We price checked Dunnes against Lidl and Aldi to see if their vouchers really mean savings

Lisa Cope
2 hours ago
6 min read

The Dunnes voucher scheme has arguably been the biggest supermarket success story in decades, creating a "voucher cult" that keeps customers coming back to keep them active. Facebook pages, Whatsapp groups and even a full website are dedicated to sourcing vouchers for those in need, and the first rule of the Dunnes voucher club is - you do not shop without a voucher. The second rule is, you must spend in multiples of €25 to maximise your savings - a €25 spend with a €5 voucher = 20% off. A €35 spend with €5 voucher = 15% off and so on....

While many people switched to discounters Lidl and Aldi years ago for "the big shop" (or to "go full Lidl"), supplementing with unavailable or premium ingredients in Dunnes, Supervalu or Tesco, the voucher scheme means customers are pulled back to Dunnes within a set timeline to get that discount again and again, and lately we've been wondering whether it's all just a game that we've fallen for.

Every time we set an anxious foot in the supermarket it seems prices have risen (grocery prices are currently rising at double the rate of inflation), and we hear constant grumblings that prices in Dunnes are at a minimum 20% more than the discounters to start with. The accusation is that in reality there is no saving with the vouchers, and couldn't they just reduce the price of everything permanently than sucking us into this escapade? At the same time, every basket or trolley from Lidl and Aldi also seems unreasonably high, so who's offering the best value for money?

Curiosity (and our increasingly battered bank accounts) eventually got the better of us, and we decided we had to know whether the voucher scheme resulted in genuine savings, or whether we'd just fallen for some seriously good slight of hand. We spent most of a week and more supermarket trips than we'd like to admit price checking and rechecking almost 70 common supermarket items in Dunnes, Lidl and Aldi, and this is what we found out.