Bastards! Jarred spaghetti sauce is now 24 oz instead of 26 oz! No price reduction of course

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

I think they used to be 32 oz.and then they got smaller.

It kills me when suddenly every brand of a particular item - coffee, spaghetti sauce, ice cream, paper towels etc. all switch at exactly the same time into smaller containers. How is this not collusion?

I know I had someone tell me once that they all buy their cans and jars at the same place, but I'm not buying it.The factories retool for smaller sizes because one or two want to downsize? I think not. I also have heard people on TV say that the market research told them that people wanted smaller, more convenient containers. Right. Did the market research also say that people wanted to pay the same price for less? I doubt it.

[TheDebbieDee]

1. It's a conspiracy, DAMMIT!

And it pi$$es me off.

Oh well, gotta get used to getting less for my buck............

[hlthe2b]

2. Andy Rooney on 60 minustes has tracked this through the decades

I'm sure he'll need to do an update. Everything I see is charging more for less and using trick packaging techniques.... Frustrating.

[david13]

3. Dude

Prices have been going up since the beginning of time, and they will only continue to do so.
PS
Did you reduce your prices?
dc

[DesertFlower]

4. never heard of jarred.

i use trader joe's organic tomato basil.

[Muttocracy]

6. but doesn't it come in a jar? nt

[DesertFlower]

8. yes. it does.

[MADem]

31. Substitute "bottled" --- the stuff that comes in a glass container. NT

[old mark]

5. That's to go with the 14 oz box of pasta I bought yesterday thaqt used to be

a pound.
Price on that boy actually went UP!


mark

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

7. True. Pasta has gone way up. nt

[Mind_your_head]

18. Yes, I noticed that myself in the past week or so!

It used to be a pound (16 oz.) of dried pasta, now most of the boxes are 14 oz. or even 12 oz.! And, as you say, the price is UP, even on sale, it is unusual to see it under $1.00/box now. Now I've got to buy TWO boxes of pasta to make the same dish in the same way for the same amount of people!

:mad:

[dipsydoodle]

9. Same in the UK with Heinz soup

Higher price and smaller tin.

[EFerrari]

10. I'm spending between $5-10 dollars more a day now than six months ago.

Too bad I can't keep goats and a vegetable garden on my deck. Scary. :(

[Muttocracy]

11. store-brand cereal at a somewhat upscale grocer... I came home with 2 boxes

and they were different sizes. I noticed when I was putting them on the shelf and thought, why the heck did they change the box shape? Oh, because they took out a couple of ounces. Turned out I had grabbed one old and one new. Grrr.

Same thing with dog food - they reduced the size, jacked up the price, and used cheaper ingredients. Much doggie discomfort later, I switched to a whole 'nother (much more expensive) brand.

[XemaSab]

51. What kind of dog food do you feed?

:shrug:

[DJ13]

12. I bought a bag of Fritos this morning that had shrunk to 9 ounces for $2.89

It used to be a 12 ounce size and was priced at $1.99 just 6 months ago.

Its damned frustrating when I follow commodity prices and have watched the price of corn collapse over the last several months to see how these companies are ripping us off on food at an ever faster pace.

[Muttocracy]

33. yeah, gas prices tumbled and I saw no drop in food. nt

[OnyxCollie]

13. I grabbed my store brand ice cream the other day

and I was like, WTF? It looked like my ice cream, but now the box wasn't as deep. It went from a half gallon to 1.75 gallons. 'Course the price was still the same. There were a few of the half gallon sizes left, so I got one of those.

Bastards.

[Snarkoleptic]

16. Most major brands of ice cream have reduced their containers by 25% to 1.5 quart.

Natch the price hasn't budged.
Were'nt we supposed to be in a deflationary spiral?

[geardaddy]

54. That's an increase in volume.

:shrug:

[OnyxCollie]

57. Oops. That should be 1.75 quarts, not gallons.

[3waygeek]

14. This is not new...

the change from 26 to 24 oz for the major brands happened a few years back. I go through a lot of it as pasta is my standard weekday meal. Frankly I prefer the 24 oz size as it makes portion control a bit easier -- my standard meal is 2 oz of dry pasta with 3 oz of sauce, so that a box of pasta & bottle of sauce will provide 8 meals.

[bertman]

19. two ounces of dry pasta with three ounces of sauce. That is pretty geeky alright.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

45. Well, I have a couple of 26 oz. jars that I bought a few months ago

so I don't think the change happened a few years ago. I noticed it immediately when I was shopping and made a note to myself to compare with the jars I already had in my pantry.

[bigtree]

15. ceareal is the worst

[DeepBlueC]

17. how about toilet paper?

A roll of toilet paper has diminished so radically over the decades that they are now less than half of what I still see in my mind as a roll of toilet paper. A roll of toilet paper used to fill the space in a standard fixture. Fixtures have not changed but rolls have. So they come out with "double rolls" which are still smaller than what started out as the single roll. Same with paper towels.

For items where they determine that price point is the single factor that in market share, they simply reduce the volume. And print "New Improved" on the container! I actually compared some cough medicine and the only difference between the old stock and the "New Improved" was that they had increased the dosage from one spoonful to two spoonfuls.

With laundry detergent they just add more water until it gets so ridiculous that someone reverses the trend with the New Improved 2x concentrated in a jug less than half the size.

:grr:

[TheCowsCameHome]

29. And only one side gets used. That has to stop.

[DeepBlueC]

34. would you like a rewind option?

:rofl:

[TheCowsCameHome]

36. Not if they skip every other sheet to boost their profits.

:rofl: :hurts: :rofl: :hurts: :rofl:

[DeepBlueC]

43. if they did it wouldn't be a toilet roll

it would be a box of kleenex.

[TheCowsCameHome]

20. This is hardly anything new.

The do it because they can.

[knitter4democracy]

21. They did it with yarn awhile ago.

Everyone here used to sell yarn in 4oz. skeins or 2oz. skeins. Then, when more imports started coming in, they went to 50g. and 100g. skeins. The 100g. skeins are 3.5oz and so less yardage, meaning you have to buy more yarn at the same price. Knitters and crocheters have been ticked off about that for a few years now.

Everything boxed is being put in smaller and smaller containers for higher and higher prices. It's really frustrating to shop anymore these days.

[pipi_k]

28. Yep...another outraged knitter/crocheter

We can't just assume anymore that it's 2 oz. of baby yarn or 4 or 8 oz. of worsted weight or whatever.

What really makes me crazy is when they won't list any weight, even in grams. No, it's all in yardage, like we know how many yards a project is going to take

[knitter4democracy]

48. And when yardage is so iffy.

If they wind the skeins when it's humid, you get shorted on yarn, as they wind them by weight at the mill, so you get all the water that the wool soaks up. It's crazy!

[LeftyMom]

22. I do almost all of my grocery shopping at natural foods stores, that hasn't really happened there.

Actually, other than a few dry goods going up a bit, prices there have been steady. :shrug: The thing is, items that I remember used to be significantly more expensive there aren't anymore, and many of them (a lot of the dry goods, canned tomatoes and sauce) are actually the same or cheaper for organic than what the conventional grocer up the street is charging for standard versions.

[lib2DaBone]

23. Food goes up, Insurance, Utilities and taxes all up....

But your wages don't go up. You see, when wages go up, that's "Inflationary".

When CONgress votes itself a big raise... that's "Business as usual".

[pipi_k]

24. What really pisses me off...

when the basic size and shape of the container stays the same, but there's a big old depression on the bottom that takes up room that would ordinarily have been occupied by product.


Or I buy something for the first time and it's packaged in a cardboard box and I open it up and the real container (jar, whatever) is tiny.

[ejpoeta]

25. you have to be careful. they are quite sneaky.

one of the shows was doing a story about that. how they downsize the container. with the sauce i think they put an indent in the bottom of the jar. and you'd never know if you weren't really paying close attention. I hate when they do that because it feels deceitful. like i am being lied to. of course, i always compare amounts to prices and pick based on that. i would rather them be honest and raise the price or something instead of trying to trick me. of course, i haven't bought jar sauce in a long time. but the same holds true for cereal and anything else.

[JaneQPublic]

26. How about the incredible shrinking laundry detergent?

They keep telling us it's more "concentrated" as the size of the package grows smaller. Yet the amount per load remains the same.

They must think we're pretty stupid if they figure we won't notice we're simply getting less for the same -- if not increased -- price.

[slampoet]

27. 4 years ago the size of microwave popcorn was changed DISABLING the popcorn fuction on MILLIONS of

microwave ovens.

[DeepBlueC]

35. oh shit, I just bought some mini-bags

without thinking about that. Now I'll have to watch the fucking thing pop! At least once.

[TheCowsCameHome]

38. Each kernel comes in it's own private bag.

[DeepBlueC]

42. those are the micro-bags

I'm waiting until they go on sale. :D

[MADem]

30. I noticed the difference in sizes when I moved back to Europe a while ago.

They did that over there, too, over the course of years, but they are ahead of us and all of their shit is well shrunk now, even worse than here.

This is all about selling less product at the same price. Baaaaaastids.

[soothsayer]

32. which would you prefer? smaller portion, or a price hike?

[DeepBlueC]

37. price hike

It is a price hike effectively anyway as you will have to buy more product sooner and I would rather shop as infrequently as possible ...at least for anything I might find in a grocery store.

[annabanana]

50. If only it was either/or!

First they shrink it.. Then a couple of months later they raise the price with the notice.."new everyday lower prices"

Us "every week shop-for-the-family" front line commadoes have seen these tricks for years...

[oldnslo]

39. Welcome to modern reality based on dishonesty.

Practically everything has shrunk to remain price competitive. Tried Dial soap lately? A joke.
Eventually, toilet paper will be the size and consistency of cash register tape.
What really pissed me off is the new, small ice cream containers. Ice cream is a food group, and to cut us short is just unthinkable.

[seabeyond]

40. folgers from 39 oz to 34.5 oz and raised price $2.00 and had special red tag like

on sale

i hear ya

[Ladyhawk]

41. The FSM will have his vengeance. nt

[swishyfeet]

44. I have a 26oz jar of Prego, and 26.5oz can of Hunts in my cupboard

Those are probably 2 of the most common brands at the grocery store.

??

[NutmegYankee]

46. my favorite: 24 oz Mountain Dew 6 pack becomes 16.9 oz, same price.

But Oh, it's in liters now says the store manager, they converted. Oh bullshit! I'm an engineer, and I can do the calculation in my head. It's obvious you're screwing us over.

[awoke_in_2003]

47. They fuck with peanut butter, too...

putting a big indentation on the bottom of the container. I opened a jar of Peter Pan the other day, and noticed it looked strange. My wife had accidently bought the whipped PB. Compared the container to the one I was about to toss, and they were physically identical. However, the weight listing on the whipped was 14 oz, the normal was 18 oz. Better that 4 oz less jar didn't cost less.

[JohnnyRingo]

49. Toilet paper is even more sneaky

Look at how much space is now left on the sides of your dispenser.

[XemaSab]

52. A trip to the grocery store:

Soyrizo
Veggie bologna
4 bagels
Cream cheese
Chips
2 avocados
Dish soap
Stuff to clean the sink

50 bucks. x(

2 plastic bags. x(

[Arugula Latte]

53. I opened a can of tuna the other day and it seemed tiny.

[JSK]

55. Back in the day

(when I used to walk to school in 3 feet of snow, uphill both ways) a pound of coffee was a pound of coffee. Now it's a can/package that's like 10 or 12 oz.

[Dukkha]

56. it's their sacrifice to the flying spaghetti monster

I make my own now tomato paste, diced petite tomatoes, basil, garlic salt, & oregano.

[ZoltarSpeaks]

58. How about the new improved flat-sided jars?

I was cursing the latest product downsizing the other night when I was trying to finish off a jar of applesauce (Mott's, I think).

Not only do they put the flat indentations on the side of the the plastic jar (New, Easy Grip), but just for the extra piss-off they rib the wall of the jar with fairly deep grooves, which also further decreases the volume. The ribs are hidden on the outside by the label. The real irritation is that you practically need dental tools to work around the ribs and the interior undercuts from the conveeeeeeeenient hand grip just so you don't leave a fourth of the contents stuck to the walls of the jar.

We'll see how well that sneaky crap works for them-at least we won't be buying that brand again.

I would rather they increase the price instead of resorting to packaging trickery.

Even my favorite flavored oatmeal assortment (Kirkland) from Costco pulled a sneaky. They used to have 9 packets each of 5 different flavors, but they changed that to 6 packets each of the 3 good flavors and the rest of the cheaper plain varieties.

And then there's Breyer's ice cream, but that's just sad and I don't like to talk about it...