Lewes Forum thread

Crossing Tesco's car park this morning, I noticed that there are new signs, reducing the maximum parking time from 3 hours to 2 hours. "New" in the sense that I haven't noticed them before, but they look just like the old ones until you look carefully. Anyone know how long they have been up?
This, they say, is for our convenience. We have told them there is sometimes not enough parking, so this will free some up.
Am I being too cynical in suspecting that their real motive is to slime out of their obligation, accepted as a condition of the planning permission for their Lewes store, to provide parking for Lewes shoppers as well as Tesco shoppers? 2 hours is longer than anyone sane would want to spend in their supermarket, but not long for someone wanting to shop in the High Street. They tried to make the parking there "Tesco customers only" a few years ago, but were called to account. Will they get away with it this time?
If they REALLY wanted to provide more parking, they have the land, they have the planning permission and they have demolished the old industrial units at the end of Brooks Road to make more spaces. They are just choosing to keep all that land derelict.
"Every little helps". Helps Tesco, they mean.

I think that the new signage is part & parcel of the revamp & redecoration of the whole store.

I'd rather spend 2 hours in Tescos then looking at cr@p in our poxy hight street

The 3hour parking is useful if you need to go to the Doctors-Bank ect
it was in the planning conditions, they should go back to the planning committee if they want to change the time to 2 hours.

Tesco seem to be having numeracy problems at the moment. The other day I saw an 'offer' on some bottled water. 1 for £1 or 2 for £3. I kid you not.

If anyone wants to park and shop in the high street then they should pay and display somewhere else and leave the Tesco car park for genuine customers only.

If you don't like the way Tesco do business just stay away ferchristssake!

Asda has loads of free parking and full shelves of so much more stuff !!

Jack ,
How long have you been working for tesco ? Or is there another reason for your apologists support for tesco. There is a lot wrong with supermarkets but they are a fact if life. One can shop in them and still be critical.

Anyone stupid enough to pay £1 for a bottle of water deserves all they get.
I used to pay 17p for 2 litres. I only buy it because it is fizzy, and I wouldn't want to pay much more. But Tesco stopped selling it, and I have not shopped there since. I currently pay 25p at Aldi.

PS UK inflation 2.8% yet tesco have increased the price of their apple turnovers ( Yes! apple turnovers) from £1 last week now £1.20, i am rubbuish at maths but thats 20% increase. I rather shop in waitrose, it will cost me , i dont expect to make savings but the food quality is good. For all the non food items there is Aldi.

Drink tap water !

I've just spoken to the store manager. There's no change to the hours allowed for parking at the store. She says that new signs have gone up in the car park as part of the new signage. These are standard (2 hour) signs used in other Tesco stores. The free parking time shown on them at the Lewes store will be amended to 3 hours.

Padster. I have no connection with Tesco at all. I get fed up with people complaining about Tesco irevelences and everyone else joining in just because it's trendy. A while ago it was Bills. Who is next? I dont like Aldi so maybe I will start a thread about that and see how many sheep follow. Tesco is no better and no worse than any other supermarket.

Went in earlier to lewes tesco and a bottle of flavoured water was 62p or you could get 2 bottles for £2 - I mentioned it to a shelf filler (in a shirt and tie)and he just said yes I know lots are wrong. I did suggest the he removes the label to avoid confusion to customers !!

oops re last link

Tesco, like Boots, are tax dodgers. That means we have to pay more.

If there was no Tesco, there would be less competition, prices would go up and we would have to pay more.....

If there were less tescos there would be more competition and lower prices surely?

And how do you work that out Padster!

Because Tescos work quite hard to eliminate the competition, Rose. I remember the effect on my local high street when Sainsburys opened a supermarket. Within six months our bakery (proper bread baked overnight), three wet fishmongers, four or five greengrocers and four butchers had closed. One butcher remained, but they succeeded by undercutting the supermarket prices until they were inspected by the council and their hygiene condemned.

The only real competition anyone can offer is opening another supermarket which either offers better quality (Waitrose) or cheaper, like Aldi. I think Tesco has really taken its eye off the ball recently, and the quality of the goods is just not as good as it used to be, and I think Aldi is doing a great job of offering an affordable alternative. It's up to us, the consumer, to vote with our feet and go somewhere else, and the big five have a clear policy of limiting our choices.

You actually illustrate my point SQ. You say that the butcher only succeeded by undercutting the supermarket, therefore if there had been no supermarket the butchers would have continued charging higher prices, along with all the other shops. No supermarket = less competition = higher prices. What would happen to the prices of bread, meat etc.. in Lewes shops if the supermarkets disappeared overnight. Are you seriously telling me that they would go down?

Lifestyles have changed, We all seem a lot busier and a lot less social than we did 30 years ago. Back then, mum had time to do the shopping in the high street 3 times a week whilst hubby was at work and kids at school.
Now, many mums have to work to pay mortgages etc and just don't get the time to browse the high street. As a result, a nice, out of town supermarket where you can get all your weekly shop in an hour is much more preferable.
Make the most of it because in another 30 years time, there'll be no high street, no tescos no nothing....it'll all be done on line

There used to be lots of competition in a busy high street with different bakers, grocers all competing. Even now High Street shops can be cheaper than supermarkets.
When I was a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere in the late 60s we had a visiting butcher and fishmonger once a week and daily delivery from a local baker. In some ways we are going back to a similar system with online shopping whether it be for veg boxes or supermarket deliveries.
We need to support our High street with its mix of multiples and local shops and stop whining about lifestyle shops. They are there because shopping habits have changed and the supermarket has become the 'normal' shop. NOT because they have usurped 'normal' shops. These shops often employ local people. Some like Bills or Russell and Bromley become successful multiples.
I hope that Clintons, S&S and Julian Graves are occupied soon.

I think that's a perception rather than a fact, Rose. What certainly does happen is that supermarkets undercut the local opposition until it's been closed down, but after that? I don't think it's necessarily true that, for example, the prices in a local greengrocer would be that different. However those shops are now so rare it's difficult to know for sure.

What actually happens, I think, is that somewhere like Richards survives because people want a proper butchers and pay more for it, but that's because the supermarkets have closed the rest down. The situation would be quite different without the supermarkets, but I don't think you can say that the shops would have continued to charge higher prices necessarily.

I do agree though that shopping habits have changed. Once upon a time you'd go to the market/high street and all the shops you wanted were near each other so it was easy to go from stall to shop. Now many people do their shopping after work and want to do it all in one place - but who's to say that the old local shops would not have adapted to that, given a chance?

I do pretty much all of my shopping in supermarkets. I can't imagine now not doing that, but they are, in their own way, quite anti-competitive and I'm very aware of that. (Plus I don't like Tescos, for all the reasons I've given before....!)

My old man used to tell me about a place he lived where, if a kid went into the dairy, the woman used to take their money, ask them what they wanted, and if they didn't have it give them something she did have.

Well Rose, as SQ says, but to be clear , if you have too many of the one supermarket then you have a monopoly so less tesco means more plurality.
I think Rose you are very price conscious and fair enough but i like to think that just chasing the cheapest prices affects food quality , and animal welfare and the little people who do the producing ( by little i mean wield less power than the conglomerate that is tesco) I am not suggesting i have all the answers i just feel companies like tesco are shortsighted and chase profits only, anything else is irrelevant to them. So to recap less tesco more choice( other supermarkets / local convenience stores) better competition.
As for high street traders they offered a fair price, they are undercut by the fact that big supermarkets squeeze price throughout the supply chain ( remember the milk farmers last week good on them I say) I don't remember my local butcher driving around in a Rolls Royce but i do remember locally sourced fresh meat as the norm. great days. As they say you cant stop progress it just depends on what we think progress is?

Hang on SQ, Padster, you are both missing a fairly obvious point. Your ideas may well hold some water if Tescos had never existed, but unfortunatley they do exist. You cannot change that. They are therefore a part of the equation and any lovely ideas about what the state of local shops would be if they weren't is really irrelevant. If Tesco went bust tomorrow, you would find that prices in other supermarkets and local shops would increase because they would not have to keep up with Tesco. I am not saying that butchers would be driving around in Rolls Royces, just that they would be charging a higher price than they are now. Had Tesco never existed, then one of the other big supermarkets would be in the market position that Tesco are in now. If none of the supermarkets had existed we would be buying everything from small local shops and prices would be still higher. The simple fact is, as I said to start with in my reply to Clifford, if there was no Tesco, we would all be paying more. You cannot even say that buying direct from the producer would be cheaper - look at the price of milk!