Ever spotted a product in the shops and thought to yourself, "I'm sure that was cheaper the other day"? Well, I think this a lot in the supermarket and caught myself thinking this regarding the price of Quality Street and Roses chocolates around about this time last year and vowed to revisit this topic this year, just to make sure I wasn't imaging things.

Around about September this year I noticed Sainsbury's wheel out the pallets of tins of Roses and Quality Street chocolates in preparation for Christmas and was instantly reminded of my thoughts form the year before so started taking note. Given we were still a long way from Christmas, the Quality Street and Roses 1kg tins (975g in the case of Roses) were priced at the astronomical price of £10 a tin. But, and there's always a but, they were BOGOF (buy-one-get-one-free) so in fact were only really £5 each; no one was going to only buy one tin when they could get another free. Within a couple of weeks they were all sold out (or were they?).

A couple weeks later they reappeared, this time priced individually at £5 each. I noted this and thought, "I bet those will go up as we approach Christmas". Well, I think I should have given BetFair a call back then as sure enough, they have indeed gone up. They are now £6 a tin..

Quality Street 1kg Tin
Roses 975g Tin

Yes, that's a whopping 20% increase in price, but as they were originally being sold at £10 a tin, Sainsbury's haven't done anything illegal here. Dishonest, possibly, but certainly nothing illegal. They do like to point out that you are making a whopping saving of £4 a tin which on the face of it sounds like a bargain, but when you consider you could have had these for a fiver a tin in September, that £4 saving doesn't sound quite so appealing does it?

Given we're just over a week away from Christmas, I'm anticipating the price of these to rise once again next week. £7 a tin? Maybe £8? Who knows, they may even pump them right back up to the "advertised" £10 a tin on Christmas eve. We'll have to wait and see. I'll certainly be keeping my eye on the price and will report back any price changes.

If there's a take-away message here, it's you must always buy your Christmas luxuries and nice-to-haves months before Christmas; you'll save a fortune.

Oh yes, and Sainsbury's aren't alone in this practice. All the supermarkets do it, I just happen to shop in Sainsbury's every week so noticed when they did it.