Montenegro discovers shopping vouchers...and makes a right pig's arse out out of it

There are quite a few retail organisations in Montenegro for whom I wouldn't mind having a loyalty card. KIPS, for example, the DIY chain in whose inconsistently stocked stores I have spent a fair few bob over the years. OKOV, their great rivals, would be another (because, even now, they each sell a couple of items the other - unaccountably - does not). EKO petrol - given that I run two Landrovers - would be another. However, now that I have three children, the shop that hoovers up by far the greatest proportion of my hard earned cash is Voli.

For those not living over here, Voli is a bit like Tesco in that it's a supermarket chain that has large and small stores all over the country. Voli is not really like Tesco in that no matter what the size of the store the wares for sale appear to be exactly the same - so if you visit the Mega-Voli near Delta City you will find, mascarpone and baked beans aside, that it stocks exactly the same stuff as the little Voli in Virpazar but just has rather more of it. Voli is rubbish, but it's what we got.

Voli is also pretty dependable. It will have a large meat counter selling 30 kinds of spam. It will have a bakery section with loads of white bread and a few loaves of brown, and some croissant if you get there early enough. It will have a tiny fruit and veg section with a pitiful selection of withered greens and browning bananas. The booze aisle will be the largest and best stocked in the building. Everything you buy will be placed in its own plastic bag unless you tell them not to (in case a can of tuna somehow gets infected by a bag of washing powder). Voli to us, like to many Montenegrins, is simply a member of your family.

They are not free of competition, however. There is Maxi (shit), Mercator (shit) and Roda (shit), not to mention Gold (shit but with good veg). If any of these lot upped their game and became, however briefly, not shit, Voli might not have everything its own way. With this vaguest of threats in mind, Voli has decided to incentivise its customers to shop only at Voli. It'd be too much to expect them to adopt loyalty cards, but they've clearly been giving the concept a lot of thought, so much so that they have decided to trial-run a voucher system this last month or so.

This is how a voucher system works in the UK:
1. You get given a £2.50 voucher
2. You get £2.50 off your bill

This is how the voucher system works in Voli:
1. You get given a €2.50 voucher
2. You can't use it immediately, only the next time you're in Voli
3. The next time you're in Voli you get €2.50 off your next bill.
3ii. As long as you spend more than €10 with your bank card, not cash
3iii. And as long as you find (an) item(s) that cost(s) - hah! - exactly (ie, round about, as odd cents are always rounded up or down here) €2.50
3iv. That come(s) from the same manufacturer
4. You then have to sign a specially printed out page of A4 before you can leave the store

All together now....WTF???

This how I came to be in Virpazar's Voli being told that a combination of icing sugar and baby wipes would not entitle me to €2.50 off my bill because they didn't add up to the (almost) exact amount and because they were made by two different companies. So I bought a bar of butter for €2.56, which was deemed close enough. And then I had to wait 5 minutes while they printed out my receipt, found a pen, and got me to sign for the butter, like a chit.

I don't think they're quite ready for Nectar cards.