Tesco online pre-christmas order fiasco

properjob70

After a stressful pre christmas, partly caused by an order with Tesco online, I sent them the following letter:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to complain about the service I received on the last delivery from Tesco.com. Clearly the weather conditions were a factor, but as a specialist logistics company the communications between head office, store and customer fell well below expectations. The whole idea of shopping online at this time of year rather than jostling elbows with the crowds is supposed to reduce stress, not add to it. I think going to the local store for this particular shop would have taken a little over 2 hours door to door.

I placed the order on Monday 20th December at lunchtime and got the only available pre-christmas slot for 10-12pm Tuesday 21st December. A slow tesco.com website meant this process took 1.5 hours in itself.

On Tuesday, the order had failed to materialise by 1:30pm, so we called Tesco.com. They informed us that no deliveries were being made that day. Both landline and mobile numbers had been provided and no communication to that effect had been received by us via text or phone call. The tesco.com person we were speaking to informed us that the order had been processed and gave us the van number it had been loaded onto. We were offered the option of collecting from the MK Kingston store and decided to take that option. They made strenuous efforts during the call to contact the MK Kingston store and confirm the picked order still existed. On terminating the call, they assured us they would continue to try and contact the store to ensure they knew we were coming. At about 3pm we received a text from tesco_info, finally informing us that the delivery had been cancelled.

On arrival at the MK Kingston store at about 5pm, after being directed to a temporary tesco.com counter where they were dealing with the internet order fiasco, I was informed that they hadn’t saved any record of our order and could not pick it up. They offered a sandwich/drink in the caf! while I waited, but was given the bad news that the order had been cancelled. They claimed not to have received a call from tesco.com central so had assumed we weren’t going to collect. I was offered the option of picking the order myself and being given a 20% discount on the final bill. Given how busy the store was I refused and asked for my order to be re-picked while I completed my Christmas shopping in shopping mall, to be collected a couple of hours later. I was informed that no pickers were available until the following morning and could I collect by 10am on Wednesday 22nd December, running the picked order through the cash till but with the 20% discount still applicable. The tesco.com temporary shop would be available to process the order. I reluctantly agreed.

The following morning, my partner went to the store. The tesco.com counter was not open and after a wait in a large queue for customer services was informed the order was not in store as agreed and was in fact on a delivery van. Again, we had not been informed this was the case, so now we had completed two wasted journeys to the store; 4 journeys at 8 miles each way. By about 1:30pm we had given up hope of seeing the order and called tesco.com again to find out the situation. At about 2:30pm we received the order and gratefully accepted it; at least we had the items we wanted for Christmas at the price of several hours frustration.
On analysing the bill and the substitutions I have the following complaints about it:-

• Judicious picking of reduced price and 2 for one offers saved me a considerable amount of money with the original order. The substitutions did not have these discounts applied and represented about £15 over charged on the final bill. e.g. 500ml beers were substituted with 330 ml bottles; ½ price wines at £5 were substituted with £6 full value wines; 2 for one offers were substituted to the value of the original price, not the 2 for 1 discount.
• The 20% discount we were offered twice the previous day was not applied to the final bill. This represented nearly £40 more than we would have paid on collection from the store as agreed, and what we turned up for.
• The delivery fee was not waived – given two wasted journeys on information from Tesco staff this is a goodwill gesture that surely should have been applied.
• The two wasted journeys at Inland Revenue lower rate would be charged at 25p/mile. This represents about £8 of mileage allowance (32 miles travel).

Overall we are out of pocket on this order to the tune of over £70. Please apply a discount of this order to a future tesco.com order or we will have to reconsider using Tesco.com in the future. Other delivery services are available.


You can imagine how pleased I was to receive a call from them yesterday offering me £5 delivery charge as "compensation"... :mad:

With a heating system breakdown and a fraud on my Tesco credit card that same week (the card was obviously cancelled on reporting it - which is good - but at one of the more spendy times of the year, and given post backlogs, weather delays and numerous bank holidays I still haven't had a new one over 2 weeks later), I was not high-minded enough to reject the order on principle even though it was obvious the order screwups were really not giving me a fair deal.

Definitely not convinced this online grocery shopping lark is all it's cracked up to be (though when I didn't work for myself the lunch hour used to be a good time to place an order).

alwaysonthego_2

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Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

candycow

Not the same problem at all, but related. About 2 weeks before Christmas, I went online to book my delivery slot for the same store as you. The closest slot left available was Wed the 22nd, which I didn't mind about too much as it gave me time to go back out and get anything that was out of stock, so I took the slot and secured it with an order of champagne. A couple of days before, I logged on to put what I actually wanted in my trolley, only to find that everything Christmassy said 'no longer available for your preorder', grrr. I ended up cancelling the order and spending 3 hours in the store early in the morning of the 23rd doing the shop myself.

Emmylou_2

properjob70 wrote: »

<snip>Clearly the weather conditions were a factor, but as a specialist logistics company the communications between head office, store and customer fell well below expectations.</snip>.

They're not a specialist logistics company - they're a supermarket. Slight difference.

Wouldn't want UPS or Norbert Dentressangle to be in charge of selling my groceries. I also don't like Tesco being in charge of delivering anything.

This is the problem with people expecting all things from all companies. Tesco have got where they are by being good at what they do, rather than by doing a lot of different things badly.

properjob70

Emmylou wrote: »

They're not a specialist logistics company - they're a supermarket. Slight difference.

As a company whose whole raison d'etre revolves around shipping a lot of perishable goods in enormous quantities around the country (indeed the world) I would vociferously argue that their logistical activities are key to the company's activities.
That aside I suspect the internet shopping side is run as a separate business unit within the group and it's that unit the comment is aimed at.

Foggster

To be fair it was an awful domino effect with the bad weather. We were also victims of the madness of internet shopping in particular groceries. Sainsburys cancelled my very long standing order 2 days before it was due, no reason just "sorry we have cancelled your order". I didnt panic, my mum had a Tesco order on the go for the day after my delivery (23rd Dec) so moved my entire order onto hers. Day of the 23rd, we called Tesco to check all was well with our delivery, a very jolly customer services lady told us not only was all OK but we were the 2nd drop of the morning and the van driver was just arriving at the 1st drop - see you in 20 mins! Hooray we said. 2 hours later, many phone calls we discover that Tesco had cancelled the order the day before via email. To be fair, mum doesnt check her emails as often as I do but when we logged in there was no email. Tesco did tell us we could collect from store, however, it is 30 miles away and when I asked why they couldnt deliver they said the roads were too bad due to the weather!!

I honestly couldnt be bothered to complain. We ended up making a mad dash to the new Tesco 18 miles away and found the store not only stocked to the hilt but no queues! So alls well that ends well.

hollydays

Omg that letter is incredibly wordy,you need to be concise!

The one time of year I would NOT place an Internet shopping order would be before Christmas,as I need to be sure I get the exact ingredients I need for my recipes.as for the weather,!!!! happens.

Internet shopping is a godsend for me as I have a trek down steps and through my garden ,so I get a delivery of tins,bulky and heavy stuff every so often,I go with whoever gives me free delivery,I have never had any problem and sometimes get given substitutes free,if you want top notch cs maybe go to Harrods

Virtually everyone I have spoken to was Illl over Christmas, with winter vomiting virus and or flu,so perhaps staff shortages had an impact

Emmylou_2

properjob70 wrote: »

As a company whose whole raison d'etre revolves around shipping a lot of perishable goods in enormous quantities around the country (indeed the world) I would vociferously argue that their logistical activities are key to the company's activities.

Not sure about worldwide, but in GB Tesco's "Producer to DC to store" logistics are handled by Eddie Stobart Ltd. Which is why I didn't mention them above. I'd probably trust a Stobart driver to do anything. (I've previously worked in the transport/logistics industry in various roles).

Makeandsave

Thats a good letter, However they did offer you 20% on the bill if you got it yourself which was good of them. You could have rang them before traveling down to there store to be told it was on its way to you saving yourself a trip. I hope you can get some sort of compensation, but at the end of the day you accepted the shopping meaning you were happy with it. Keep us updated

nomoneytoday

We had 2 deliveries on Christmas week.

One didn't show up, and after a call to the CEO's office we were credited with an appropriate level of compensation.
Waitrose did turn up, on time and with a smile

properjob70

Makeandsave wrote: »

Thats a good letter, However they did offer you 20% on the bill if you got it yourself which was good of them. You could have rang them before traveling down to there store to be told it was on its way to you saving yourself a trip. I hope you can get some sort of compensation, but at the end of the day you accepted the shopping meaning you were happy with it. Keep us updated

Well, the comms breakdown was between Tesco.com and the store.

Given that you (the customer) can't phone the local store - you have to call tesco.com and rely/act on the info they give you - we did this and things hadn't happened as we were told by tesco.com.

Talking direct to the store in the evening, they told us to come back the following morning, assuring us that the order would be ready. To check in the morning before travelling we'd still have had to ring tesco.com, whose information had already proven unreliable in the previous conversation (not to mention the 30 minutes on hold it took to get through), so we didn't repeat that.

As per my OP, after wasting 4 hours to not get any shopping it would have been cutting my nose off to spite my face if I'd rejected the order at the point it arrived and still have to spend another couple of hours getting some more. So I felt it was more productive to accept the order and outline the complaints by letter.

Anyhoo, be that as it may they called back today, refunded the 20% and £20 for the special offers. :T
So I'd say it was worth writing the letter then... Whether putting it on here helped or not I don't know but I'm sure sites like this get monitored so it hasn't hindered.