9th August 2026
The Poor Pay More: Is Britain's Discount Economy Becoming Unfair?
Tesco is currently offering customers who spend at least £60 in-store a fuel discount of up to around 8p a litre. It is a perfectly normal supermarket promotion but it also highlights a much bigger problem.
The people best able to take advantage of discounts are not necessarily those who need them most.
Tesco's latest promotion is a good example.
Spend at least £60 in a single in-store transaction and customers can receive a coupon giving a 5% discount on fuel, worth up to around 7–8p a litre depending on the fuel and station. The promotion runs until 16 August.
For a motorist filling a 50-litre tank, 8p a litre is worth about £4.
That's useful.
But there is another way of looking at it.
Who is most likely to qualify for the saving?
Someone who drives.
Someone who has access to a car.
Someone who can afford to spend £60 in one shopping trip.
Someone who can then buy enough fuel to make the discount worthwhile.
And that immediately raises an uncomfortable question.
What about the person who doesn't drive?
Consider a pensioner who no longer has a car.
They may walk to a local shop, use a bus, rely on a relative or have their groceries delivered.
They don't buy petrol.
So the 8p-a-litre saving is completely irrelevant to them.
Now consider somebody on a low income who carefully buys food every few days because they cannot afford to spend £60 in one transaction.
They may actually spend more over a month than the customer spending £60 at once.
But they don't qualify for the promotion.
The same pattern occurs repeatedly throughout the economy.
The people with the greatest ability to spend often receive the greatest discounts.
The supermarket isn't doing anything wrong
It is important to be fair to Tesco.
This is a commercial promotion, not a government benefit.
Tesco is entitled to use discounts to encourage customers to shop in its stores and then buy fuel from its filling stations.
The company isn't responsible for solving inequality.
Indeed, Tesco has plenty of other discounts available through Clubcard and other promotions. Its Clubcard system offers discounts on selected products and rewards customers through points and vouchers.
From a business perspective, encouraging customers to spend £60 rather than £40 makes perfect sense.
But the wider pattern is worth examining.
The discount economy favours people who can spend
Look around the modern economy and the same thing happens everywhere.
Buy in bulk and the price per item falls.
Buy two or three products and receive a multi-buy discount.
Spend more and qualify for free delivery.
Have a Clubcard and receive a lower price.
Buy a larger quantity of electricity, food or other household goods and you may get better value.
Travel frequently and loyalty schemes reward you.
Pay annually rather than monthly and the overall cost can be lower.
Own a car and fuel promotions become available.
Have enough money to invest and you can receive returns on your savings.
The problem is that being able to take advantage of these savings often requires money in the first place.
The paradox of being poor
This creates a strange paradox.
Someone on a comfortable income can often afford to buy a larger pack because it is cheaper per kilogram.
Someone on a low income may have to buy the smaller pack because they don't have enough money to spend £10 or £15 on something they won't use immediately.
The larger pack is cheaper.
But the person who cannot afford it pays more per unit.
The same applies to household energy, insurance, transport and credit.
Those who can pay in advance can sometimes obtain the best prices.
Those living from payday to payday can end up paying more.
Poverty can therefore become expensive.
Transport is an obvious example
The Tesco promotion also highlights the importance of transport.
For somebody living in a rural area, a car can be essential rather than a luxury.
But car ownership carries considerable costs:
fuel;
insurance;
road tax;
servicing;
repairs;
tyres;
MOTs;
depreciation.
Someone without a car avoids many of those costs.
But they may face higher prices or reduced access to shops, services and employment.
The situation is particularly complicated in rural Scotland, where distances are greater and public transport can be less frequent.
So a fuel discount may be valuable to one household while completely irrelevant to another.
Discounts can unintentionally widen the gap
This is where the issue becomes more interesting.
Imagine two households.
Household A has two cars, regularly spends £100–£150 on a supermarket shop and fills a vehicle with fuel.
It can potentially take advantage of supermarket fuel promotions, Clubcard offers and bulk-buy discounts.
Household B has no car, buys smaller quantities because money is tight and shops locally or makes several smaller purchases.
Household B may receive far fewer promotional savings.
Neither household has done anything wrong.
But the first household can potentially reduce its cost of living through discounts that are simply unavailable to the second.
The same problem appears in banking
Consider savings accounts.
People with substantial savings can earn interest.
People with no savings receive nothing.
Indeed, someone with £50,000 in savings can earn hundreds or thousands of pounds a year simply because they already have money.
Someone struggling to pay the bills has no capital generating an additional income.
Again:
The more resources you already have, the more opportunities you often have to reduce your costs or increase your income.
Insurance is another example
Insurance can produce similar effects.
Some customers can pay annually.
Others have to pay monthly.
Paying monthly can involve additional costs.
The person with enough money to pay the entire premium upfront can therefore potentially obtain the cheaper deal.
Once again, having money can itself become a way of saving money.
Even food shopping demonstrates the problem
Multi-buy promotions are another obvious example.
"Buy two for £5."
"Three for £6."
"Family pack £X."
For a household with plenty of disposable income, these can be excellent savings.
For someone with £30 to last until payday, spending £5 or £6 on several items may simply be impossible.
The saving exists.
But they cannot access it.
Is this unfair?
That depends on what we mean by fairness.
A supermarket could reasonably argue:
"We are offering everybody exactly the same opportunity. Anyone who spends £60 can receive the fuel discount."
That is technically true.
But equality of opportunity isn't always the same as equality of access.
A person with £100 available for shopping can take advantage of a £60 threshold.
Someone with £40 cannot.
A motorist can use a fuel discount.
A non-driver cannot.
Someone with a large freezer can buy in bulk.
Someone living in a small flat may not be able to.
Someone with savings can shop around for insurance or energy deals.
Someone struggling financially may have to accept the immediate option.
Should companies be expected to solve this?
Probably not.
Trying to force businesses to make every promotion equally valuable to every consumer would be unrealistic.
Companies exist to make money.
Promotions are designed to change customer behaviour and increase sales.
But governments should recognise the consequences.
If a growing proportion of essential goods and services are sold through discounts, loyalty schemes, bulk purchases and targeted promotions, then headline prices may become less representative of what the poorest households actually pay.
That is a more serious issue.
The real problem is not Tesco
Tesco's 8p fuel promotion is only the latest example.
The real issue is a cost-of-living economy increasingly divided between:
those who can afford to shop around, buy in bulk and pay upfront
and
those who have to buy what they need, when they need it, with whatever money they have available.
The first group can accumulate discounts.
The second group can end up paying the full price.
That can create a vicious circle.
Lower income means less ability to exploit discounts.
Less ability to exploit discounts means higher effective prices.
Higher effective prices mean less disposable income.
And less disposable income makes it even harder to take advantage of future savings.
Perhaps we need to rethink what "value" means
The cheapest advertised price isn't necessarily the cheapest price available to everyone.
A £60 threshold may be trivial to one household and impossible for another.
A car-fuel discount may be valuable to a commuter but meaningless to a pensioner without a vehicle.
A bulk-buy offer may save money for a large family while forcing a single person to spend money they would rather keep.
A loyalty scheme may reward frequent shoppers while offering little to someone who simply cannot afford to shop that way.
So perhaps consumers should ask a different question.
Not:
"What is the cheapest price?"
But:
"What is the cheapest price available to someone in my financial circumstances?"
That is a much more revealing measure of the cost of living.
The uncomfortable conclusion
There is nothing inherently wrong with Tesco offering 8p off a litre of fuel to customers who spend £60.
The promotion is legal, transparent and entirely understandable from a business perspective.
But it is a useful reminder that modern consumer capitalism often rewards the ability to spend money before it rewards the need to save money.
And that raises a much bigger question for policymakers.
If the people on the lowest incomes routinely have the fewest opportunities to access discounts, cheaper credit, bulk buying, loyalty rewards and upfront-payment savings, are they effectively paying a poverty premium for everyday life?
Perhaps the real measure of a fair economy isn't how cheap things are for the average consumer.
It is how expensive ordinary life becomes for the person with the least money.