Tesco petrol station wouldn't accept my credit card

JasonW_2

astonsmummy wrote:

I had a problem with my card yesterday, went to tesco, spent an hour trying to get round the place, got me shopping scanned, packed it away then was told - sorry it's been declined there is a problem with the cards.
Was abruptly told you will haave to go and get some cash, was escorted to customer services while everyone looked on as i was some sort of shoplifter.
Then bluntly told well u will have to get cash out or leave the shopping here, fair enough i thought - where is the cash machine?
outside, where i have to walk in the rain with my 2 year old son, right past those poxy ride on machines, great! a lovely tantrum and chance for some more people to stare at me! then endured the same on the way back, finally nearly 15 mins later i managed to pay for my shopping whilst trying to keep ds from being run over by passing trolleys as he has no concept of standing still!
I got no sorry no nothing. thanks!!
I arrrived at tesco at 3.30pm, didnt end up leaving till 5pm!! i only spent £20 !!!!!!!!

The fact 'they had been being declined all day' got my back up - where were the signs to warn us?

I would have left the shopping where it was and gone elsewhere and never went back there. The more I read about tesco the lower my opinion of them, they are getting worse and are a bit too arrogant and cocky now these days.

Don't get upset by small pathetic people hiding behind their internet connetion giving out insults and being holier than thou with no way to back up what they are saying. Do the same as people clearly do on the real world and ignore them. They will soon get the message and change their ways. It's easy to sit on your high horse on the internet and try to get a reaction out of people. If I ever get like that, please shoot me.

J

taxiphil

Many thanks, everyone, for your responses.

Outtathaway wrote:

You're title and this part here are totally misleading, its not that tesco wouldn't accespt it, its that they couldn't accept it. Its not their fault either. You even state that it was a bank problem and yet you're puting the blame on Tesco.

Its not a mistake, its a technical problem, they happen. But it does show that you could have paid by taking out cash, but since you didn't want to incur the service charge they gave you the oppertunity to pay the following day (which they didn't have to do)

As others have already said, it's up to Tesco to have decent contingency plans for when the bank system fails. Expecting a customer to come back within 24 hours is not reasonable in my opinion. Perhaps giving them longer to pay or giving the option of sending a cheque in the post may have been reasonable. What if you'd just been passing that branch of Tesco while visiting friends but lived at the other end of the country?

There's no obligation for me to go and withdraw cash on my credit card. As has already been said, they advertised the fact that they accepted Mastercard and could have put up a sign to forewarn customers that they could not accept Mastercard due to a system failure. If I had known this I could have gone somewhere else for my petrol in the first place.

astonsmummy

JasonW wrote:

I would have left the shopping where it was and gone elsewhere and never went back there. The more I read about tesco the lower my opinion of them, they are getting worse and are a bit too arrogant and cocky now these days.

Don't get upset by small pathetic people hiding behind their internet connetion giving out insults and being holier than thou with no way to back up what they are saying. Do the same as people clearly do on the real world and ignore them. They will soon get the message and change their ways. It's easy to sit on your high horse on the internet and try to get a reaction out of people. If I ever get like that, please shoot me.

J

Thank you for your reply, thought i may be overreacting!

As far as leaving the shopping there - i soo wish i could of but only went to tesco as when i pulled up in the asda carpark and realised i didnt ave a pound to pay to park! (have to remeber to check next time!):o
But i ened up having to draw out £30 to pay for £20.83 worth of shopping!:mad:

MyUserNamesTaken

Chances are if the till won't accept the card due to a technical error, you won't get money out of a cash point either. As far as I am aware, there was a worldwide problem with Visa the other day. I didn't know Mastercard was affected. Astonsmummy, the same thing would have happened at any shop you'd gone to if you tried to pay using a Visa Debit or Credit card. Some people even had problems with Switch.

Out of curiosity, Taxiphil, was this the card you'd used to pay for your Xbox? If so, I assume it's the card they also refunded to when you got your R&R? Sometimes, this can cause problems with Tesco's own system. I paid for a PS2 on my Mastercard, which they then refunded back to due to giving me an R&R. I needed a refund on something else and the system rejected my card.

One more thing - it's quite normal for petrol stations to do as Tesco did. Had this happened to you at Asda, they would have done the same thing.

astonsmummy

I understand it would of probably happened in asda, i was just moaning becuase there were no warnings
Oh well it's no big deal i got me shopping so cant complain really lol!!

MyUserNamesTaken

astonsmummy wrote:

I understand it would of probably happened in asda, i was just moaning becuase there were no warnings
Oh well it's no big deal i got me shopping so cant complain really lol!!

There were no warnings in any stores. It was a technical problem on Visa's end. No-one knew when it was going to be fixed. The first people knew about it was when card started being declined. My OH works in retail. He said it was terrible where he worked.

nomoneytoday

Sainsburys allowed my wife a week to pay her petrol bill when her card wouldn't work the other day...

Similar forms to be filled out were done at the side of the till, out of sight of the others in the queue

Its not the card decline that is the issue, its how the company deals with the problems that shows how good they are...

astonsmummy

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

There were no warnings in any stores. It was a technical problem on Visa's end. No-one knew when it was going to be fixed. The first people knew about it was when card started being declined. My OH works in retail. He said it was terrible where he worked.

I went to tesco at 3.30pm - got to the till at about 4.30pm the casier and 2 customer service people said it had been happening all day with electron cards - so imo they could of put signs up to warn people.

markmc999

nomoneytoday wrote:

Its not the card decline that is the issue, its how the company deals with the problems that shows how good they are...

I totally agree. If I'd been spoken to or dealt with like that in the Petrol station I either wouldnt have moved or demanded seeing the manager there and then. Im a very calm and relaxed person but people being rude and obnoxious really gets my back up!

iwanttosave_2

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

Chances are if the till won't accept the card due to a technical error, you won't get money out of a cash point either.

I had no problem withdrawing from the cash point other than the massive queue because of all the other people having to run to the machine.