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Be careful, Wal-Mart can trick you on price assumptions.
Great Value(Wal-Mart) Canola Oil is more expensive than Wesson (name brand). At least it was last year when I was standing there comparing cost and size and product. As I was evaluating, I watched 2 different customers grab the Great Value brand and place in their cart, without checking price of the other brands. They probably assumed Great Value was the best value, but it was not in that case.
OT sligthly....but last week I bought some Wisk laundry detergent at Wal-Mart. The 32 load bottle cost the same per ounce as the 64 oz bottle of same Wisk product(This was our first time to try it because Consumer Reports just rated it #1 in their new issue). My spouse grabbed the larger 64 load bottle and placed in the cart, assuming it was the better value....as you normally would expect. We ended up buying smaller 32 load bottle, since there was zero cost savings in buying the larger bottle, and this is the first time using the product.
We later checked prices at another store and the same 64 load larger bottle was a better value versus buying the 32 load bottle.
Nothing was on sale in any of the above scenarios.
This is very true! After seeing an article last year, I started taking a close look at the costs per ounce of many items at WM and other stores and found exactly what you state.
I have severely curtained my shopping at Wal-Mart over the past six or eight months. In the wake of the big hoop-la over Wal-mart's supposed new found focus on local organic and "healthy" products, I started seeing increases in price among many WM products. For my self, these increases offset the "savings" from other items. With a little judicious shopping, I can find products at my local Lowes grocery and Target that are just as cheap as Wal-mart, sometimes even cheaper. There are a couple of items I will get at Wal-Mart, but I just stop there if I happen to be driving by. I limit my purchases to those specific items and get the rest of what I need from other places.
The Walmart GV barbecue and sour cream/onion chips are superior to Lay's, in the opinion of my husband, who fancies himself quite the chip expert.
We prefer the GV brand of light buttermilk ranch dressing to Hidden Valley Ranch Light.
The GV brand of instant oatmal is just as good as Quaker, and the GV brand of traditional spaghetti sauce is quite tasty, and is saving me a lot of money vs. buying our previous favorite, Ragu.
GV fat free chocolate and vanilla ice creams are also favorites in my house.
I also get the GV pasta sauces, and the Alfredo- both are actually better than the popular brands. We also get their instant oatmeal, salsa, tortilla chips, ice cream- very good prices & just as good as the other brands.
we have giant foods here in maryland and I generally like their store brands. I will buy name brands if they are on special and I can get gas points. If I can earn 40 cents a gallon off my gas at shell it makes it worth it to shop at giant
You can save quite a bit on the Equate version of OTC medicines, like cough syrup, tylenol, cold meds, etc. IMO, they are the same, sometimes 1/4/ the price of the brand name.
i have no problem with most equate products, but their caffeine pills are useless.
if you want discount caffeine products, jet-alert actually works.
I generally only buy GV brown sugar and milk on most runs. Though, I wish Costco in our area would have the 4lb bags of brown sugar I used to buy back in our old state. They only have brown sugar here in 25lb bags. I have nothing to store that much brown sugar in. So I just buy the GV brown sugar. Milk I also buy at Costco, but I generally only go to Costco once a month and Wal-Mart is closer. Milk costs the same either way.
I had to stock the medicine cabinet recently and I bought mostly Equate items. But that is like a once a year deal.
I just finished eating a 1.5qt of GV Cookies and Cream ice cream. If you compare it to the name brands, the difference is this: the cookie chunks were larger, and it wasn't as creamy. But for $1.50 less, I still enjoyed eating it.
I read labels and buy a fair amount of organic items. IF Great Value has preservatives, and additives -- which a lot of cheap items do -- I don't buy those items. It's an item by item thing.
I buy Great Value bottled spring water.
That's about the only thing I can think of that I buy of Walmart's house brand.
I'm also wary of some things being TOO cheap.
For example Great Value paper towels just are NOT the quality of Brawny or Bounty. There's just no way around that. They're not. I'd rather pay more for better quality.
I've never bought Great Value trash bags -- but that's another item that I want quality. To pay less for a trash bag that's thin or has the draw string break out of the casing isn't for me.
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