It makes it sound like it’s a good thing, as you can now mix-and-match products and still get a volume discount.
However it’s hiding a sneaky price rise for those of us that place large orders.
For example I order 16 bags of powder at a time, which currently costs me £342.40.
According to the above page, I’ll now pay £25.75 per bag, less a 10% discount, giving a total of £370.80.
So that’s a price rise of 8.3%.
Ok, so maybe your cost price has gone up, and you need to increase the price. But at least be honest about that, rather than framing it as doing us a favour by “simplifying” the pricing.
Your new discount will make subscriptions cheaper for those that order 5 or fewer bags, but more expensive for anyone who orders 6 or more bags. It’s hardly encouraging for those of us who are huge Huel users.
The above page says “the more you spend, the more you save”, which isn’t true. Once you hit the £85 threshold, the saving stays at 10% however much you buy.
there was a big discussion thread on this here and the general consensus for large volume users appears to have been to create multiple subs of smaller volumes to maintain the savings rather than one big one.
But how ridiculous is that Phil. I order 8+ bags at a time, and so next time I’m going to have to change my sub to 4, and set it to renew weekly and receive 2-4 sets of deliveries from Huel with 2-4 sets of packaging, processing and delivery costs incurred by Huel and 2-4 sets of delivery emissions from DPD.
It makes no sense, and goes against the very basics of economies of scale.
not many things do these days and ive long since stopped trying to figure those things out. Sorry - wasn’t adding to the convo, just pointing it in the direction of the existing one. I have to pay large delivery fees and even larger customs fees so I’m definitely not invested in the trouble it cause for domestic deliveries
I did skim-read that thread, but I don’t see how that helps?
4 bags would get 10% off = £92.70. So buying 16 bags in 4 orders would still cost £370.80?
Yes, buying 4 bags now will be cheaper than it used to be. But buying either 16 bags, or 4 lots of 4 bags will now cost more. And there is no incentive to buy more than 5 bags at a time, whereas before there was a big discount in placing a large order.
Huel are implicitly saying that they don’t want to give such a big discount to those of us that eat a large amount of Huel
(I started a new thread because that thread was about the US pricing structure, which seems similar but slightly different in implementation.)
I think Phil was just pointing you to that thread because this has come up already and there might have been something in there of interest to you.
I’m getting confused. I haven’t analysed the numbers myself, I’ve only looked at the pricing analysis at the end of that linked thread. So is it now the case that 8x2, 4x4, 2x8, or 1x16, all cost the same? The last thing I saw on this said it didn’t.
Almost - I think 8x2 bags would cost more as it doesn’t hit the threshold for the 10% discount, but anything above 4 bags is charged at a fixed price per bag (with a 10% discount).
Inflation eventually affects every business. So far they have reacted with quality downgrades, and now eventually with a price increase in disguise. Which is still better than a further downgrade in quality. If there had been another downgrade they would no longer be the market leader, so this seems to be a strategically better move.
Nevertheless it is bad, and annoying. Like all recent price increases affecting almost all products. Inflation is bad and annoying, but unfortunately we can’t change it.
It’s incorrect to brand this as an across-the-board price increase. Some customers pay more, others pay less. According to Charlotte for the ‘large majority’ it’s a benefit.
It’s certainly not a price increase for fans of Essential. That’s down to 90p.
& here’s a thought… although the new system is more expensive for heavy users of one product maybe it’s cheaper for a large enough majority of customers to actually mean less money overall for the company. ? It’s not impossible.
I think most would agree that it is the delivery of the message that is really the issue here. If Huel had said - We don’t want to reduce the quality of our product but we do need to increase the price - I believe most would accept this. Poor delivery of the inevitable need to increase prices.
Why would Huel say ‘we do need to increase the price’ when some people (presumably that ‘large majority’) will actually see a price decrease? That’d be silly.
I’ve shared this message in the other discount thread however to explain on this thread, the new system, allows Hueligans to get discounts across the range, which is something that wasn’t possible before.
With the old system, every subsequent bag of the same product was cheaper than before, with the new system the discount is based on overall spending (across products) not the volume of the same product.
Also with the old system, the cheapest price per bag on a single product was achieved at the top quantity (e.g. 16 for powder). However, with the new system, the cheapest price per bag on a single product is achieved sooner (e.g. around bags 10-11 for BE).
But, the key takeaway’s are (using Black Edition for example) buying 3 bags in the new system is cheaper than it was before, which will actually benefit a large majority of our customers.
Buying medium volumes of multiple products will now result in a bigger discount than it would have done before, so our customers can still benefit from ordering high volumes, but across our product range, which we believe more and more of our users are doing.
I hope that makes the discount structure a bit clearer.
It does, however, it has still resulted in a big price increase for essentially your most loyal customers. The ones who have probably supported you the longest, and made the decision over the years to make Huel a huge part of their diet, and in doing so place large orders. It now appears that we are having to pay more, so other people can pay less, and we no longer benefit from the economies of scale which exist for large orders.
Bingo. This, and after finding my second bit of plastic in my food in three months, is really starting to annoy me. we will be placing two large orders before the increase (32 black and 32 h&s) then reassessing when its done.
