While B&M is best known for affordable bargains, there's a way to get some items of your shop cheaper than the already cut price displayed on the shelf.
The budget retailer has its own handy mobile app, complete with a scanner displaying up-to-date information on prices of products - even if staff haven't got round to visibly reducing them yet. In fact, the app has grown so popular, that a cult following on Facebook called 'B&M scanner and other bargains' has dedicated itself to sharing deals among some 247,000 members.
This week alone, some customers have reported as finding items for as little as 10p on the app - with some of these finds including the likes of Zoflora, kitchen utensils and Air Wick products.
A reporter for the MEN decided to download the app and see what bargains they could find for themselves in a local B&M. Armed with nothing more than my smartphone and a reusable bag, they headed down the aisles to scour the shelves for secret deals.
Here's what they found...
The app is easy enough to use. It’s free to download through the App Store or Google Play, and once set up with an account, you can find your nearest store, check opening hours and search for products, as well as scanning barcodes to find the best deals. I do recommend downloading the app at home and getting familiar with it ahead of using it in the shop, though.
In store, I thought the best way to try out the scanner was to methodically go aisle by aisle scanning a few products per aisle. Now, I saw little point in scanning food products, as these were very unlikely to be reduced, but almost everything else, from beauty to homeware, could see some huge savings.
The way the app works is that it scans the barcode on the product and then brings up the most up-to-date price information for it. It also displays the previous price so you can see how big your savings are.
As a dog owner, I headed straight to the pet aisle to see if I could snap up any discounted dog beds or toys for my pooches. Sadly, all of the beds were still full price, and any discounted products were marked on the shelves, including pet-friendly chocolate and some cooling harnesses.
The first bargain I did find was in one of the cleaning aisles, where a soft close recycling bin was reduced to £6, down from £10. I have to admit, the secret deal did give me a bit of a buzz, and I felt like this little barcode scanner held all of the knowledge in the world. The world of B&M, at least.
In the next aisle, filled with beauty products, a set of five Bourjois lip products had a label that read ‘was £5.99, now £3.99’, but when I scanned the barcode, they were actually reduced to £1. Bourjois was recently reintroduced into the UK, and is exclusive to Superdrug. One of these lip products would typically cost £9.99, or £49.94 for five, so this was a whopping saving on the RRP. Meanwhile, a F.R.I.E.N.D.S. branded Revolution palette was down to £4, from £6.
I scanned dozens of items which were still at full price, however the bargain hunting is quite addictive and you’ll find yourself checking anything and everything. One pair of glitzy trainers were priced at £10 with no signs of being discounted, but upon scanning they were only £6, and a pink footstool with gold detail was down from £20 to £12.
Elsewhere a pretty decorative vase filled with faux flowers was £2 instead of the advertised £4, and I was tempted by a three tier plant stand down from £30 to £10 - but I’d have struggled to get it into the car alone.
I did notice that there were a lot of sale lines already on display in the store, which to me suggests a bunch of new stock is being prepped for. I scanned a handful of the already reduced products to see if the prices had been slashed further, but most of them were already at their lowest price.
Other offers I discovered through the app were a black and wooden chopping board for £2, down from £4, a pink glitter lava lamp priced at £10, instead of £14 and a Remington curling wand with an RRP of £29.99 down to £13.99.
An adorable geometric elephant planter was originally £25, and despite not having any red reduced stickers on it, scanned through on the app at £8, so a saving of around 60%
In the garden aisle, many children’s toys were already price cut, but the best unseen saving came in the form of a wooden playhouse which displayed a note that read: “was £110, now £90”, however my app told me otherwise, as it was actually £60, saving shoppers £50 on the summery toy.
The furniture aisle was where things got a little more tricky, because you have to locate the barcode before you can scan it, and a lot of the time, it’s on the bottom or the back of the box. You’ll likely get some funny looks from shoppers unaware of the money-saving app, but if you manage to get yourself a bargain, it’s totally worth it.
By the end of my shopping trip, I’d scanned a total of 97 items and discovered around 18 bargains - so around one in every five were reduced. Of course, I mostly avoided anything that looked new in, and opted for items I’d seen on previous trips as they were more likely to have seen a reduction. The app keeps track of how many items you scan, giving you a number out of 500 - although it's unclear what happens when you do hit 500.
While I may not have discovered any deals for pennies, I was pretty pleased with the Bourjois set find, and picked up one of the boxes to put up for Christmas, as they’ll make great stocking fillers and works out at 20p per lippy.
You’ll often find yourself popping into B&M for one thing, coming out with an arm full of shopping bags having forgotten what you actually went in for, however it’s important to remember that a bargain is only a good deal if you would have bought it anyway.
It was great to be able to work out exactly what I was going to pay at the checkout, and the app was ideal for finding unmarked prices I’d have otherwise never known. While my bank balance escaped the store mostly unscathed, I’ll definitely be using the app whenever I pop in to see what offers are hiding behind the scanner.
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