Even Cheaper Festive Cheer.



Food You won't remember but last year I explained how having spent years waiting for the Marks & Spencer Festive Cheer hamper to be reduced after Christmas we decided to simply go to the shop and purchase the items from the hamper separately. In the end, we bought the same hamper sans box for eight pounds cheaper than it would have been.

The old post about these shenanigans is here.

Given the success of that mission we decided to repeat it again this year. The hamper's contents have changed slightly as you can see from the M&S website but the price is still £30 (tech note: I used the same link included in last year's blog post about this to find the new page which shows inventory continuity).

Here is the receipt which contains only items from the hamper:



Buying the items separately led to the same product (again without the box) being £10.90 cheaper.

Some notes:

(1)  Part of the reason for the cheaper price is a multisave in which the Christmas Tea wound up being free.  Without the discount, the hamper would have been £20.70 which is still remarkably cheaper.

(2)  As you can see the photograph and inventory don't match on the M&S website.  The inventory says a tin of Wild Alaskan Salmon (170g) is included.  The photo has Wild Canadian Salmon (170g).  Given the geography they're probably the same salmon through different nets but I'm still pinging it.

(3)  Here is the inventory from last year with prices:

Christmas Tea (125g) £1.60
Spiced Mandarin Marmalade (295g) £3
Tomato & Basil Soup (400g) 0.90p
Strawberry & Champagne Conserve (295g) £3
Top iced Christmas cake (600g) £3.30
Classic Christmas pudding (100g) £1.25
All butter Scottish shortbread rounds (180g) £1.50
Wild Alaskan Red Salmon (170g) £3.00
Milk dark white chocolate box (220g)

The only item on both which is more expensive is the soup with an extra 5p.  One of the jams has been replaced with a chutney and the whole business is £1 cheaper overall so an extent this year if you did buy it for £30 you'd be paying more for less.

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