MAY I add a comment concerning David Head's letter (Your Letters, October 18) with regard to supermarket competition in Malvern.

A couple of months ago my wife and I had to be in Hereford and we decided to do our weekly shopping in the Hereford Safeway instead of our usual visit to the Malvern one. We found everything very different there with, at a rough estimate, three times as many 'cut price' items than is usual in Malvern, although some were only slight reductions. At the check out we mentioned this to the cashier and although she did not have any knowledge of the Malvern store she did say that there was keen supermarket competition in Hereford and they had to have good prices.

When I reached home I checked over the Malvern Safeway leaflet that had been left a couple of days before. There it advertised as a specially priced item prawn cocktail at £1.29 instead of £1.99 each. We had bought the identical items in Hereford for half price at 99p. Then I noticed the list of stores at the end of the leaflet; nearly 40 altogether in various parts of the country but Hereford was not one of them. I then realised the strategy. Those 40 stores were judged to be in a similar situation to Malvern with a certain level of competition so they all had the same leaflet with the same cut prices.

We had to go over to Hereford again recently so we again went to Safeway and found a similar situation with many more bargains than in Malvern. There are features in Malvern missing in Hereford, a good fresh fish and meat counter and the better bakery but when it comes to prices we would go to Hereford every time if it was nearer.

I think this bears out Mr Head's contention about Malvern competition as well as the need to attract more people into Malvern and stop them being drawn away to other towns. We would also endorse his comments on Lidl, which we visited for the first time in Wiltshire this summer.

ANTHONY BYATT, Cowleigh Bank, Malvern.

n Safeway comment: "We have a national pricing policy but store managers are encouraged to use local initiatives, including local pricing, local products and local promotions, to help them compete effectively in a specific location.

The manager is best placed to know what his customers want and he can offer reduced prices on key products.

Stores assigned on each flyer are chosen completely at random so that out competitors are unaware of our special offers. All our stores have similar levels of deals, however prices may vary depending on the store size and location.