Unfair Grocery Prices.

I've noticed some price reduction at the grocery store my son works at. No, it isn't an employee discount. The bagged salad when down from $1.99 to $1.29. Milk is still ridiculously high though.

Too late now the gas price took a huge hike Wednesday and it's on the rise again. The price of oil went up so I'm sure the price of grocerys will not come down. It's not fair and I totally agree with you. Thank You my friend.

You would think so, but I doubt it. They will just run better sales. Kelloggs is still going to raise the prices on their cereal, so the stores will be raising them too.

Well it is the same here Heather we are waiting for things to come down in price to

Hello! Here in India we are facing lot of problems because of rising prices of all items including fruits and vegetables.About 50% of the workforce earn two to three dollars a day.For them it is difficult to provide two square meals to their family.They are the worst effected people of this financial crisis.thanx.

You are really an optimist/ I jhave never prices of essential commodities falling after their rise following the gas price rise. Gas prices might fall but like the min-max thermometer's mas index lock they are stuck there!

Yes in time they will decrease but not to the level they were prior to the last hike in prices. There are a few reasons why they will not decrease in the short term and one of the big ones is stocks that they have on hand plus the forward supply contracts that they signed. For example my partner and I have a small organic farmlet where we grow fruit and vegetables and one of our customers is a supermarket chain. It is summer here in Australia and so our products are being delivered to the customers at the present time. The first deliveries went out to the supermarket in December and the last ones will be March or April. The actual contract is for the end of March but if we have extra produce then they could take some the following month. Because of lead times and planting schedules, the contract was signed in early September when prices were high. Yes we already had some seedlings in then and while they were not specifically for this customer, we had been talking to them so planted in anticipation. At the time we signed that contract, fuel prices were still high and in fact rising on a regular basis. Also our costs had increased considerably over the previous year so there was an reasonable increase in the price we were prepared to supply them for. No, we don't actually gain much because the price of fuel has dropped because for a start we had already filled our on-farm fuel tanks plus bought all that we needed to grow the crop so our expenses had to be covered. We had agreed that we would deliver the produce to the supermarket warehouse and the cost for that us factred into the price. The only "gain" for us is that we will be able to deliver the produce to them cheaper, freight wise, than we would have say 6 months ago. However the supermarket will still be selling our produce in April and at a 'higher' purchase price. Yes they do make a profit on what they get from us (and evey other supplier) so they might reduce the price a little but somehow I doubt it as they too have expenses. Now I am only talking about one small section of what they sell but the same would be throughout the entire range of products. Generally supermarkets buy goods at a contracted price for a certain amount of time which might be 3,6 or 12 months or anywhere in between. You can guarantee that Kimberly Clark toilet paper and Kraft foods made sure they got a decent price for their goods and they too would have allowed for the increasing fuel prices. So the supermarket is still paying that higher price to all their contracted suppliers. Yes what they bought last year while the fuel prices were skyrocketing was at the probably cheaper old contract rate for the goods but their freight costs would have increased considerably. This is not meant to justify what the supermarkets do but simply to explain how and why these things happen.

I really don't think prices will decrease that much because gas prices are starting to go back up. They're already saying don't count on these low gas prices to stay and I've already seen prices jump back up 20 cents or more so I'm not sure if grocery prices will ever reduce.

Here in Japan prices are still high, some things because of the season veggies etc but some things are crazy. Fortually I got lucky that a large dicount supermarket has recently opened near my house, not only are they cheap for daily items like milk and bread but they have pushed the other supermarkets to make more specials. Still feeding a family of six, which include 2 teenage sons who think nothing of eating a full meal then declaring they are starving a couple of hours later and a husband on a special diet because of kidney failure takes a lot of creativity with the budget!! Jacks

Yes I do agree with you whiteheather. Plus I think another reason they raise their prices is just an excuse to keep them there so they can make more money. These business people are so into making that buck that they don't care who it hurts and yet they say they give back to the community. Yeah right! We ARE the community so they should let us decide where it should go to by lowering the prices back to where they were before the gas prices went up. But you and I both know that isn't going to happen because they like being in control.

No I don't if anything they go up or if some reson they go down that is because March sells. cd

An economist on TV said that it would take at least 6 months for stores to do that. This would be assuming the prices were still low for gas at that time.

No I dont and I even look for gas to go back up Time will tell!

This is the complaint I make LOUDLY every time I am at the grocery store to every manager I see. I realize they can't do anything about it, that the price gouging policy comes from he corporate office, but I still feel a little better after publicly griping. I don't think the prices will ever go down, unless some watch dog group decides to make an issue of it, and they should!

I doubt that they will unless there is competition and they feel more people will go elsewhere.

they should but I am really started to doubt it . for just the last couple of months I have noticed a change in our bill and look at what we have and feel like haveing a fit!

The box's are suppose to smaller, so we are getting less and we are going to have pay more money. They are cutting back the amounts, the servings. I also read online that Kellogs is not the only cereal maker who is raising prices....ugh

I doubt it. What happens is that they have to get rid of the old stock, and what happens is when the gas went high, they marked the remaining stock at the new higher price and when the gas starts to go down, they keep that price since they expect the gas to go up again. So when the new stock comes in, they will keep the revised prices. The only way is if the gas runs out and the price of oil has gone done and it is permanent.

That's exactly what I was saying to my daughter when we were in the grocery store the other day. Now in my area gas prices are on their way back up so I expect grocery prices to go up even higher. I HOPE I'm wrong, but I'll bet I'm not. Annie

Yes these grocery stores seem to want the best of two worlds .They immediately increase the prices of groceries when gas prices increase and by a greater percentage than the actual percentage increase in gas prices .Whets even worse is that they often do it on old stock that wouldn’t have been affected because they paid for those stocks at the old price for gas. Yet months after gas prices have fallen by more than fifty percent and they have kept prices high or reduce it by miniscule amounts. Consequently they make enormous amounts on the upswing and down swing in the price of gas. These grocery stores are like blood sucking vampires who have no civic responsibility for the hardship facing its consumers and supporters. They don’t realize that if they suck money from consumers through high prices will result in persons buying less groceries and may even cause persons to rely more on food from their own backyard and neither of these would be favorable for their bottom line.