Tesco today.....

dannodw

Well, after completing my food shopping, I decided to go upstairs and check out their vat free promotion on games, dvd's and Cd's. Anyway, I found one that I fancied at a reasonable £25.

I then took it to a self checkout machine where I was charged £29.00. Just to double check I wandered back upstairs, (the entertainment area is quite a distance away) and checked the price, it was marked up at £25. To save time I took a photo of the items barcode to save the customer service staff time.

She scanned the item, looked at my photo and confirmed that I had been overcharged. Due to the vat free thing though, she wasn’t quite sure on what to do so she called the entertainment section for a member of staff to come downstairs.


After a patient wait, the customer service operator approached another lady who was talking to another member of staff. She was from the entertainment department. After a short conversation the entertainment staff member came over to me.

She then immediately, in a sharp tone, asked if I had taken a photo of the price tag of the item I had been overcharged for. I confirmed that I had. She then asked me to delete it immediately, as I was infringing some sort of copyright by taking the photo. I was told not to do it again. The entertainment member of staff then left. She made no effort to confirm the pricing error, she simply told the other staff member to refund me the difference and left.

At this point I was in shock. The tone the entertainment staff member talked to me in was totally uncalled for. It was very aggressive. Even the lady I was dealing with on the customer service desk looked at me with a shocked expression on her face.

I can say now, that in all my years, I have not been talked to like that, other than when I was being told off as a child by my father! It was totally unnecessary.

Fair enough, I took a photo of the item which apparently, isn’t allowed. Prior to this I was unaware of this and consequently I will not be doing it again. Strangely enough, I don’t get pleasure in taking photos in a supermarket. I simply did this to save time, the customer service staff member certainly didn’t mind me saving her from wasting 10 minutes, walking up then down the store, navigating her way through hundreds of customers, just to confirm what was shown in my photo. I fully intended to delete the photo as bizarrely, I had no other use for it.

Normally I would have demanded to see the store manager there and then. I was however genuinely shell shocked at the behaviour which I had just been the recipient of.

Upon getting home, I rang the store to be told the manager was away, resulting in me them an email.

I have emailed them at [EMAIL="customer.services@tesco.co.uk"]customer.services@tesco.co.uk[/EMAIL] and await a reply.

For reference I got DTD on the game, meaning it cost me:
£29.00 originally minus £3.80 vat equalling 25.20.
£4 overcharged, time 2 equals £8.
£25.20-8= £17.20.

(I'm not sure if that should of happened due to the original vat reduction, but there you go.)

I was and am genuinely shocked by the behaviour received. I hope it was simply her having a bad day, otherwise she seriously need some sort of refresher course in customer service.

Just thought I would have my rant.....

dannodw.

bumpoowee

Apart from what you were told sounding like the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, bad day or not there's no excuse to talk to customers like that who haven't intentionally done anything wrong - I used to work in supermarkets (haven't quite managed to block it out of my memory yet!) and even when I was !!!!ed off about something I was polite to all the customers (even the horrible ones).

Well done for keeping cool at the time cos I certainly wouldn't have done - hope you get somewhere with your complaints it's deffo worth £10/20 in vouchers.

oldone_2

Name the store so we can all go there and take lots of photos in the entertainment section.:D

dannodw

oldone wrote: »

Name the store so we can all go there and take lots of photos in the entertainment section.:D

:rotfl:

The store concerned was:


NEWTON AYCLIFFE EXTRA,
GREENWELL ROAD,
NEWTON AYCLIFFE,
DURHAM,
DL5 4DH

LemonGrove

dannodw wrote: »

:rotfl:

The store concerned was:


NEWTON AYCLIFFE EXTRA,
GREENWELL ROAD,
NEWTON AYCLIFFE,
DURHAM,
DL5 4DH

I love taking photos of things in Supermarkets, guess I'll have to be careful not to go to that one. :rotfl:

dfh

I am off to the store with me camera.Let us know how you got on with your complaint.

I_know_my_ABC_and_my_CMYK

Isn't there something about photos being taken of goods for stealing? Could be wrong but i seem to have some kind of a memory of this even if its faint.

I do agree though the lady in Tesco should not have spoken like that to anyone, not very good customer services really is it. Having said that she may have been caught off guard, we can all have an 'off day' but even so the OP is due an apology regardless.

I personally would probably look for another Tesco to shop in as I don't like confrontation and I wouldn't want to go back there.

dannodw

After telling some family members, it all seems to ridiculous now, she really did make me feel as if I had done something really bad! All over 1 photo of a price tag!

I do actually prefer Asda, but the Tesco Clubcard scheme is one of the main reasons our main monthly shop is done there. I do find some things more expensive though, and end up going into Asda on the way home anyway!

I have never had any problems before, hopefully it was a one off. I would hate to imagine that the staff member would be biting peoples heads off all day, I couldn't imagine working with them if that's the case!

hoyles10

That's out of order speaking to you like that and i'm sure what you were told is rubbish.

I don't know how it works but haven't Tmobile brought out some sort of phone where you can take pictures of product barcodes to compare prices or something like that?

I must admit the only time i've ever taken a photo of anything in a supermarket it was a punnet of Blackberries because the wife was mithering me to get her a Blackberry as her friend has one so I sent her the picture so tell her she could show her friend that i'd got her one

Halloway

hoyles10 wrote: »

I don't know how it works but haven't Tmobile brought out some sort of phone where you can take pictures of product barcodes to compare prices or something like that?

The T-Mobile Android G1 has an app where you can indeed scan a product barcode and it will then do a lookup at various online sites for price comparisons and reviews. I think it's called 'Barcode Scanner'.

dannodw

Thinking about it, whilst in tesco I used my mobile, the Nokia N97, to price check an item on mysupermarket.co.uk.

It was indeed thirty-odd pence cheaper at Asda, I wonder if that was 'allowed' under her rules. :rolleyes:

I'm still trying to work out the 'copyright infringement'. Anything I think of is trivial at best...