The letter I’m probably going to send to Sainsbury’s supermarket

Dear Sainsbury's,

I would like to register my displeasure at your recent decision to change the way customers' receipts look, listing (certain?) discounted items after the subtotal.

For the customer, this is not an improvement, since, in order to check that all the discounts have been correctly tallied, we now have to know how much we have saved with each multibuy, special offer etc. Since we cannot realistically be expected to do this, it is now far easier for mistakes to go unnoticed. Perhaps that is your ultimate aim, to sneak a few extra pennies and pounds out of our unwitting hands.

Furthermore, your "leaflet" explaining these changes appears to be nonsensical. It reads: "So we can introduce some exciting new offers, we have made a few changes to how your receipt looks." Might you be able to explain, please, how changing the look of the receipt enables you to present the customer with more offers? Surely the two are mutually exclusive. You are implying that you could not possibly introduce any new offers unless you changed the look of the receipt, which is clearly not true, since you have been doing just fine so far.

As a further insult, you have chosen to print up what I can only assume to be countless millions of leaflets explaining this unnecessary decision to hapless customers, when many of us are asking our supermarkets to produce less packaging and waste material. What is the point in reducing the amount of packaging on ready meals and the like if you then go and produce millions of these things? Yes, the paper is recyclable, but we all know that a huge number of consumers will just throw it in the bin.

I would be most grateful if you could respond to these queries.

Many thanks.

Blah blah etc