Free food until 15th August @ Big Brands for Less

[Dottie]

Cheap bread mix

At the moment they have new stock of the big 3.5kg of McDougalls flour packs. Last night I ordered:

2 GRANARY BREAD AND ROLL MIX
2 WHITE BREAD AND ROLL MIX
1 TOFFEE MUFFIN MIX
1 CHOCOLATE FLAVOUR FUDGE TOPPING MIX
1 DOUGHNUT AND BUN MIX

Which is 3.5kg x 7 = 24.5kg, if I'd ordered 8 or more then the P&P have doubled.

So completed my order to stay within standard P&P with:

6 x 300% FREE ANGEL DELIGHT RASPBERRY for £1.38
1 x RICH SOY AND SESAME MICROWAVE NOODLES BOX OF 6X250G

Total: £19.45

The offers at the moment are not as good as in the past, for example: Previously if you ordered BOGOF, the weight of the free item/s was not included in your shopping basket, so you could order lots more without paying more P&P.

Received an email at lunch time today stating my order had been dispatched.

[21again]

Dottie, I don't know if you have any of that bacon and lentil soup left, you said it was a bit too salty for you.

I bought a turkey drumstick and cooked it in the slow cooker with 2 tins of the soup and half a tin of water.

It was absolutely lovely and no taste of salt at all.

I cooked it on auto for about 7 hours, took the drumstick out and stripped the meat off and put that back into the sc for another hour on low.

Took the lid off and turned it to high for about 20 mins and it was fantastic.

[Dottie]

Yep I water the soup down and use it in a load of dishes, condensed soups are always handy for making casseroles and stuff. In fact there was a thread on here recently where folk talked of just that.

I also rinse the baked beans of all the sauce and use the beans for making hummus and add to curries and casseroles.

Today while making pizza, I tried out a sweet mincemeat calzone. I'm not really a fan of pastry, so was really pleased with the dough result. Looks like I'll be doing mincemeat mini calzone this festive season.

Loads of soup, loads of beans and loads of pizza mix left, as I was able to make use of the previous great offers of buy 1 and get 2 or 3 free.

[winstonwobble]

Does anyone know if there is an offer on at the moment?

[Dottie]

Not that I'm aware of, as I recently made a bread mix order (previous post), without a code.

However I'm afraid I was not happy with the order, as a 3.5kg bread mix was damaged. Today they confirmed that I had a refund of £1.29 to replace the bread mix. I wasn't happy with that as I actually wanted the bread mix delivered instead and it didn't take into account that I could have ordered 3.5kg of more products, to justify the £5.25 delivery charge. So they refunded me 68p for P&P and said that when I place my next order, email them and they'd send another bread mix FOC. But I'm not happy to have to place another order to fulfil a previously damaged order.

So clearly not happy with the outcome and just like 21again who also experienced damaged goods on her last order, I'm shall now consider trying out Approved foods or Food bargains. In fact food bargains is actually selling 3.5kg Muffin Mix £1 cheaper than bigbrandsforless, but I'd stuck with bigbrandsforless as I was previously happy with the customer service, as they'd sent a replacement of missing goods within days. But it seems the new policy is not customer friendly, although they have said that they think they are being fair and they can't please everyone all the time.

By the way, it used to be Debbie who dealt with order problems and you certainly felt happy with the way she dealt with things, and always ready to place another order. So it seems likely that the change in attitude may have more to do with the way Louise is now implementing customer services, as her stand point is "You can't pleased everyone, all the time".

[21again]

I know what you mean Dottie.

It's ok saying you will get a refund for damaged goods but as you say, you wanted the goods which were worth a lot more than the refund ie the cost of the goods in the first place. Hence making the order.

Also, if you are paying over £5 for delivery you want to have a worthwile order to justify the delivery cost.

There is now way I will order any glass products from them again.

Wrapping glassware in newspaper with a couple of magazines or catalogues shoved into the box may be a way of keeping packaging costs down but it is of no use if you have a few glass jars that can be broken.

I may think about ordering tinned things from them again but anyone who has not ordered from them before, be aware that you tins may be seriously dented.

[Dottie]

I know what you mean Dottie.

I may think about ordering tinned things from them again but anyone who has not ordered from them before, be aware that you tins may be seriously dented.

Yep I'd say at least 15% of the cheap soup and baked bean tins I bought ended up with dents in, the tins are so much thinner than branded tins. I decided to use them first, but if I was at the supermarket I wouldn't take home dented tins. I'd also found sometime after a previous delivery, a squeezy bottle of relish had popped open, so I had to use that straight away. It must have got squashed, but not enough to pour out into the packaging, so it was only when I was re-organizing my stock that I noticed the seal had broken under the lid.

The above problems I'd put up with when they had really good offers on, but now that any BOGOF is now counted towards the P&P, then things don't work out to be real bargains once you've added £5.25 P&P and possible quality/damage issues.

To be honest the supermarkets will soon be doing silly christmas offers and then all the Xmas stuff will be reduced after by New Year. I've only just used up loads of 1kg bags of salted peanuts from Sainsbury's 10p each and they still were not out of date. Also bought several jars of SO Organic and Luxury mincemeat for 10p that I'll finish off this Xmas, BB Aug 2011.

Last year Morrisons Xmas £4 meal deal for 4 people included 2 x Fresh Tomato and Basil Soup, or another started to choose from, Roast Pork loin with all the veg and a fresh fruit trifle for pud. They had the offer on for at least 2 weeks, so I bought 1 and tried it out at home, found it was yummy and went back several times and filled my freezer with the soup and pork.

Prior to ordering with bigbrandsforless though, I had never bought any kind of flour/baking mixes. When making bread I automatically bought all the individual products to make a range of different loaves. But I have to say I'm now a convert of flour/baking mixes, just adding water makes things so easy and they are still yummy. So now I check these items out in the supermarket for offers, where I wouldn't have even looked at them before.

[Dottie]

That happened to me as well, got an email back
if you pressed the checkout button or pay button more than once we will receive both orders, the only one that is paid for is the one where you went through to the paypal screen and confirmed payment. when the orders come through they either say order received or accepted payment. we close all orders that come through as order received, and an email is sent automatically by the system, the only orders that are paid for and processed are accepted payment orders. Once these are processed and closed another email is sent by the system and you end up with two order numbers.

Interesting Weggy that your 4 posts are about BBFL and you joined 15/08/10 which is the date the original posting and offer was mentioned on here. As your most recent post sounds like a PR job for BBFL, I checked your other posts and the quote above definitely sounds like you know the system inside out, rather than as a customer.

Anyway thanks for the new offer Weggy, I'm sure folk will make use of it, although I've not checked it out myself yet so don't know how good it might be.

Anyone placing an order remember to check the small print, as last time a few folk got caught out with things like coffee, sugar and biscuits etc, as these were not classed as food products. So if in doubt, email them and ask if all qualify, before you place your order.

[21again]

Prior to ordering with bigbrandsforless though, I had never bought any kind of flour/baking mixes. When making bread I automatically bought all the individual products to make a range of different loaves. But I have to say I'm now a convert of flour/baking mixes, just adding water makes things so easy and they are still yummy. So now I check these items out in the supermarket for offers, where I wouldn't have even looked at them before.

You know I still haven't tried any of mine .

I got the pizza base mix, the savoury scone mix and the doughnut mix.

I must have a go before they end up going off.



I normally make my pizza dough and bread rolls from scratch and they are always a success, so I am a bit wary to try the mixes in case they aren't as good.

[Dottie]

21again I thought you were going to give the doughnut mix a try in your pie maker?

I can't really say how cake mixes and stuff turn out, but I like the bread mix. Just tried the doughnut and bun mix and I had thought the buns would be more cake like, but I suppose as they have an iced finger recipe on the side of the pack, then it explains why the mixture is nearer to bread than cake.

I do like fruit loaf, so maybe next time I'll add fruit and see how it turns out.

[21again]

21again I thought you were going to give the doughnut mix a try in your pie maker?

I can't really say how cake mixes and stuff turn out, but I like the bread mix. Just tried the doughnut and bun mix and I had thought the buns would be more cake like, but I suppose as they have an iced finger recipe on the side of the pack, then it explains why the mixture is nearer to bread than cake.

I do like fruit loaf, so maybe next time I'll add fruit and see how it turns out.

Did I? I had forgotten about that. I'ts my age.

I bought a doughnut tray from Lidl the other week so I am going to try some in the tray and some deep fried in a normal pan with just a couple of inches of oil.

I tried making muffins for the first time the other week and can't believe how simple they are to make and how good they are and cost next to nothing.

I can't stop making the damned things now.

[21again]

New code for 100% extra free food exp 5th Nov

I have just seen that Big Brands have another code but this time it includes food which I assume includes chocolate and snacks this time.

http://www.bigbrandsforless.co.uk/?page_id=140

[Dottie]

Yeah that's the offer Weggy informed us of, before it went on BBFL site. I also got an email this morning stating the offer and it does say all food, but if your going to place an order, it might be worth checking if all the items you want, come under their heading of food.

At the moment there is not a lot of food products, so I would have thought that they are now including the biscuits you like. They also have some items listed on the products page as 50%, 100%, 200% and 300% free, it might be worth checking that if you order those, do they still count? As in double your order coupon code BBFLXC 100%, so if you ordered an item which offers 300% free, do you receive 600% of that product?