Valid points Paul. We noticed this when we used the Asda 'click and collect' service. Prices going up and up. We started shopping at Aldi again a few weeks ago and have noticed that their prices are going up too. Still cheaper than Asda etc. We're still lucky that we are both mobile and can jump in the car and shop around, some aren't so lucky 

The cheap own-brand goods are not always worth buying. We bought "The Greengrocer" sweetcorn and we couldn't get rid of it fast enough. Absolutely tasteless. We went back to Birds Eye sweetcorn and loved the full flavour. I don't know how you can grow sweetcorn wrong?

Although we find Sainsburys overall pretty expensive against other supermarkets, and their stock control is not the best, I will say that they are doing a good job of holding their petrol prices down. I filled up with super-unleaded yesterday at 155.9p/litre when everywhere else is almost into the 170p range.  As I have to fill up twice a week this is their most important price for me.

I can understand prices rising.  After all, we're only customers and it's the shareholders who are important, but it's the "under the radar" way they're attempting it, like putting the price up, putting it on special, and then reintroducing it at an even higher price.  That's why I highlighted the peach tea.  That's gone up by exactly a third, 33.33% over the course of five or six weeks.  And the other method, removing "cheap" alternatives, thereby forcing the customer to buy more expensive items.  As Marting pointed out, some of the absolute basic lines are awful, but you'll find just as many that are quite tasty, and some people don't always have the option of "going back to Birds Eye."

There are people who, even a few months ago, were having to strike a very fine balance between heating and eating as the saying goes.  For some, it was even a choice of one or the other.  With energy bills soaring, and supermarket prices doing the same, it's going to be a lot worse while UK-listed companies reported a combined £7.2bn in dividends and share buybacks last June, and in February this year it was reported that the UK Big Six energy firms made more than £1bn in profit ahead of this latest price hike.  My direct debit arrangement with British Gas went up by 25% this month, and I dread to think what's to come, as (like Mike) I spend longer and longer online trying to keep the price of my grocery deliveries down.


Sainsbury's Scottish Smoked Salmon 300g is another casualty.  I used to be able to get (Price Matched with Asda again) 300g of Sainsbury's Scottish Smoked Salmon for £4.49.  That's vanished over the last couple of months and the closest equivalent is aga Sainsbury's Scottish Smoked Salmon, but now it's 200g for £5.75 - which they're advertising as a "Price Drop" - or slightly cheaper per gram is their Harbour Smokehouse Salmon at £2.50 for 100g, both of which are a mile away from the £1.50 per 100g I was paying.  I daresay the "Smokehouse" will go next.  It's these stealth methods of either putting my bill up or denying me something I enjoyed regularly, that I object to.  Not only that, but smoked salmon is healthy as well as tasty.  That 300g pack sufficed for two dinners (with blinis and a salad for instance), and at least one breakfast with scrambled or poached eggs, two if I eked it out.  Now the gap is being filled with something that's not necessarily as good for me.  Another downside which, I must admit, has only just occurred to me.

Also, it might sound blindingly obvious when said out loud, but in choosing an alternative for something I'll probably have no clue what that alternative cost last week, or last month.  My "reasonable" alternative might, in fact, have other customers saying "I'm not buying it at that price." 

The list goes on.

We have an Aldi, Asda, 2 Tescos, and an M&S Foodstore all within a 10 minute drive from our house. No Sainsbury. Waitrose, or Morrison nearby.
My missus was always a Tesco shopper until Aldi arrived, now that's where most of our shopping comes from with the occasional goceries from M&S.

We have Lidl, Aldi, Tesco, Morrisons, Co-op, Asda and Sainsburys all within a short drive away. Sainsburys is closest, gives Nectar points and has fuel so that's our regular one.

<Sainsburys algorithm chunters and produces the result Slinger wants...>

I'm going to burn all my Russian paper in oil caps

I've actually got a set of pickups on a Strat I rebuilt to David Gilmour specs (or as close as I could get it without taking out a mortgage) that were hand-wound by a guy in Russia (Moscow in fact) who does brilliant work. I shall not be burning them. 

Prices going higher courtesy of Putin