Episode 10 Rip Off Britain

There's a lot we don't know about the food on our plates

and the shops and the labels don't always tell you the whole story.

Sometimes, there's just too many offers

and when you really look at them, you're not really saving that much.

Whether you're staying in or going out, you've told us

you can feel ripped off by the promises made for what you eat

and what you pay for it.

If you buy six, it's cheaper.

But I don't want to buy six, I want to buy one.

From claims that don't stack up

to the secrets behind the packaging,

we'll uncover the truth about Britain's food,

so you can be sure you're getting what you expect at the right price.

Your food, your money. This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain

and our special series on food and drink.

Today, we're looking, in particular,

at how to get the best value for money,

and if you fancy you've got a keen eye for a bargain,

well, get ready to meet a true master of the art,

a woman who has slashed the cost of her weekly shop

and she's going to be letting us into the secret

of exactly how she does it.

Believe me, you certainly do not want to miss that, nor do I.

And if you follow her example,

it really is extraordinary how much you could actually save.

As ever, we'll also be getting answers on some of the topics

you've asked us to investigate on your behalf

and we'll be identifying plenty of other ways

to make sure you're getting the best deal

instead of paying over the odds.

Because we know, from all of the letters and emails that you send us,

just how important it is for you to come away from any purchase

or shopping trip feeling that you paid a fair price

and that you're getting your money's worth.

So, we've got plenty of tips on the way to help you decide

when it really IS worth splashing out on something

and when, perhaps, it might not be.

Coming up, the booze cruise is back,

but how much does nipping over to France

to stock up on drinks really save?

Today, I've probably saved in the region of about £100,

probably a bit more, but about that.

Today, we must have saved a good few hundred quid.

It's been worth the trip and it's a good fun day out.

And hampers chock full of delicious goodies

may seem the perfect gift, but how much could you save

if you bought the treats inside on their own

without the fancy packaging?

The individual items are very rarely worth the amount

you're being asked to pay as part of a hamper.

Now, who wouldn't want to reduce the cost of their weekly shop?

But forget the special offers and promotions.

According to the woman we're about to meet,

there's a much better way to make some serious savings.

Her method is simple and, indeed, some of you may already be doing it

up to a point, but I bet most of you don't go to the lengths she does.

So, if you follow her example

and have a bit of space to spare in your freezer,

here's how you, too, really could be quids in.

This mobile phone footage is graphic proof

of just how far some people will go to grab a bargain.

You're unlikely to see shoppers scrabbling and scrapping

over cut-price meat like this every day,

but wherever you shop, you will spot eager bargain-hunters

descending on the cheapest part of the supermarket, the reduced aisle,

to see which foods are being marked down in price,

sometimes from pounds to pennies, including this lot.

Yes, I do. I look for some reduced, if possible, to save money.

Some branded pizzas should be about £5.

Sometimes they go down to half-price.

Probably on the meat counters, when they reduce the...

And fish, usually on a Saturday after the Friday.

Asda's good. They sell, like, five packs of doughnuts

for about 5p, don't they?

Whether the items have been reduced

because they're approaching their use-by date, are seasonal,

or are in damaged packaging, the bargains can be massive.

While it used to be the case that the best reductions could be grabbed

just before the stores closed, with so many supermarkets now open late

or even round-the-clock, that's all changed.

And that's a development which former lorry driver Ilona Richards

from Lincolnshire is happy to exploit.

She likes to keep every aspect of her life in tiptop condition,

so when it comes to her food shopping,

it's not just the calories she's counting, it's the pennies too.

It's very important for me to keep track of how much money

I spend on food, so I'm constantly looking for reductions,

I'm looking for bargains, special offers,

in every single shop I go in.

And she's become so successful at finding discounts

that Ilona, who dubs herself the Mean Queen,

says she rarely spends more than £15 a week on food,

without compromising on quality.

That doesn't mean that you eat rubbish.

I like to play around with the food that I've bought which is cheap.

I don't go with a shopping list and I will buy whatever is cheap

and then make something from that.

So, Ilona has perfected the art of maximising those markdowns

and, as a result, every week, she brings home some big bargains.

It's not very often you get bargains like this, is it?

But I know where to look for them.

There's 1.75kg of potatoes

reduced from £1.50 to 15p.

Now, that's a fantastic bargain!

I've got seven of these in my freezer.

I was really lucky to find these in the supermarket.

They'd been reduced to 50p.

Now, normal price is around about £2,

but I thought I'd got a real bargain there

and I'm really chuffed with that.

To be honest, it's like a game and it's a game that I want to win.

Ilona reckons that, over the years,

she's saved herself thousands of pounds.

To demonstrate how she does it, we've set her a challenge.

We've given her a total of £20 and asked her to see

how many marked-down prices she can find for under a fiver

in the local branch of each of the biggest four supermarkets -

Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons -

and Ilona has a well-honed strategy.

Whenever I go in a supermarket, no matter what supermarket it is,

I know where the reduced sections are

and that will be my first port of call.

But bagging the best bargains isn't as simple as it might seem.

Shop too early and the reductions may be thin on the ground.

Most supermarkets cut their prices more as the day goes on.

But leave it too late

and all the best offers may have been snapped up.

I would expect to get 90% off if I go shopping after 7.30.

But it really depends how much there is.

You can never guarantee that there is going to be a lot of bargains

because earlier shoppers might have taken it all.

So, that's the gamble with it really.

But it's a gamble that, once again, appears to have paid off.

Later in the programme, we'll see

how Ilona got on with challenge we set

and get ready to be seriously impressed

when you see just how many bargains she was able to bag this time.

It's amazing! I'm very happy with this result.

20 years or so ago, popping across the English Channel

just to stock up on cheaper wine, beer and spirits was all the rage.

It was nicknamed the booze cruise and it was so popular with us Brits

that the coastline all along the Port of Calais

was absolutely chock-a-block with warehouses

that were full to their roofs with every kind of drink you can imagine,

all at prices a lot less than you would pay for

here, in the United Kingdom.

But then, in 2007,

the pound lost some of its value against the euro

and the world economy, in general, slowed down,

and the booze cruise, well, it effectively sank without a trace.

But over the past two years the booze cruise has enjoyed

something of a comeback

and, I have to say, that's made an awful lot of people

on both sides of the English Channel very happy indeed.

The '90s may have been the era of Cool Britannia

but back then, France was definitely the place to go

if you were looking to stock up on cut-price drink.

We come in a van. We come in a van, five of us,

so all our quotas for everything is taken up

and maybe even a little bit more.

-We'll be back.

-I think we'll be back, yeah. With a bigger van.

And now, despite recent wobbles,

the pound remains strong against the euro,

meaning that the booze cruise has made a comeback,

with Brits, once again, crossing the Channel in their thousands

to stock up on their favourite tipple.

It's a trip Joanne from Surrey used to do a lot.

We used to go quite a lot in the late '90s. It was like the heyday.

Everybody used to go to Calais.

And she's delighted to be, once again, regularly making the trip.

We probably go two or three times a year now

and it saves a lot of money. We can buy different produce

that we can't buy in the supermarkets at home.

The size of the savings to be made obviously hinges largely

on the exchange rate, which can be rather unpredictable.

It's dipped from the eight-year high that it reached in June, 2015,

and has also been affected by uncertainty

over the outcome of the EU referendum.

But while that means that the savings that you'll make

can vary from day to day, there is another key reason

why wines bought in the UK are usually more expensive.

And that's the amount of duty you'll pay on them,

as wine writer Jamie Goode explains.

Now you'll spend £2.05 for every bottle of wine you buy.

That goes straight to the government.

And then you put VAT on top of that, which is 20%,

so suddenly you're seeing that on an average bottle of wine

at the sort of average price that people pay for wine,

55% of the price of that wine is going in tax.

What's happened is that the euro has got weaker,

the pound has got stronger and the tax in Europe

is very, very low on booze,

so suddenly it's made the equation work again in our favour

and so, as long as you're buying a reasonable amount of booze,

then it's worth crossing the Channel and stocking up.

And while you may face a bit of scrutiny from customs

if you're buying more than 90 litres, which is 120 bottles,

there is no legal limit on what you buy,

provided, that is, that you're not selling it on.

And, of course, providing you can fit it in your car!

So, to see if the savings really do outweigh the costs,

we followed Joanne on one of her trips across the Channel.

The first charge you might expect her to come across

would be to pay for the Eurotunnel.

But, today, that is not something that she'll be shelling out on.

Mine, today, is completely free because the wine shop that I visit,

if you spend over £300 on wine, your tunnel crossing is completely free.

Several stores in Calais have similar deals

and, once Joanne has arrived in France,

there's another saving when she fills up her car.

So, I always drive over

with about a quarter of a tank, quite empty,

so that when I get here I can refill my car with diesel here

cos even the cost of diesel's cheaper over here

than it is in the UK, so a further cost saving.

Within a few minutes' drive from the port,

there's a multitude of wine supermarkets,

including big French names like Carrefour,

as well as familiar stores, such as Majestic,

leaving Joanne spoilt for choice.

I've seen, already five or six different wine warehouses

and now, look, it says...

And there are so many within close distance to each other

that it's very easy to shop around.

Today, Joanne has made a preorder at the Calais Wine Superstore.

Things got so bad when booze cruising went out of fashion,

that the store closed its doors for several months

but now, in common with other rival stores,

British visitors are back with a vengeance.

Ross Mclear moved here from Northern Ireland four years ago.

When I first came in it was a smaller shop,

definitely not as many customers as what we're seeing now.

It's definitely been an increase in the last couple of years,

just more and more people coming over.

The euro rate's better, the prices of things you can get over here,

in all areas, are really good.

About 99% of the customers coming in here are all British.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-You all right?

Joanne wastes no time in seeking advice from Ross

on the best bargains.

If I was to buy that particular wine in the UK,

how much would it cost in the UK?

You'd be talking around a tenner a bottle.

The saving's about £6.50 on a bottle there.

I'm sure I've seen that particular bottle

in the supermarkets in the UK for about £10.

-Would that be right?

-Yeah, absolutely, the saving on it's £8,

so you're talking over a tenner a bottle at home.

As with any great-sounding deal,

the advertised savings on some of these bottles may not always be

quite as good as they seem.

Several of these wines can often be found

on special offer in UK supermarkets.

And while that can bring the cost back home right down

to as low as half of what's claimed to be the usual UK price,

thanks to our higher rate of tax on alcohol,

even the best promotions are unlikely to match

what you'd pay in stores like this.

Case in point - this wine that Joanne has found on offer,

priced at £1.29.

How can you make money on a bottle of wine for £1.29?

Where's the profit?

You get a lot of people asking that but, as I say,

it comes down to the duty again and the tax,

compared to what you'd save and what it's going to cost

to bring it into the UK.

But not only that, it's the mass production. It's a Spanish wine

and there's quite a lot of production that's done in Spain,

so we're able to buy in quantity and drive the price down

and that's why we can get it in so cheap.

To make sure you're getting the deal you think you are,

it's easy to compare prices before deciding

whether it's worth making the trip

and that's because most of the brands you'll typically find

in stores like this are familiar mid-range bottles

widely available in the UK.

What makes it even easier to compare prices

is that all the wine here is priced in pounds as well as euros.

I'm just curious as to why all the prices are in UK sterling.

We prefer, if a customer's going to be paying in sterling,

they're not going to lose out on any rates

that are maybe changing at the time.

It's your currency, so you know what you're spending.

Yeah, so it's better for me, financially, to pay in UK sterling.

Absolutely, yeah.

Joanne is not alone in taking the trip over

to stock up on alcohol at cheap prices.

The car park is full of Brits

who've hopped over to find their favourite vino.

I would say today we've saved, between us, probably about £50.

Today, we must have saved a good few hundred quid.

Today, I've probably saved in the region of about £100.

And, as Joanne heads to the checkout,

Ross is confident that she's saved more than even she had imagined.

-So, how much is that?

-It's £527.19.

And, just out of interest, can you calculate there

-how much is my saving if I'd have bought this in the UK?

-Yeah.

You've got saving there. It's nearly double what you spent. It's amazing.

Now, in fact, if Joanne had shopped around back home,

she could have got some of those wines a little cheaper.

But even with the very best offers that we could find,

her trip to France would still have saved her at least £300...

Thanks a lot. Bye, Ross. Thanks for your help.

..less than the store claimed,

but still a significant bit of extra cash in her pocket.

And there are also bargains to be had in the other wine cellars

dotted along the Calais coast.

For example this wine cost £6.35 in local supermarket Carrefour

and £6.99 in the Calais branch of Majestic.

The absolute cheapest we could find in the UK was £7.50,

although, more often, it was at least a couple of pounds more.

Interestingly, the same bottle in a British branch of Majestic

was £9.99, £3 more than over the Channel.

This bottle of bubbly cost £12.99 in France and £25 in the UK.

And these beers, in a case of 12 from Carrefour,

work out at 38p a bottle, whereas the same bottle,

in a pack of ten from Tesco, back in Blighty, would cost 60p a bottle.

When we checked,

the only better deal we could find in the UK supermarkets

was this champagne on offer at Tesco, which was £25,

just 32p less than we found it in France.

Now, all of these deals are only worth it

if it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg

to get to Calais in the first place.

Of course, Joanne, who only lives an hour and half from Folkestone,

won't have to spend as much getting to Calais

as if she lived much further away.

Any extra costs and time that you'll spend on the journey

might make a booze cruise a lot less appealing.

But if Channel hopping shopping is something

that tickles your taste buds then, as ever,

it is worth doing your homework before you set off.

Most of the places you're going to buy from will have websites.

Check the prices and you can work out

whether you're really going to be saving any money or not.

What you've got to factor in are your transport costs,

also the incidental costs of the day, like meals and drinks.

If you're looking just to save money,

then I think it's worth doing your sums before you plan a trip.

So, the best advice is plan ahead and do check carefully

the prices of the wines in which you're most interested.

And remember, there are extra savings to be made

if, as Joanne found, you travel to one of the many stores

who offer to pay your Eurotunnel or ferry ticket

if you're going to be buying and preordering

over a certain amount of alcohol.

So, as long as the pound stays strong enough

for it to work out good value,

Joanne will continue to make the crossing

whenever she needs to stock up.

So, today, with the savings I've made,

it's been absolutely well worth the journey

so, without doubt, I'll be coming back.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain, at which of the four big supermarkets

will our bargain-hunting shopper, Ilona, find the best reductions?

When you shop like I do, you never know what you're going to find

and it is a bit of a gamble.

Let's be absolutely honest, it's an age-old dilemma -

what do you buy the person who's got everything

or, indeed, wants nothing?

I think it's a nightmare, but books or vouchers might not be

the treat you want to give this year.

Instead, when it comes to birthdays or all those celebrations,

many of us will opt for the perfect foodie gift -

in other words, a hamper, chock-full of luxurious-looking goodies.

You might be prepared to splash out a bit more for the convenience

and all that carefully-arranged packaging.

But get ready for a bit of a shock

because when you hear just how much extra you might be paying

for your hamper than if you were buying its contents separately,

you might start to wonder if it really IS such a perfect gift.

There was a time when hampers were reserved

for that great British summer institution, the picnic.

But now they're just as likely to be a year-round gift,

packed with luxuriously indulgent food items.

Fortnum & Mason, the Queen's food supplier,

has reported their hamper sales are at a 300-year high,

so it appears to be a business that's booming.

It's lovely. You never know what's going to be in them.

They're attractive to the eye and you think, "Ooh, that looks nice."

Quite a pleasant present to receive.

It's exciting to dip into it and take all the straw out

and think, "Ooh, lovely!"

Now, when it's such a lovely present and the foods are so delicious,

you might think, "What's not to like?"

And you'd probably expect that you'd have to shell out a bit more

to get such top-of-the-range foods all carefully put together

in a nice box tied up with all those fancy ribbons.

I would be prepared to spend quite a bit of money on a hamper,

especially if I'm giving it as a gift to somebody.

It saves you time from making it yourself and setting it up.

But take away the basket, the luxury trappings

and the convenience of it all,

how much of a mark-up are you left paying for the goods inside?

I've come to Bromley, near London,

to a market where I'm opening my very own gift stall.

That's quite a nice shape. It's good, very good.

I'm going to put the hamper factor to the test.

This is it - Gloria's Gifts.

As you know, every entrepreneur has to start somewhere,

so I think all I need is a bit of stock.

We've bought a handful of hampers from big-name retailers

and taken out all the individual products.

So, without the packaging they came in,

what do passing shoppers think that the goods are worth?

I would like you to look at each section of food and tell me

what you think, basically, they're worth.

So, we have some toffees and cake and biscuits

and different little bits and pieces. How much do you think?

-£8.

-£8 or £9.

-OK.

Over here, you've got two bottles of wine,

you've got sweet basil olives, a cake, crisps, things like that.

So how much do you think this is worth?

-I would say £25.

-£25.

And in the middle, I don't know how well you know your beer...

-I'm an expert.

-So, you said £10 for that one? OK.

Last one here. You have some manuka honey fudge, some chocolates.

-So how much for that one?

-£8.

-£8, OK.

Overall, once the nice presentation

and gift wrap had been stripped away,

the people we asked all underestimated the retail price

of those luxury goods.

So, it's time to bring back all those fancy extras and packaging

to see what a difference that makes

to people's perceptions of the price.

What do they think the goods are worth now?

Let's have a look at this one, for example,

-in the nice little wicker basket. What do you think?

-£15?

-£15, you thought? Right. What do you think, Lucy?

-I'm going £20.

-£20. Are you agreeing with that?

-I agree with that, yeah.

-OK.

It seems that the packaging really has bumped up

how much people think the goods are now worth.

On average, those we asked thought that this John Lewis hamper

would cost about £31, only slightly less than its actual price of £35.

But what's inside, if bought separately,

would have had a total cost of just £21.07,

so once our shoppers know that,

do they think the difference is a price worth paying?

-Oh. I think it's dear.

-Expensive?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Now, we couldn't find an individual price for everything in each hamper.

Some products can only be found in multipacks, for example.

So, in some cases,

we compared the cost of the closest product we could find.

Whilst it makes sense that the cost of the packaging itself

will obviously bump up the overall price,

it's interesting to see how much shoppers instinctively thought

the ingredients were worth,

once they were nicely presented in a hamper.

This rather neat little basket, which has got wine, sweets,

jelly babies, tea, chocolate,

biscuits, including the basket, of course?

-About £35.

-About £35.

The average guess for the cost of this Debenhams hamper was £31

but it actually retails at £40.99.

That's despite the contents selling for just £22.39 on their own.

Big difference, eh? OK, what about the middle?

Michael, this is where you come into your own.

-You've got a lot of beer and nuts and things.

-£20?

-£20?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

On average, our shoppers thought this lagers of the world package

would cost around £26

but it actually retails for more than double that, at almost £60,

even though you can buy the contents inside separately for just £11.02.

-Goodness!

-What do you think of that?

-That's outrageous.

-Outrageous?

-It is.

So, now we come to the slightly bigger hamper.

You've got, obviously, a very nice basket, apart from anything else.

Cake, you've got olives, crisps, tea, biscuits, wine...

-£65.

-£55.

-£55 for the basket.

-£75.

-£75?!

-What do you want to settle on?

-£60.

£60 it is, OK.

The average guess for this Waitrose Weekend Feast Hamper was £62.50,

which was about half the actual retail price of £100.

But buying pretty much the same products separately

would total just around £57.73.

-No!

-No?

-No.

-You're still not buying any of them?

-Still not buying, no.

No takers. So, all our shoppers totally underestimated

just how much extra that hamper factor adds

to the price of all those goodies.

But what is the hamper factor?

Why are we all so dazzled by a few ribbons and some straw

and, of course, that wicker basket?

I've invited financial expert Sarah Pennells to help shed some light

onto what makes hampers just so attractive.

Why do you think we like hampers so much?

I think it's partly because, when we buy hampers,

it is often as a present for a special occasion,

for something like Christmas or Mother's Day,

and I think we often have a different mentality then

than when we're buying food normally.

It's partly because of the way they're presented.

It feels like a treat, like it's luxury and, frankly,

who has the time to add up what the individual items cost

and to work out that they're actually a really bad deal?

Do you think, then, people are attracted in by the word "luxury"?

We're being told we're buying into something that's really premium,

it's a treat, it's not the kind of thing

we'd normally buy for ourselves on a day-to-day basis. That's all fine.

The fact is, once you take away the wicker basket or the shiny box,

you realise that the individual items are very rarely worth

the amount you're being asked to pay as part of a hamper.

But of course, the cost of the products

is only part of the picture.

The baskets in which they come have become very desirable

in their own right,

with people more than willing to pay extra for the packaging

which, let's face it, will last longer than the actual goods inside.

With these hampers,

a lot of the costs sometimes goes on the packaging

or on selling the idea,

not on the ingredients that make up the hamper.

I think the idea of them is great.

I'm a real foodie, so I would love it if somebody gave me

a collection of things I probably wouldn't buy on an everyday basis,

but I wouldn't like it if I'd known they'd paid double

just for getting a nice box.

We spoke to the companies behind the hampers we used on our stall.

Debenhams didn't want to comment,

but John Lewis and Waitrose both told us

theirs offer real quality and value

and that the price reflects the effort

that's gone into carefully selecting,

packing and presenting the products to make a "perfect ready-made gift",

as well the cost of the basket or box and, of course, free delivery.

They also stress how much time and effort hampers save the consumer.

Diverse Hampers, which sells its lagers of the world product

through Not On The High Street, said its price is based on the...

..the high quality wooden packaging

and UK-wide couriered delivery included in the cost.

Meanwhile, some of those retailers pointed out

that they also sell unfilled hampers, so that you can buy

and put together your own selection of treats, which is an idea

that Sarah Pennells enthusiastically recommends.

There's nothing inherently unfair

about shops charging a lot for hampers,

as long as they're upfront with the cost,

because they never really market them as being a budget-buy

or a way of saving money.

They're always marketed as being a luxury treat.

But I would say, don't assume you're going to get

anything like good value if you buy a hamper.

If you want to buy a hamper for someone,

I'd really advise you to save your money and put it together yourself.

It's really not difficult to put together.

You can buy decorative boxes and bags for a fraction of the price

and you'll know you'll have saved some money along the way.

Whether you're nipping somewhere just for a coffee and a cake

or sitting down for a full three-course meal,

eating out can be an expensive outing,

so we asked personal finance expert Sarah Pennells

to see if she could serve up some ways of cutting the cost.

Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?

There are a few out there if you know where to look

and don't mind the fact that some of them come with strings attached.

Many of us spend a small fortune on coffee

and it's thought that we buy over two billion cups of it every year.

But at several big-name stores,

there's a way you can usually get a coffee

without it costing you a bean.

Now, personally, I like to soak up the atmosphere

of an independent coffee shop like this one,

but did you know that, if you're on the move,

a couple of companies, including Waitrose and IKEA,

have loyalty card schemes where you can claim a free tea or coffee

while you're in the store?

These offers do come with terms and conditions.

You can only claim one free drink a day

and the IKEA offer is only available Monday to Friday.

Waitrose recently tightened up the rules,

after what they said was abuse of the scheme.

In some stores, to qualify, you'll need to buy something,

but if you were going to do that anyway,

a free coffee could give you a very welcome boost.

And if drinking for free sounds good, eating free is even better.

You'll often find online vouchers and loyalty schemes

that offer the occasional freebie,

but there are some restaurants that regularly let kids eat for free,

if you choose your moment.

Oh, thank you very much.

If you eat out with the whole family, the bill can soon mount up,

but there are ways you can cut the costs without ditching the kids.

For example, if you want breakfast, both Beefeater and Brewers Fayre

will let up to two kids eat for free,

as long as an adult pays the breakfast at the same time.

Several chain restaurants and big pub companies may also offer

free kids' meals, sometimes even for Sunday lunch.

But if you fancy getting an entire adult meal for nothing,

you could try becoming a mystery shopper for a free supper.

Companies pay you to check out a restaurant or a cafe.

You will have to make notes and complete a report after the meal

and you'll usually have to claim back the cost of the meal

after you've dined there,

but it can be a great way of eating out

in places to which you'd never normally go.

So, if going undercover takes your fancy,

then GFK and ABA are two of the biggest names in the business

and worth checking out.

But, as always, watch out for the scam companies.

You shouldn't be asked for an upfront fee

to take part in these schemes.

If you are, then it's likely to be one to avoid.

All you have to do is sign up online.

Make sure you do some research to check out the company first.

You'll then be sent your assignment and a budget.

It's normally a meal for two

and you have to claim the money back afterwards,

but who's complaining if it's all for free?

Anything that saves you from spending the pounds is fine by me.

Earlier in the programme, we met Ilona,

whose sheer skill at supermarket bargain-hunting

meant the cost of her weekly shop

is likely to be a fraction of yours and mine.

She takes absolutely full advantage of those little yellow stickers

that show you when food is being reduced in price.

You probably look out for them already.

But wait till you see exactly how much money she's been able to save.

I'm constantly looking for reductions,

I'm looking for bargains, special offers,

in every single shop I go in.

It's like a game and it's a game that I want to win.

Well, let's find out if she can do just that.

We've armed Ilona with £20

and asked her to visit her local branch

of each of the top four supermarkets

to see how many marked-down prices she can find

for under a fiver in each.

She's plotted a route around the stores,

based on her previous experience

of when the lowest prices are likely to be found.

Knowing the reductions don't typically start in earnest

until late afternoon, her first stop, Sainsbury's, isn't until 6pm.

That's swiftly followed by Asda at 6.30,

then Morrisons and, finally, the supermarket she knows best, Tesco,

which she hits at around 8.30.

She's left each store with some encouragingly full-looking bags.

So, once back home, it's time to unpack her haul

and see what bargains she's managed to pick up.

First on her journey and, perhaps because of that, the place

where she found the smallest savings overall was sainsbury's.

When you shop like I do, you never know what you're going to find

and it is a bit of a gamble.

Ilona spent our £5 on a total of seven items, including diced turkey,

grapes, yoghurts and fruit.

The original price would have been £11.05,

but thanks to the markdowns,

best of which were some wraps slashed from £2.50 to just 45p,

the total cost of her shopping went down by more than half to £4.92.

And she saved even more than that in the store she visited last, Tesco.

Now, it's a bigger shop there, so there was a lot more to choose from.

I've got lots of stickers with 90% off.

These 22 items should have cost just over £20,

but Ilona got them for £4.94, saving £15.10.

Her best bargains were with those 90% reductions,

one of which took these organic limes from £1.75 to just 18p.

I'm really pleased with that.

Second best for savings on this particular trip was Morrisons.

I've got quite a big pile there as well

and, again, really good savings,

down to 10p, 20p, 30p for some items.

And in some cases, even less.

Ilona bagged this pot of hummus for just 5p.

The full-price cost of the 19 items she bought would have been £21.38

but after the markdowns, she paid just £4.89,

a saving of more than £16.

However, it was at the second store she visited, Asda,

where, on this occasion,

Ilona's fiver went further than anywhere else.

In fact, she reckons she got enough shopping

to feed a family for a week.

These 21 products would have originally cost more than £25,

but Ilona picked them up for a mere £4.96.

Her biggest bargain here was some carrots

which were reduced from 56p to 4p, saving practically 93%.

Asda has the biggest pile of all.

There was plenty to choose from at Asda and I was really pleased.

I managed to get a real full trolleyload for my £5.

So, you can see by each pile, the biggest one is Asda,

so I got a lot more there.

So, in total, Ilona saved...

And she ended up with more than £77-worth of shopping

for just £19.71.

It's amazing. I have saved a massive £58.12,

so you can see that it was worth

all the effort of visiting these stores.

I'm very happy with this result.

It's lucky she's got the space to freeze all that stuff

with dates about to expire

but, of course, what markdowns you'll find depends on

what an individual store has in stock and wants to shift quickly.

Ilona's results could have been completely different on another day

or if she'd shopped in a different town

but she doesn't believe it's all down to luck

and reckons you can do some proper planning,

so to identify what time your local store

is likely to have the best reductions,

she recommends simply ringing them up and asking,

as she's doing now.

Yes, good evening. I wanted to come and do some shopping at your store.

Could you tell me the best times to come to get some reduced prices?

Asda start marking down in the morning

and they do it continually throughout the day.

The later you leave it, the better the savings will be.

PHONE RINGS

And what is the latest time? I don't want to get there too late.

Tesco start marking down about lunchtime

and they continue to mark down throughout the afternoon.

The better the bargains, the later it is.

PHONE RINGS

Right, thank you very much then. Yeah, thank you. Bye.

Sainsbury's, the lady said it all depends how much stock they've got.

If they've got a lot of stock, they will start early,

but if they haven't got very much stock at all,

it will just appear in dribs and drabs and there is no set time.

PHONE RINGS

Well, Morrisons are not picking up the phone

so the only thing you can do in that situation

is actually go there and have a look.

Ilona was simply calling her local branch of the main chains.

So, to see if they have a national policy on markdowns,

we contacted each store's head office

and asked if they had any set rules

on when staff should discount products and by how much.

Sainsbury's told us that its markdowns depend entirely

on factors such as the type of product and the amount left to sell.

Staff may even take into account surprising factors,

such as the weather, for example.

If it's snowing, they might reduce

the price of salads earlier in the day,

so keep your eyes on the skies.

At Asda, markdown fresh products can be picked up

on the morning of their last day of sale,

while each day's goods from the bakery are reduced later on,

with all markdowns decided by head office.

Morrisons said that fresh food is marked down

the night before it goes out of date,

while bakery products are reduced on the same day.

Either way, evening is the time to grab the best bargains,

with products sometimes marked down by as much as 99%.

And finally, at Tesco, items are reduced in price

on the day they go out of date or the day before,

with the size of the reduction dependent

on how much of the product is left.

Tesco also told us that in some stores, it's piloting a scheme

whereby any such products still left on the shelves at the end of the day

are distributed to charities in the local area.

But if Ilona's success has made you want to dash off

to do your own supermarket sweep,

then remember these savings are obviously only available

if you shop in the old-fashioned way - in person and not online.

And remember, nothing's a bargain if you don't really need it

or you don't think you'll be able to make use of it.

But, provided you have the time to do it

and don't mind the uncertainty of what you might find,

Ilona is convinced that shopping the way she does

really is the key to bringing your costs right down.

It's a mindset, actually.

I don't go shopping, thinking, "Well, I want this and I want that."

I go in search of this cheap food, which anybody can do.

I'm nothing special, it's just that I'm determined,

so if you want to be determined, then you can do the same thing.

If you've got a story you'd like us to investigate,

you can get in touch with us via our Facebook page,

BBC Rip Off Britain,

our website, bbc.co.uk/ripoffbritain

or email...

Or if you'd rather send us a letter, then our address is...

I don't know about you two, but I have to say

that after seeing the fantastic results that Ilona had

with her shopping earlier in the programme,

I imagine that quite a lot of us now are going to be keeping

an even keener eye out for those tiny little yellow stickers

telling us that something is being reduced.

We've probably all picked up the odd bargain every now and then,

but I would never have imagined

that you could do ALL of your food shopping that way,

provided, of course, that you've got enough big stores

-right on your doorstep.

-And enough shoe leather to keep you going.

But she was absolutely fantastic.

And I must admit, I really enjoy seeing all the different ideas

that people come up with to save money.

But it may well be you're sitting at home thinking,

"Ilona's got nothing on me and the way I do it",

so if you fancy yourself as a superconsumer,

not just when it comes to food, but in any area,

whether that means that you're especially good

at getting your money back

or you've won a real victory against all the odds,

then we'd genuinely love to hear from you, so do please let us know.

Yes, because sharing your secrets could help others benefit too.

I really hope you've already picked up

some money-saving tips on the programme today

cos, in the end, all the stories you ask us to look into

come down to whether or not you've had the best value for money.

So keep telling us when you don't think that's happened

and we'll keep doing our best to find out if you're right.

But that's all we've got time for for today.

We'll be back very soon but, for now, thank you very much

-for joining us and from all of us, goodbye.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.