Sincere apology to Spar and Checkers

IN “Trolleys of price pain for shoppers”, published on July 3, we stated as fact that the price of lamb chops at Spar was R89.00 per kilo.

This was misleading as that was the price for braai chops, and not the rib chops calculated in the other retailers’ baskets.

This resulted in an incorrect comparison as it was not on a like-for-like basis.

This error was introduced when our reporter went to check prices at Spar in Melville. When she got there, the meat had not yet been packed out.

Later, she called the store to check the price of lamb rib chops and was told it was R89.00. We went on to report this as fact without doublechecking by going back to the Spar store and seeing this for ourselves.

This wrong information was used to calculate the basket of food from Spar.

Days after publication, Checkers contested the price of the cut of Spar’s meat — making us go back to Spar to check the price of lamb rib chops.

On further investigation, we were told lamb rib chops cost R129.99 in the first week of July. This brought Spar’s basket of food to R715.17, with rib chops at R129.99.

We apologise to Spar after the retailer used this incorrect information on its print advertising campaign, claiming it was the cheapest of all four major retailers and best in terms of inflation.

In the same story, we also incorrectly calculated the basket of food from Checkers at R711.94. This error was introduced during the editing process. The correct total was R698.95, making Checkers the cheapest of the supermarkets surveyed.

However, in terms of the inflation trend Spar remained the lowest.

Today we apologise profusely to both companies and we regret the errors.

We are taking measures, including disciplinary, resulting from the mistakes made.