Freezer Favourites £5 Member Price / £6 Non Members - Peas, Chips, Ice Cream, Fish Fingers, Fish Steaks

Heat from me, nice to see it back to £5!

The member prices / rewards cards really do my nut in.

Would you all like to hear my latest Co-op freezer deal shopping experience? You would? Oh, okay, if you insist...

I swapped out three of the 'main' items for some of the substitutes. I suppose you're now going to ask me to specify which ones. (Sigh). Okay, I will, although may I respectfully venture to suggest that you need to seek more fulfilment in life if such a topic holds so much interest for you? I got the Birds Eye 10 Cod Fish Fingers (280g), primarily for the extra 56g of fish and breadcrumbs, went supersize with the Co-op peas, and purchased the spiced wedges, sacrificing 100g of potato for enhanced flavour. I would have also got the Youngs Chip Shop Cod Fillets (400g), but they weren't a stock line, so I had to go with those greasy fish steaks (at half the weight) which are now a mainstay of the fish & chips deal, when once it was 400g packs of 'proper' battered fish.

Okay? Satisfied? Good, perhaps now I can get on with the rest of my post. After all, this is where it gets really interesting. The total should have been £4.75 (75p of which was for a price-reduced pack of closed cup chestnut mushrooms) - £1 off the deal price for Co-op members, and two 50p off app coupons.

Yet, to my great astonishment, dismay and embarassment, the price came up at £5.75. The coupons had been applied, but not the £1 off for members. What devilry was this? I can only surmise that 'the system' refused to knock the quid off because of the substitute items, even though technically, they are still included in the deal.

The checkout operator was on her own, and the queue behind me was growing (although I'm sure the other customers were more than happy to continue shifting their weight from one foot to the other while I attempted to get another nugget off). She came up with a workaround, more to get rid of me than out of a genuine desire to help. I paid £5 cash, which she entered as £6, and she gave me 25p change. This would have skewed the cash reconciliation, but I'm sure Co-op can take the hit in the interests of customer satisfaction.

She suggested I contact customer services about the member's discount not being automatically processed, but I'm not sure I can be bothered, to be honest. I'm not the kind of dull, friendless saddo who is prepared to spend a disproportionate amount of time addressing something as trivial as a failure to apply a £1 discount to a frozen meal deal. I mean, come on!

All my silliness and general joshery aside, do be aware that if you get substitute items in this deal, the £1 member discount may not be applied.

On a related note, I've noticed that my local store no longer keeps the 'contingency' list on the shop floor (they used to place it on a fixture by the freezers). I reckon they cottoned on to the fact that 'savvy' shoppers like me were casting their beady eyes on it. Co-op do seem to be a bit secretive about the whole thing. When I first mentioned the list to a staff member, they seemed quite surprised that I knew anything about it, like I'd somehow tapped into some secret knowledge. I know that, technically, it is an internal staff-only document to be used when one or more of the 'main' items is/are out of stock, but, as I've pointed before on these hallowed pages, there are occasions when a customer has a legitimate need to choose an alternative, e.g. a vegetarian wanting the plant-based nuggets instead of the chicken ones (in a different deal from this, obviously). If a suitable alternative appears on the subs list, the customer should be able to know this without having to ask a staff member who may be too busy, indifferent or ignorant (in the nicest possible sense) to find out.

That's my tuppence worth, anyway. I'd be interested to see a post from a current or former employee explaining what the deal is with the list, especially if the store they work/worked in is one where they are/were quite cagey about it. I'm sure that it varies from store to store, however, and that some are quite happy to leave the list where customers can see it.

I hope you enjoyed my little story, in which case you will be delighted to know that there's plenty more where that came from...