Episode 5 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.

If you do read the list of ingredients, there's loads of stuff

in there, and you think, "I don't really want to be eating that.

"That just sounds like a whole load of chemicals."

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

ripped off by the promises made about what you eat and what you pay for it.

It makes my blood boil, because I feel like they are tricking people.

From claims that don't stack up to the secrets behind the packaging,

we uncover the truth about Britain's food, so that you can be sure

you are getting what you expect at the right price.

Your food, your money.

This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain,

the programme that is always on your side when it comes to getting

a really good deal, so that whatever you spend your money on,

you can be absolutely certain that you really are ending up with

exactly what you expect.

But when it comes to food, that's not always the case, is it, Julia?

No, cos food is big business,

and the major companies employ very clever marketing people

to persuade us to part with our money for their particular brand.

And the method they use,

whether it's some sort of amazing special offer,

or the claims or pictures on the label, can be very convincing indeed.

But things are not always what they seem.

So, today we're going to be looking behind some of those promises

and revealing the things that they don't tell you.

Because, in some cases, after you've heard what we've got to say,

it may just make you look at things in a rather different way.

Coming up, we go undercover in the wine aisles.

Are all those supermarket special offers as good as they seem?

You might think, "This is great, everyone's a winner."

Well, actually I think the problem is that even at half price,

many of these wines are still, I think, quite poor value.

And if you only want to buy food that's made in Britain,

why it isn't always easy to know exactly what you're getting?

We've got such a distinctive design of our national flag

and people see that and associate it with something being British.

And that is being abused a lot at the moment.

Taking great photographs is really quite a skill.

And, as we're about to find out, when it comes to taking pictures

of food, it can also be a highly creative process.

One Rip-Off viewer contacted us wondering if it really is true

that the camera never lies

after playing a game of spot the difference by comparing the food

that was shown ON the packet with what was actually IN it.

Terry Edwards lives in Bridlington in the East Riding of Yorkshire,

home of one of the country's busiest seafood exporting ports.

And he's also a man that very much believes

in the Rip-Off-Britain philosophy.

I really think that people don't complain enough.

I think if you've got something that you find is not as good as what

you think it should be, you should tell the company. Let them know.

And there's one particular issue that prompted Terry,

and indeed even more of you, to contact us.

I'm sure that quite often when we buy food in a packet,

it's because we've been tempted by that oh-so-enticing photograph

of the food on the front of the packaging, because when it's done

well it can make even the simplest of foods look absolutely delicious.

The trouble is that quite a few of you have told us

that once you get the food home and undo the packet,

you find that what's inside bears very little resemblance

to that mouth-watering image on the front.

It was a seafood product that left Terry wondering

if something fishy was going on.

Normally I would buy the haddock or cod.

This particular packet just looked so attractive,

but it was not what I thought it was going to be

and I was very disappointed.

The product in question was some frozen

Chip Shop Extra Large Fish Fillets from Young's.

The actual packet showed a large white piece of fish,

really thick, and a lovely golden batter on it.

Having cooked it, it was a different picture altogether.

It wasn't thick - not at all - and it wasn't white.

My wife, she actually ate hers and she said it was OK.

I didn't fancy mine so I'm afraid mine went in the bin.

The experience left a disappointed and somewhat hungry Terry

wondering how the image that drew him to the product

was actually created.

And it looked pretty different to what ended up on his plate.

It looked too good.

The picture probably had been enhanced as well.

I can actually use Photoshop myself, so I know what can be achieved.

Of course, it's not just the food industry that presents its products

in the best light for advertisements.

Adverts and package advertising is all around us.

But whereas we probably know deep down that a hair dye

won't turn us into Cheryl Cole,

we do expect the food shown on the packaging to match the contents.

But we've found plenty of examples where what's on the front

doesn't look quite the same as what's inside.

And Terry doesn't think it's right.

I mean, if you went to a garage and you picked a Jaguar up

and they wrapped it up for you, when you got home it was a Mondeo,

you'd be disappointed, wouldn't you? I think that's what happens there.

Terry brought his experience to Young's attention and the company

apologised for his disappointment, saying it would bring details

of his complaint to their production and quality control personnel.

It also gave him a voucher as reimbursement for the money

that he'd spent on the product.

But how is it that the images used on most food packets

end up looking quite so delicious in the first place?

Hi, Terry, I'm Mark Sykes, the photographer.

We arranged for Terry to spend an afternoon

with a food photographer and food stylist,

whose job it is to make what we eat look irresistible.

They've agreed to take a similar product to the one that Terry bought

and give it a touch of magic, to show Terry just how it might be

possible to make the fish that he threw out

end up looking like the fish that drew his eye when he was shopping.

OK, so, we've now got a very rough set-up of the basic shot

that we're trying to create.

-You have to use actually what's in the box?

-Oh, yes.

What we have to do is use the product that is in the box,

and arrange it, cook it to perfection and style it nicely,

-so we bring out the best in the product.

-I see.

And to do that, we've got, I think, ten boxes of fish.

Two portions to a box. So, we've 20 portions of fish to play with.

It's now down to Richard as the stylist to go through those,

select the one he thinks will photograph the best,

and take it from there.

-Your title - food stylist?

-Yeah.

-What exactly does that entail?

Initially, my job would be to select

the best out of a range of the product,

cook it the best way it needs to be cooked for the camera.

First, Richard must select the very best fish -

the one that looks good on the inside and out.

So, he takes time to cut into them and examine the flakes within.

So, this third one we'll get to set,

see what Mark thinks about it, and the camera.

It's the best-looking one so far.

Once the super star fish is chosen, it's time to get

it in front of the bright lights for its close up.

Mark, this is our chosen fish for now.

Thought we'd bring it, see what you think of it

and see what the camera... MARK: OK, action stations, then, eh?

As the photographer takes pictures,

the stylist will keep making adjustments until they're happy

that they're moving towards the most delicious-looking final image.

When you're doing this,

do you sometimes have clients from the companies here?

In most cases, we do, yes. They'll be supervising exactly

-what we do, so we get it right to their requirements.

-Right.

So, if we can start trying to compact it a little bit,

fill gaps, and make it look a nice, solid piece of fish.

Props are added along the way - chips, peas and some sauces.

These don't come in the packet with the fish, of course,

but they can still be used in the photos

if manufacturers put the words "serving suggestion" on the box.

A bit of a gap between the front pea and the fish.

If that pea could just push back a bit, close that gap.

Right, I think we're pretty close now.

I think what we need now is the slice of lemon garnish down at that side.

Once everyone is happy with the arrangement,

it's time for our photographer to apply some tricks of the trade

for those finishing touches.

-Bit of oil?

-Getting very close. Yeah, bit of oil.

Just added a bit of oil to the surface of the batter

and some slight moisture to the fish. That's where we were.

And you can see the difference, certainly, on the batter.

It's got that nice sheen to it now.

I think that's looking pretty good. Let's try another one.

So, there you have it.

As they've built up to the final image with skilled styling,

a delectable-looking picture has emerged.

But even after this careful preparation, you might be surprised

by some of the techniques that food photographers often use

to make food look better.

And, as Terry suspected, digital enhancing can help.

Any retouching now we've got the main shot in is done in Photoshop.

Right.

You get a little bit a yellow colour cast from the batter into the fish.

And then we can take out a bit of the yellow saturation

so that...the fish starts to be more white.

For all practical purposes, you can say this now, if it had been

done a little bit more precisely, it would be the finished shot.

We've taken out any minor defects, whitened the fish.

And, there you have it, that's the finished product.

It's ready to go on a packet.

It's ready to go on a packet, it's ready to go on a plate.

-And tempt somebody to buy it.

-It is.

When we asked for their response to Terry's case,

Young's Seafood Limited told us that they...

They say that's...

In this particular case,

the fish fillets Terry bought could, at the time, have been either

pollock or basa, but as a natural product the fish...

The company now only uses only pollock, but in any case,

they recently launched "updated packaging" for this range,

which has "new photography" and "improved on-pack information".

What I saw was very professional and skilful people

taking something and making it so that it's ready for a packet,

and it was very, very well done.

Obviously some trickery was involved and if you buy that piece of fish

it's not going to look like the fish on the packet.

When I'm going around the supermarkets in future,

and I see the packets on the shelves,

it will certainly make me think about today and what goes into

actually making those packets look the way they do.

We all love a bit of a bargain.

And when you're looking out for them in the supermarket,

one of the things that you're most likely to see on special offer

is wine. It's very difficult to walk down the aisles these days

without being confronted by signs offering us bottles for half price,

or three for a tenner.

But although we're all drinking more wine than ever before,

not too many of us are experts, and we don't always feel confident

when confronted by all the jargon.

And that makes it all too easy for us to be bamboozled when trying to

work out which of these wine offers really does offer the best value.

It's not so long ago that for most people the choice was pretty simple

when it came to wine - red or white.

And if you were somewhere really exotic, there might be

a bottle of rose available as well.

Nobody but real connoisseurs bothered very much

about the grapes or the vintage.

But over the past three decades, that has all changed.

Britain has transformed from a nation of warm beer-drinkers

to one of wine lovers.

We're drinking nearly six times more wine than we did in the 1970s.

And, of course, that means the wine trade is big business.

We drink 1.7 billion bottles in the UK each year.

It's become Britain's favourite tipple,

much more popular than beer, cider or indeed spirits.

We've fallen absolutely in love with wine.

But how do we know a good bottle when we see it?

Or, indeed, how to spot a really good price?

These days, most of the wine bought in Britain -

around three quarters, in fact - is bought in supermarkets,

and the market is worth a hefty £6 billion a year.

And more than half of the wine we buy in the supermarket

is on some sort of special offer.

But that may not be quite the good news it sounds.

Former industry-insider turned-consumer champion,

James Foord says there is a reason why the stores

make the offers so attractive.

During my time with the supermarkets,

the wine promotions were absolutely crucial to the stores

because it's all about getting the customers in

and then hoping that they buy lots of other products.

So, let's look at the wine aisle. How do you sum it up?

I would sum it up as possibly the most confusing part of the store.

"Three for two, half price, 10% off." It's just incredible.

You've got to try and wade through this promotional confusion, really,

just to work out what's a good deal.

I find myself going back for that label just because it's pretty

-and it looks nice and I've tasted it before.

-Absolutely.

People like to go with what they know

or what they've seen other people buy.

Which is why just a handful of lines

will take the lion's share of the sales in most stores.

But how can you navigate your way through all those prices and offers

when it's hard to tell in the first place what a bottle is really worth?

With less choice of varieties,

it's pretty simple to work out what, for example, a particular brand

of baked beans or instant coffee should cost, but with wine,

and all the different grapes and vintages,

I'm afraid it isn't that easy.

We thought we'd do a little experiment on the street,

so I've been to the supermarket, I've bought two bottles of red wine

and one is actually quite a lot more expensive than the other.

The French tipple on the left is 14.99,

and the Italian job on the right is 5.99.

The question is, how many of you would guess which is which?

I'd like you to have a look at these

and see which one you think is the cheaper.

Good one!

So, which bottle do our wine drinkers

think is the most expensive and why?

Put the price tags on whichever one you think is the cheaper.

-That one's cork that one's screw top.

-Right.

That one, I would think, is the more expensive one.

-This is the more expensive, you think?

-By the label.

Now why do you think that? Because it's French?

-Cos it's French.

-Yeah, OK.

The question is, who got it right?

Well, I'm going to tell you that this is the more expensive.

-And look at the difference in price, by the way.

-Mmm.

-Are you surprised?

-Yeah.

-You were...totally wrong.

-Ohhhh!

Well, I'm going to reveal now

because THAT actually is the most expensive.

Surprised by the price that one's coming out at.

-You're spot-on.

-Oh, right. That's good.

Cos that IS the most expensive.

So, in actual fact, you were spot-on. This is the cheaper.

-Oh, we were both right.

-So, you did well.

-Yeah.

-Good for you.

-We both agreed on it but in different ways.

-And you know your wine, so well done, you. Excellent.

-Thank you.

But it's no wonder that many of us are left wondering

when it comes to wine.

The very language they use can make it all

seem a very mysterious business.

Very nice. Quite sweet.

So, if you're not an expert, how do you know whether

you're getting a good wine at a good price?

Actually, it's very clean on the palate, isn't it?

Very clean, very fresh, very zingy.

Frazer Thompson runs the Chapel Down Vineyard in Kent,

and thinks we should call time on confusing prices.

How would you convince me that I should pay more, for example,

for this wine than a cheaper white that I might pick up on offer?

I think pricing in the supermarkets can be very, very confusing.

It's a hugely complicated industry. You've got different grapes,

different regions, different styles of wine,

there's all sorts of confusion out there, and actually the price

is your best indicator. Because buying wine that's very cheap,

really isn't a very smart thing to do.

In a way you can't blame the consumer.

It's very easy for the supermarket to play around with prices.

Well, in the UK, we tax wine very, very highly.

So, you pay £2 on any bottle of wine.

And then, of course, we put a VAT on top of that tax,

so if you buy a bottle of wine for, say, £3.99,

67% goes straight to the Government.

Then if you take out what the supermarket...

Have to earn a little bit of money, what the wine-makers,

the transport costs, everything else, you've probably got grapes in there,

that's worth about tuppence.

Wow! I think people will be really surprised by that, actually.

Well, actually, if you spend as much as £5 a bottle, you are getting

wine in there that's probably worth around about 40 pence.

If you then go up and you're prepared to pay £10 a bottle,

then you're getting 75 times the value of fruit in it.

So, with those fixed costs accounting for

so much of the price you pay,

some people might say that when it comes to wine,

you really do get what you pay for.

And that you may get better value and quality

from a wine that has a higher cost.

Now, of course, that's not always the case.

You can get some very well-chosen, excellent quality wines

from all the big supermarkets, sometimes for under a fiver.

But that's where things can get tricky.

Because as if working out what your wine is worth

wasn't complicated enough, the supermarkets can confuse things

even further with all their special offers.

Look at the promotional labels

and you'll be convinced that you're getting an absolute bargain.

But is that always the case?

Later in the programme, we go undercover

in the big stores' wine aisles

to see if some of those bottles on offer were ever really worth

the higher cost that the stores claim is the normal full price.

So, somebody might be tempted to buy this at full price,

which is why I'm so alarmed by these tactical brands.

Cos it doesn't offer value for money.

Now, when we're trying to choose between products in the supermarket,

very often we might plump for the ones that seem to be flying the flag.

Buying British, we hope, is a way of ensuring quality and freshness,

not to mention allowing us all to do our bit for the economy.

But it seems that buying products which are actually MADE in Britain

may not always be as straightforward as it appears.

First, there were the Jubilee celebrations. Then the Olympics.

And most recently, the birth of Prince George.

The nation has been decked from head to toe in red, white and blue.

And politicians of all parties are keen to encourage

the equivalent economic patriotism.

That really depends on us as consumers going into shops

and supermarkets and wanting to buy quality British produce.

There are three words we don't hear enough in our country.

"Made in Britain".

Which one do we need to find?

James and Emily Bradshaw from Kent are very keen on those three words.

So much so that, last January, they set themselves a challenge.

Are you going to find one for Daddy? What's Daddy got to find?

We decided that all the money that we would spend for 12 months

would be reinvested back in the UK.

And we'd do that by buying only British.

That means absolutely everything they buy, including clothes, toys,

and toiletries, has to have been made in Britain.

So, all the food to feed their growing family

has to come from here, too.

The first shopping trip was...not great.

Um...it took us about three hours.

Because, initially, you really have to turn every packet, every jar,

absolutely everything over.

Things did get easier, but the Bradshaws have had to say goodbye

to some of their favourite foods.

We cannot buy rice at all.

There are some small suppliers of dried pasta that we can access.

But it's not really at a price point that is readily available.

Apart from rice, any other aching voids you've not been able to fill?

Citrus fruits.

Though they've had no luck finding oranges and lemons grown here,

all the rest of their fruit and veg IS British.

Hi! Veg box. How are we?

Once a week, a box arrives with seasonal produce from local farms.

What's this wonderful stuff?

This is called black kale. It's got that kale feel to it.

-Mmm, it's a beautiful colour.

-Yes, it is, it's fantastic.

It's really good just with a bit of butter.

Couple of butternut squashes, quite small.

It's not been the best year for butternut this year.

-And a small bunch of carrots.

-Oh! Carrots!

Perhaps the biggest surprise for the Bradshaws is just how hard

it can be to find manufactured food that is still made in Britain.

Even some of the long-established names, with their evocative

British branding, turn out to be far from home-grown.

It's just very upsetting I think,

actually, to see British brands

move their manufacturing abroad or being sold off.

I think it's a real tragedy.

The Bradshaws aren't alone in finding it frustrating

trying to work out what is and isn't British.

-I found it!

-You found one!

Nearly half of those asked in a recent survey

said they were confused about which brands were still made in Britain.

So, where better to put this to the test than at a very British event

in a very British town?

Can the fleet of foot in Tunbridge Wells tell which

of the following British-looking products

are actually made on our shores?

There are these Whitby prawns, which sound as if they must have been

brought ashore by North Yorkshire fishermen.

HP Sauce uses the Houses of Parliament

to reinforce its image as an icon of breakfast tables across Blighty.

And what about this Cadbury's Flake,

complete with that most prestigious

seal of British approval, the Royal Warrant crest?

You are going shopping in the supermarket,

and you're browsing and you see these products.

Decide in your heads which you think are British goods and which are not.

I would've assumed that most of them are British.

Certainly... I don't know about HP. That's a big company.

I would think that's probably been taken over.

Whitby sounds as if it's, er...British.

In fact, HP Sauce, an essential addition

to millions of bacon butties every day,

hasn't been made in Britain for almost a decade.

In 2007, its Birmingham factory was closed,

125 workers lost their jobs,

and production of this British icon was shifted to the Netherlands.

-Did anybody choose HP Sauce?

-Yes.

-And what was the basis of that?

-An old, established...

-It's got Big Ben on it, the Houses of Parliament.

So, what about those prawns? Made in Britain?

-Whitby is a place...

-Whitby.

-..in the UK, isn't it?

-Yes, absolutely.

With a pretty picture of Whitby on the packet,

you wouldn't blame the unwitting consumer for assuming that

Whitby Prawns are indeed from Whitby.

But turn the packet over and you see that actually the prawns

you're buying come from at least 5,000 miles away.

I think that's misleading if it says Whitby, isn't it?

But makers Whitby Seafoods say they're a long-established family

business based in Whitby, employing generations of people IN Whitby,

not to mention marinating, coating and packing those prawns in Whitby.

They point out that warm-water prawns cannot be sourced from the UK,

and the origin of their seafood is made very clear on their packaging.

So, it's not always straightforward.

And, while in most cases the packaging will make things clearer,

sometimes you might still leap to the wrong conclusion.

Take this multipack of chocolate bars, the ones long sold to us

as the "crumbliest, flakiest in the world".

There is the age-old Cadbury logo,

and the Royal Warrant crest. Cocoa manufacturers Bourneville.

Do our dancers think the Flake is British?

I thought Cadbury's was definitely British.

But, no, Flakes, alongside their sister brands, Twirl and Time Out,

are made in the Republic of Ireland.

I'm a bit annoyed, actually,

that not more are made in Britain.

Study it carefully and you'll quickly see that,

as well as displaying the Royal Warrant,

the label does say "Made under licence from Cadbury UK Ltd".

Keep looking, and you'll be able to work out

that they're produced in Dublin.

But with just a quick glance, you could be forgiven for forming

the conclusion that the Flake is made in the UK.

However, makers Cadbury don't agree.

The company says Flakes have been made in Dublin for over 50 years

using creamy Irish milk. And it also told us...

So, what do you have to do to be allowed to say a product

is "made in Britain"? Kate Hills should know.

She has founded a campaign to "Make it British".

If you've got spices that were grown overseas

and you just put them in a packet over here, then that's still...

The country of origin is still where those spices were grown.

However, if you turn them into a sauce in the UK,

then that's a substantial change,

because they've turned from raw ingredients into a final product,

and then you can therefore call that product "made in the UK".

So, the rules should be clear

but the same isn't necessarily true of the labels.

There's definitely quite a few misleading tricks

that companies and marketing experts

will use to mislead the public into thinking something was British.

You have phrases such as "developed in the UK", "designed in the UK",

"produced in the UK".

And, also, there's the use of the Union flag.

We've got such as distinctive design of our national flag,

and people see that and they associate it

with something being British

and that is being abused a lot at the moment.

That's certainly what the Bradshaws have found

during their year-long mission to only buy food that's home-grown.

Even flying an actual British-made flag defeated them.

We tried to find British disposable bunting and plastic flags

and patriotic-style stuff.

And it was all made in the Far East.

Now the family's experiment has drawn to a close,

they're going to let up a bit,

and foreign fruit will once again appear in their fruit bowl.

But they say that putting in the effort to buy British

has definitely paid off.

I think that there are many things

that we would be foolish to go back on.

I think the food certainly is one of those.

We are saving about 20% on our food bill.

It's not to be underestimated, I think,

what one British family can do.

Next, some tricks of the trade to keep in mind

if you're going out for a meal.

Restaurant critic Andy Hayler spills the beans on the techniques

some restaurants can use to push you towards the dishes

they'd most like you to order.

When you're looking at a menu, you might not realise that

some dishes will be significantly more profitable to the restaurant

than others, and just how deliberately they may have been

described to try and tempt you to order them.

If you saw a description that said "spit-roasted chicken,

"organic producer paired with sweet Italian peas",

that's a much more appealing thing than just saying "chicken and peas".

Slightly unfamiliar terms on a menu, you may think,

"Well, why would they do that? Nobody knows what that means."

But that's actually to encourage you

to ask the waiter what something means,

because if you engage with the waiter then you've got a chance to be

steered in another direction.

The very layout of the menu is often designed to get you to spend more.

Even the colours of the print make a difference on the menu.

It turns out that research has shown red and blue colours

stimulate appetite. Grey and purple do the opposite.

And don't always be sucked in by set menus

that may end up saving the restaurant more money than you.

Restaurants really like set menus because they know that

they're going to sell a certain number of those,

so dishes are all prepared and they've designed it in a way

that's going to be fairly profitable for them.

And what about that new trend for sharing plates

which is popping up more often on menus?

Be aware that they might not offer the savings they seem.

This is quite a cunning idea

because people are perhaps quite price-sensitive about main courses.

So, imagine a menu where you had a starter at, say, £7

and a main course at 18. So, £25, you'd have spent.

Instead of that, you're now encouraged to order small-plate

dishes, which are cunningly priced at about £8 or £9,

but if you're ordering four of them then that's £32.

Before, you were spending 25.

And, of course, you may get a bit greedy and order one more, even.

And it'll be even more expensive.

Whereas you would never order a second main course.

Earlier in the programme, we started investigating the true value

of a bottle of wine, so that you can try and work out whether

all those supermarket offers are really as good a deal as they look.

Now, with so many of them sold with hefty reductions,

or even half-price, there's no doubt that it all feels

as if it's a bargain.

But we've been looking very carefully at the figures.

And with at least some of those offers,

we're not be being told the whole story.

Jamie Goode knows his wine.

He's been writing about the subject for 14 years and just loves the job.

A red Burgundy, you'd expect to taste like red Burgundy.

It has a sense of place because it's more than just a liquid in a bottle.

It's got a story behind it.

But what he doesn't love is the way supermarkets promote their wine.

I think it's really tough for most people when they go

into a supermarket, cos they're faced with the famous wall of wine.

200, 300 bottles, many of which look quite similar.

It's very hard to distinguish where the wine really comes from

and what it's going to taste like.

And the only buying cue that punters are left with often

is these bright orange stickers saying "half-price" or "a 1/3 off".

Now, the supermarkets really live up to the name when it comes to wine.

Supermarketing all those bottles

to try and get us to part with our cash.

I've just been to a big store nearby, to have a look, really

at what's on offer. I'll be honest with you, I was so bamboozled

by the sheer volume of half-price and two-for-one, and this and that,

that I came away not being quite sure

whether I'd got good value or not.

We sent Jamie, the self-proclaimed Robin Hood of the wine world,

undercover in some of the UK's biggest supermarkets

to see exactly what he made of the all the deals on offer,

and to find out some of the secrets of the supermarket shelves.

My first impression is just how many of these

roll-back signs there are. Unlike any of the other aisles in store,

there just seems to be so many of them.

Amongst all those offers were plenty of half-price deals as well.

One half-price here, another one here, two. Oh, three.

Another half-price one here makes it four, I believe, or five.

And this is six. Ooh, another. Seven, eight.

Ooh, nine, ten.

11, cos one's just sold out there, it seems.

It's a huge number of them, really.

But in Jamie's opinion, these offers aren't always a good deal

because he doesn't think that all of them were ever really worth

the higher price they'd originally been sold at.

And he says looking at the detail on the back of the label

may reveal information about that half-price wine

that you didn't expect.

This is a Chardonnay from South-eastern Australia,

but if you look on the back here, there's a clue.

It says "M44 6BD", which is the postcode of the bottling plant.

So, this is actually bottled not far away from where we are now.

So, the wine will have been shipped from Australia in large flex tanks

of 25,000 litres, and then trucked up to Manchester.

You know, it's probably at best a £5 wine,

which is what it's selling for now.

However, Jamie did find some offers that he liked.

I mean, this Torres Vina Sol, it's a nice wine.

At the regular price of £6.75, it's not a bad deal at all.

And at this discount price of £5, well, that's a good buy.

That's a proper wine at a good price.

But all of the supermarkets we filmed in had offers

that Jamie felt didn't always reflect the wines' true value.

He suspects the higher price some of these wines are sold at

is an inflated one, so that the stores can discount the wines

and make them look like a bargain.

So, this is a wine I've seen before and it's a Bordeaux wine, £11.29.

But this is one of those brands, it's regularly on offer at half-price.

Currently not on offer, so it's full-price,

so somebody might be tempted to buy this at full-price,

which is why I'm so alarmed by these tactical brands.

Because it doesn't offer value for money.

In fact, this wine, which has received various commendations

and awards, had been on special offer no less than five times

in the past year. Its price kept on changing from as much as £14.99

to as little as £7.99, making it very hard to gauge the true value.

I feel really sorry for the producers of wines who don't play this game.

Because how can they compete with a half-price offer?

Everybody likes to have a half-price wine.

And what's wrong with that?

If we end up with wine sold at a lower cost and we feel that

we're getting a bargain, surely, for most, that's good news?

You might think,

"This is great, everyone's a winner, what's not to like?" Well, actually,

I think the problem is that even at half-price

many of these wines are still, I think, are quite poor value.

Supermarket chains put a lot of effort into their wines.

And there's no doubt their buyers usually select an excellent range,

often including some great bottles from their own brand labels.

So, when you don't have to break the bank to find a decent bottle,

Jamie thinks we shouldn't be seduced by all those offers.

Even if you've only just got a £5 note to spend on a bottle of wine,

you can still get some quite good wines these days.

It's just going for the half-price offers isn't the way to do it.

Of course, supermarkets can charge what they like.

But with so many deals at once, unless you're a wine buff,

it's not that easy for the average shopper to know which are a bargain.

So, how can you exactly work that out?

Well, one good way to find out is to take the average price

over the last year, and when you work that out, believe me,

the results can be very surprising.

James Foord runs a price comparison site where you can check how

the price of supermarket goods have changed over the last 12 months.

It calculates the average price of a product over the year,

so you can see how that compares to the price right now.

And he's pulled together some figures for wine.

We've looked at all the wines sold by the top five online supermarkets

and looked at how many of those lines are on promotion,

which ones were not as good as you would probably think.

-Am I going to be a bit shocked?

-You might be with some of the results.

Well, let's have a look.

Across the five biggest online supermarkets they sell just over

4,000 wines between them.

Of which almost 1,400 are on promotion, so that's one in three.

One in three on promotion.

Which is why there's so much confusion for you and I

when trying to figure out what to buy.

James can very quickly see that the price of some bottles

just keeps on changing.

And look at the peaks and troughs. Up, down, up, down, up, down.

Exactly, so this is fairly typical. High one minute, low the next minute.

But according to James' figures,

you're not always necessarily getting the bargain you might think.

Take this French wine at Tesco's. It was 14.99.

Now half-price at 7.49.

But actually, according to James' figures it was only sold

at that full price for a total of two months of the past year.

At ASDA, this bottle of Italian wine was £7. Now it's £4.

Feels a like a bargain but it had been sold at that £4 price

or even less for nearly three quarters of the last year.

And at Sainsbury's, there's this own-brand red

reduced from £6.49 to £4.86.

But, again, this wine had only been sold at that higher price

for 61 days in the past 12 months.

And on top of that, at all the supermarkets James looked at,

he even found examples where the special-offer price

was actually higher than the average price,

so not such a good deal after all.

Here's a rather nice Italian red.

But look at this. The average price over the previous year is £8.97.

If you buy this promotion today

-you're paying 7% more than the average price.

-That's shocking!

Actually, that would be very disappointing if you bought

the offer and then discovered you were paying more

-than the average price.

-Well, I think you'd be very disappointed

but the chances are, you wouldn't know.

James did find plenty of good offers out there, too.

But, it's difficult to know just which ones are genuine bargains

without doing some very serious research.

We asked the supermarkets about the way they price their wine.

Tesco said that, as the UK's largest seller of wine,

it takes its responsibility to their customers very seriously,

but those customers repeatedly say they're...

Sainsbury's told us that they...

And, they explained, wine prices are...

Both stores also queried some of our figures,

pointing out that new guidelines from the Office of Fair Trading

prevent products from being on sale at a reduced price

for longer than they were on sale at the full price.

But when we double-checked the prices with James Foord,

he was very confident they were correct, adding that his data

is based on information from the stores' own websites.

ASDA told us it takes pricing so seriously, it...

..to look at all aspects of its pricing...

The store also stressed it would...

But it looks like those offers and promotions will continue

to dominate the wine aisles,

even if critics like Jamie would like to see that change.

I think it would be great if the wine industry were more transparent

and more honest with its customers. The danger is people'll lose trust

in the supermarkets that are backing these half-price deals.

Here at Rip-Off Britain,

we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.

And not just about food.

Confused over your bills,

or just trying to wade through never-ending small print.

I mean, why is it in small print if they want you to read it, you know?

Maybe you're unsure about what to do when you discover that you've

lost out, and that "great deal" has actually ended up costing you money.

All my money is very hard-earned.

So, when I go to spend it, I expect value for money.

Or you might have a cautionary tale of your own

and want to share the mistakes that you've made with us.

You can write to us at:

Or send us an e-mail to:

The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

Everywhere we go these days, we're bombarded with advertising,

much of it for food.

And it's certainly true that all those promotional messages

help keep us informed about not just new products,

but also new deals and offers,

so that we have a real choice about what we buy.

They certainly do, but as you've been telling us,

you can't necessarily take all of those promises at face value.

The marketing men and women -

well, they have a whole arsenal of tactics they can deploy

to persuade us to hand over our cash.

But before you do, we really would advise you look beyond the hype.

Because that wonderful deal may not always be quite as good

as they'd have you believe.

So, use a bit of good, old-fashioned scepticism, and take a closer look.

That way you can be confident you really are getting

what you're paying for. And if you come across examples

where you're not, then you know what to do. Let us know!

Well, we'll be back soon to look into more of your stories.

Until then, thanks for joining us, and from all the team, goodbye.

Bye-bye.