Woolworths is the only supermarket in Tawa, and we'd be so much the poorer without it. It's very convenient, it employs lots of locals (including numerous Tawa College kids out of school hours), and it often has a good range of items on "special". I'm the main buyer of groceries for my family, and I'm happy to admit that 95% of our grocery shopping is done at Woolworths in Tawa.

Most "specials" at Woolworths are genuine specials - in the range of 10-50% (or whatever) off the usual retail price. However the occasional "special" is really not a special at all. In my opinion the likes of 10c off a $4.50 purchase doesn't qualify as a "special". Or even worse, as in the pictures above, meat reduced from $24.99/kg to $24.94/kg doesn't make it a special - a saving of .02%! Why bother calling it a "special"? In this instance I bought the meat because we needed it. The actual size of the package is twice that pictured. It's not the price as such that I'm commenting on (expensive though meat is), it's the 3c saving that isn't exactly worth boasting about.

Even worse is advertising Purex toilet paper as a "onecard special" for $2.79 (as in the other pic), when the price one pays without a onecard is also $2.79. How much do you save? At least the little notice gives a straightforward answer: Zilch! Maybe there's more to this than meets the eye. If there is, I'm quite prepared to be enlightened. In the meantime I struggle to understand why either of the items featured above was ever advertised as being a "special".

- Malcolm Sparrow