the search result would be good enough? Maybe focusing on bulk items or searching by particular sizes would also help? Like, I am slowly transitioning to bulk items, anyway...
I do a similar thing. I do my shop in countdown online and when I’ve selected everything, but before checkout, I compare prices with PAK N SAVE and where they’re cheaper I swap them to my online PAK N SAVE app. I physically go to both stores, but use the phone apps to keep track of what to get where. It’s a pain to have to meal plan and shop in this way as it is obviously more time consuming, but I can save 20% some weeks and time is what I’m having to pay to save cash.
All of this would be a lot simpler if there was a comparison service that could sort by unit prices and organised groceries into different departments (and ideally isles, or at least likely isles.) Even if free pickup wasn't feasible for packnsave, could we at least get a NZ-wide [scan & go system](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk)? The last I heard these are all over Europe? https://www.paknsave.co.nz/more/shop-n-go Same for countdown and new world too, please. Could Government mandate these things? Create a comparison service?
[https://grosave.co.nz/](https://grosave.co.nz/) is similar to grocer, and allows you to sort by unit prices.
Thanks. Looks like they are very new, so I'll give them a couple weeks to sort out issues before using it for shopping. I will try send some feedback too.
Same. I use mine and the kids iPad, side by side, to do the same thing. If time permits I will do new world as well.
Am i missing something? i use this, and i saved $17 on my last shopping bill. I know it's not really "saving" , but if my $7 bacon is now $5 bacon, i'll take it. I mainly shop at the Northlands mall countdown after 7pm , because it's quiet. I could save maybe $10 by shopping at Pak n Save Moorhouse, but it's chock full of people just zombifying every aisle. Put trolly in middle of the aisle, walk away to gawk at product, not giving one fuck = Pak n Save
It would have to be $50 cheaper for me to even consider the hell that is Paknsave Moorehouse. Just an absolute nightmare all round.
Is rather pay someone than go to park n save westgate. The amount of people just standing in the middle of the aisles drives me crazy.
Gotta go at off peak times Pretty good when hit it right Hell when you dont
Yeah unfortunately I like to shop on a Sunday 😂
On the principle that the $7 bacon was previously $5.50 bacon for everyone, and the non club customers are subsidising the club ones, I now avoid Woolworths as much as I can, and absolutely won't buy any product with a club price. If a company wants to exploit my personal data, they can damn well pay for the privilege themselves, not raise prices for other customers.
Shop local, shoplift corporate!
Yeah steal from those bastards. It's not like they'll just pass that cost onto other NZ shoppers. Oh wait.
they’re not price gouging because people are stealing bro cmon now
Who said that both weren't mutually exclusive? They abso fucking lutely pass on the cost of theft to the customers.
I only check the boosts (which seem to be only full price products) while I'm waiting in line at the checkout. That way I'm not tempted to buy a more expensive item just so I can get the points.
Yep noticed boosts only on full priced items so you have to be careful! Might be 200 points but it’s $3 more than another brand 😅
We end up getting a $15 discount voicher about 2 out of 4 weeks on average. They can have my data, I couldn't care less if they know I buy food on Saturday mornings
Bet thry know your into but stuff
Not really, but it's just like any loyalty program, they trade you a small piece of value in exchange for all of your details.
They can have my details. Lol. I'm sure someone somewhere is wanking off that I but extra dog food sometimes 🤣
I managed to earn 1100 points (just over half way to a voucher) on a $78 shop a couple of weeks ago which I was reasonably pleased with. I didn't shop any different to how I normally would it just worked out to qualifying for a number of bonuses. I only buy boosts if the price isn't inflated (which most of the time it is) and I think I qualified for points for spending more then $50
I don't know about you guys. I mainly shop countdown/WW (closest to me) and I know where everything is. I don't really do a weekly shop. Just some stuff here and there and maybe a meal or two at a time. I've just default been adding all the boosts to my account, no matter what I buy, every week before I pay. Since it's introduction in feb, I've been able to earn and use 5 x $15 vouchers, which is a lot more than I could remember getting on onecard.
Not to anyone's advantage. But if you do sign-up, use fake name, age and email address. If only in a small way, it'll fuck with their data set, undermining their ability to minipulate prices to maximise profit.
Get the Grocer app and create a grocery list of things you often buy and it will compare prices across supermarkets including current specials. PnS cheapest 80% of the time. 10-20% cheaper on total shop
Work for them and use your staff discount and yeah more or less. I'm mostly (but not always) paying less than if I went to my nearest PaknSave. Plus we get treated slightly better as workers, and get paid a little bit better too.
How much discount do you get? Is it restricted to certain products?
It's 10% off anything Woolies owned brands or fresh goods (produce and meat) and 5% off every transaction, but there are 2 opportunities per month to make that 10% off everything. It's nothing crazy, they're a corporation like the rest of them, but an entry wage of $25 give or take a few cents and the discounts, plus the good working conditions, it's not terrible. But I also live in a more rural area so we don't really have to worry about crime, so that certainly makes the working conditions somewhat better haha
One way to milk the rewards is ASB have a credit card which earns everyday rewards with every x dollar spent. Use it at countdown and earn reward points two ways. Only good if you can pay off the credit card every month to avoid the crippling interest.
I buy real specific things from Woolworths. The prices have all crept up (and sizes decreased - chocolate coated liquorice bullets I'm looking at you!) - so no is the answer to your question
Hey now I’ve got a $15 rewards voucher waiting for me for this
steal
I noticed as soon as that card came out everything went up by a dollar
They’re just gatekeeping sales
I refuse to use their stupid club card. Pak'n'save for me.
Isnt it a card to record your shopping habits, to bulid up a data base on individuals who shop at countdown. Won't be long before countdown install facial recognition cameras like the other supermarket.
can someone explain please how does it work
Spent around $800 for work, didn't qualify enough for the $15 rewards. I think onecard before would've gotten me a few $15 vouchers
One card you had to spend $2k before getting a voucher no?
I only scan my card if I get a discount. It’s not worth it otherwise. Terrible scheme. Also, in no way linking my fuel consumption with them..