Tesco misprice policy discussion area part III

Tars

letsgobilliejoe wrote:

right, this should explain all, even if it is addressed to head office. i'm sure you can make sense of it.

i'll post this letter tomorrow and keep you updated as to how i get on..

if i've made any mistakes or if you have any suggestions, PM me!



Dear Sir / Madam
Whilst in your Tesco Baguley store this evening (31/01/2006), i happened upon your XBox games shelf, above which was a chart poster claiming "XBox games under £29.97". However, after going through the till, I noticed that i had been charged OVER this price for ALL FIVE games! Knowing this, i headed over to the Customer Srvices desk, where the nice assistant set off trying to track down said poster.

*snip* (well I guess you don't want me rewriting it all here)

I'm afraid this is going to make me sound like the evil Tesco supporter here but in that situation the posters are to indicate that there are some games at that price. Its a marketing tool really but I know how annoying it is. Play.com does a similar thing with their emails. "DVD's starting at X price" yet when you go and look there are 2 or 3 crappy ones at that price and everything else is more expensive. I'm not excusing it but I think as long as the games had individual shelf edge labels up your not onto a winning battle.

For what its worth though I do approve of you guys all pushing the R&R policy. Think its a good way to keep the company honest and focus the managers on having the right price labels out there.

Tars

flufff wrote:

My gripe is with my local Macclesfield store.
Everything gets "marked up" thats wrong in other stores so your being overcharged without knowing and difficult to proof.I'm contemplating telling trading standards that they arent consistent with prices of other local stores.

Can I ask you what you mean by marked up? As long as the price on the shelf edge label matches what you are charged then everything is legal and above board. Although I suspect I'm missunderstanding what you mean (my bad)

Also from a trading standards point of view I doubt they will be interested that prices differ between stores. As long as the labelling is legal in each site the prices can be different at every single store. Whether thats morally right is a whole other question that I wouldn't want to touch with a barge pole.

I don't want to sound like an apologist for Tesco but because I've been involved in some aspects of pricing for 16+ years with them I do have some knowledge of what is and isn't legal & allowed. *Just wants to help*

PeteM

Tars wrote:

I'm afraid this is going to make me sound like the evil Tesco supporter here but in that situation the posters are to indicate that there are some games at that price. Its a marketing tool really but I know how annoying it is. Play.com does a similar thing with their emails. "DVD's starting at X price" yet when you go and look there are 2 or 3 crappy ones at that price and everything else is more expensive. I'm not excusing it but I think as long as the games had individual shelf edge labels up your not onto a winning battle.

For what its worth though I do approve of you guys all pushing the R&R policy. Think its a good way to keep the company honest and focus the managers on having the right price labels out there.

There's a difference in the wording, namely the use of "from". In the same way sales are advertised as 50% off, then on closer inspection, the words "up to" are in smaller print.

If Tesco advertise the top 15 or so games as being under £30, and you're charged more than £30 for a game in the top 15, then IMO that is wrong.

flufff

Can I ask you what you mean by marked up?

Ive noticed a few items havent gone down to few pence cheaper like mars bars in other stores.Theyve stayed at higher price.Or prices get removed and higher price gets charged rather than correct price being charged so they are consistently overcharging customers compared to other stores.This gets them out of R&R nicely but technically could you still claim if items cheaper in a neighbouring store?
Would be nice to get things for a few pence less when they are on offer like everyone else. :-(
My partners commented on this in my local store compared to his.i deliberately went to another tesco in week and saw it for myself.
Special offer posters dont seem to go up in my big local store.

Tars

flufff wrote:

Ive noticed a few items havent gone down to few pence cheaper like mars bars in other stores.Theyve stayed at higher price.Or prices get removed and higher price gets charged rather than correct price being charged so they are consistently overcharging customers compared to other stores.This gets them out of R&R nicely but technically could you still claim if items cheaper in a neighbouring store?
Would be nice to get things for a few pence less when they are on offer like everyone else. :-(
My partners commented on this in my local store compared to his.i deliberately went to another tesco in week and saw it for myself.
Special offer posters dont seem to go up in my big local store.

Its not unusual for prices to vary between stores and I don't think you can really say thats overcharging. After all you could say you're just getting extra reductions by shopping at the other stores. Its a glass is half empty/half full argument I guess . However if its actual special offers that are on at one store but not another thats alittle weird. It might sound alittle over the top but if you can tell me the two stores and maybe the barcode of one of the products you think is wrong I can have a looksee.

sparkerzzzz

Tried to get the l'oreal foundation offer this morning and got charged £10.99. Still a sign up saying £7.44 but offer ended yesterday so they refused R&R. I argued but it got a bit embarassing with a queue of people behind me so I let it go. It's really irritating how you have to fight to get them to enforce their own policy!

el6724

Tars wrote:

Its not unusual for prices to vary between stores and I don't think you can really say thats overcharging. After all you could say you're just getting extra reductions by shopping at the other stores. Its a glass is half empty/half full argument I guess . However if its actual special offers that are on at one store but not another thats alittle weird. It might sound alittle over the top but if you can tell me the two stores and maybe the barcode of one of the products you think is wrong I can have a looksee.

I would imagine what is happening here is what happens in my store when someone gets an R&R. The Lower price is displayed in the first instance, someone gets over charged, they get a refund - then the staff just take away the special offer sign/lower price sticker & leave the original instead of taking away the higher price an altering the till to reflect the actual offer - meaning all customers essentialy get over charged - they just don't know!

This happened a few weeks ago on topside/silverside beef - in all Tesco's other than mine & on line it was reduced by about 50p a Lb but at mine there were no offer signs & no SEL - just higher price joints with short sell by dates

Liverbird

Theres an offer for 20% off chart cd's, dvd's and games instore only....this is for a week. Potential for more r+r's with Mr T!

Little_John

Flufff
Tars is correct, not tesco but Asda this time we have 3 large stores near us, Mddlebrook, Farnworth and Burnden Park they price the items in according to the area and try to entice people in to buying other items with different prices.

example over christmas my dad wanted 3 tins of Quality street
Middlebrook were the most expensive farnworth next and Burndedn were the cheapest I cant remember the prices we asked why and they said it was down to the area the store was in.

We have found Burnden park to be cheaper on alot of things.

letsgobilliejoe

Tars wrote:

I'm afraid this is going to make me sound like the evil Tesco supporter here but in that situation the posters are to indicate that there are some games at that price. Its a marketing tool really but I know how annoying it is. Play.com does a similar thing with their emails. "DVD's starting at X price" yet when you go and look there are 2 or 3 crappy ones at that price and everything else is more expensive. I'm not excusing it but I think as long as the games had individual shelf edge labels up your not onto a winning battle.

For what its worth though I do approve of you guys all pushing the R&R policy. Think its a good way to keep the company honest and focus the managers on having the right price labels out there.

i could understand if the posters said 'XBox games FROM X price', but they don't. they clearly states 'XBox games UNDER 29.97!!'