I don't like gift vouchers; they're nothing more than encumbered cash.
As a matter of principle, I would rather support the outlets who are courageous enough to offer lower prices than to use their competitors who will give the lower price only if you point out their competitors' deal. The organisation that price matches wins both ways - they get the higher price if people don't realise, and they still get the business if you are aware of cheaper prices.
It's possible that Jessops have deliberately decided to stop price matching now that many people have vouchers in their hands. Maybe it's less deliberate than that, though - my impression is that they have been very intermittent with price matching recently.
All Jessops' "bricks and mortar" stores have overheads involved - and there's almost certainly going to be a price penalty over online pricing.
Most things in Jessops are not price competitive (their pricing on things like memory cards and most Canon EOS bits are expensive), also the range is not slanted towards DSLR users anyway. I use them mainly for 'distress purchases' - when I need a cleaning product or other small item and don't want to wait for shipping, or when Jessops work out cheaper than buying online when shipping is included.
If I had some vouchers, I may well use them on printer supplies as the money can't be recovered in a more liquid form; it has to be used. That said, Jessops' range of supplies often aren't that price competitive compared to the likes of LambdaTek, oyyy.co.uk, Ameiva and their ilk, also their range in my local stores is rather skewed towards own brand and Canon, with a dash of Epson and very little HP (not that helpful for someone like me whose photo printer is an HP B9180, as almost every HP paper apart from the range of Advanced Photo Papers are swellable and no use for the pigment based B9180). The packs of paper also tend to be the smaller packs which are expensive anyway. I have seen some third party branded papers in Jessops in the past, but not recently.
David
