MSE News: Anger as Tesco website crashes on Clubcard exchange deadline day

Chiddles

I wanted to cash in £170 of clubcard tokens for £680 of Park Resorts vouchers. I wanted to do it in two batches to use on two separate breaks but it just took so loooong!! On saturday evening I managed to do half the vouchers in about an hour and a half. It kept timing out and telling me there were various errors but with a lot of persistence, it all went through. I then did the second batch on Sunday which completed in about 10 minutes withuout any errors so got it all sorted in the end but what a hassle!! I hope the holidays are good and that it was all worth it!!

StevieJ

If you exchange tokens for say say a day out at Alton Towers can you use those vouchers for an alternative say a meal in a restaurant instead?

cw18

I don't think so, but a lot of the 'day out' venue vouchers aren't specific to the venue you actually ordered them against so you can have a day out somewhere else.

vanbck2

steve_carter159 wrote: »

What a Nightmare! Took me an hour to get to the basket page, entered all of my codes and confirmed the order. I got the "We were unable to fulfill your request" error. The site then told me those voucher codes had already been used! No order confirmation email, I doubt it went through...

Their phones have had the busy tone all day and no response yet to my mail.

Hopefully they will get it sorted!

I had exactly the same problem, phoned Tesco today and they said that due to the large number of people exchanging their vouchers online last night it could take up to 48 hours for the confirmation emails to come through. Apparently even if you got the "we are unable to fulfill your request error" after getting to the last stage of the process then your order will of gone through.

Fingers crossed the confirmation email does arrive!

cw18

thanks for the info

I can't phone them until Wednesday morning (work got in the way today, and will tomorrow as well ), so by then it'll have been about 60 hours since I had the problem and I should know whether it's worth phoning or not.

StevieJ

cw18 wrote: »

I don't think so, but a lot of the 'day out' venue vouchers aren't specific to the venue you actually ordered them against so you can have a day out somewhere else.

They don't actually say that they are day out vouchers they appear non specific but I have only ever ordered the day out vouchers, are they colour coded or identified in some other way?

cw18

StevieJ wrote: »

They don't actually say that they are day out vouchers they appear non specific but I have only ever ordered the day out vouchers, are they colour coded or identified in some other way?

Never having had either in my sticky mitts (nor seen any 'in the flesh') I couldn't say.

My DD has had the Day Out ones before, and has some more at the moment that she ordered a couple of weeks ago. She's not mentioned being able to use them for anything else - and when I was ordering some last night (or trying to) there was a link to 'see where else this voucher is valid' that took me through to a list of day out venues.

martinsnest

I Tried to get through on the phone more or less constantly for the last 3 days of last week. It was constantly engaged.

cagsd

StevieJ wrote: »

If you exchange tokens for say say a day out at Alton Towers can you use those vouchers for an alternative say a meal in a restaurant instead?

Any reward that is not "Buy In Full", you can interchange the vouchers. So for example you could order Pizza Express vouchers but use them towards a hotel say, or you could order Hilton vouchers and use them in Goldsmiths, etc etc.
The exceptions to this is where you are buying a specific Buy In Full reward such as Drayton Manor theme park entry / magazine subscription / etc etc. These are only valid on the things you are actually buying for.
HTH.

Yateley

corbyboy wrote: »

There's a lesson to be learned here about not leaving things to the last possible minute.

The exchange deadline has been talked about on this website for ages.

That's irrelevant because:

a) many people like me had been trying for a week, but the site kept crashing anyway and not everyone can do it in work hours
b) any decent marketeer should know that it's human nature to leave promotion applications to the last minute, particularly when it's on a Sunday, but equally it's senseless of them to have two major promotions ending on a Sunday when the customer service helpline is closed. Tesco senior marketeers are paid oodles of money to get this right - it's not rocket science!