Tesco Complaints - Who to Escalate To?

disco23

If you want to escalate issues, please dont send emails to MD's. They do not read them....At all!!! go to FSA, It will benefit you as a customer so much more and hurt comanies who are trying to take over the world more. Nothing worse than bad press. If you go straight to the companies all you will get is a generic apology and perhaps a moneycard for your troubles!

popegregorythe9th

Sir / Madam,

Without going into the tedious details, I am writing with regards to several quantities of money taken from my Visa card by Tesco Mobile, after the termination of my mobile contract with them.

When I first noticed the erroneously continued debit two months ago, I contacted Tesco Mobile and politely brought it to their attention. The assured me that the payments would be stopped, and that any money taken as a result of erroneous billing would be automatically returned to me.

Two months later and two more payments later, I contacted them again and politely made the same point. They, again, were very apologetic and assured me that the payments would be stopped. when I pointed out that all four monthly payments had not been refunded, the customer care assistant was stumped. Clearly, she did not have access to the financial transactions associated with Tesco Mobiles accounts.

I was told that I would need to provide the details from my Visa statement relating to the payments they had taken, which I duly sent her by email (having cut and pasted it from my online statement). What then ensued, went well beyond being unfathomable.

Firstly they contacted me back and told me that they needed me to send them a copy of my Visa statement. Quite rightly, I refused, made the point that I didnt keep paper statements anyway, and asked them to access their own account data instead.

Then they asked me for a screenshot, by email, of my online Visa statement. Again, I refused, stating that I had no intention of providing them with my financial data which was of no relevance to them, and pointed out that I had already sent them the details of the online transactions pertaining to them, and that my online screenshot would not be of any use to them.

They then told me that they needed my statement in order for their payment processing company, Digital Payments, to ascertain that I had not been refunded. I asked them why Digital Payments did not have audit records of their own transactions.

They them came back, stating that they needed my Visa card number (last 4 digits of). I told them they could get that from the card which they had been billing for the last 18 months.

And so it went on. About a dozen emails later I have finally been assured that I will be refunded, although when pressed on the matter, they will not commit to the amount of money they will refund me. The problem is that they dont actually know. Im confident I will get it back eventually, but im not holding my breath.

And so to the point of this narrative. Neither Tesco Mobile, nor their payment company Digital Payments, have any proper records of the payment / refund mechanism that they seem to believe is in place for payments that are erroneously taken. Furthermore, despite assuring me twice that they were cancelling the standing charge for my nonexistent mobile phone account, payments have continually been taken. Between them they could not work out what was going on with my money, to the point that they had to ask me for copies of my Visa statement.

My concern here is one of a financial nature, and I wonder how many other former customers of theirs have been impacted in this way and possibly dont even know. I would like to take this to a financial regulatory body of some description, as Tesco Mobile seem to be content to point the finger at Digital Payments and take no responsibility for their service failure. Can anyone advise of a regulatory body which I could report this lack of accounting and financial recording to, as well as their total failure to have any control over the billing that they carry out?

marleyboy

disco23 wrote: »

I would challenge any of you in your well paid jobs and think that most people in these call centres are taking 7-8 hours of constant abuse in a day for roughly £13-£14k per year. It is a soul destroying job in which makes you lose the will to live. Would any of you swap your jobs for this?

No I wouldnt, but as it is not the kind of job I would want, Im hardly likely to apply for it in the first place. If you cant take the abuse customers throw down the line, do as many would do if they couldnt take it. Apply for something less stressful, that doesnt involve dealing with customers complaints.

I dont agree that anyone needs to be abusive, swear or cuss, over a phone, but if a customer isnt happy, he or she has a right to be angy with the company, if asking to speak to the manager or someone specifically responcible for the problem doesnt work (as it never does), the brunt falls on those whos job it is to deal with it.

marleyboy

kitekat wrote: »

Wowser thats some rant you patronising prat,calling people stupid and customers ignorant, i take it you are included in this as by your own admission you are a customer,or is it only us lesser mortals who are labled as this,after all you seem to know more than any of us idiots about customer service.

Its part of his CS training, its ok for him to talk on open forums, calling people insulting names, and spitting. Its just that he doesnt like to receive it.

marleyboy

hollydays wrote: »

Funny how dangerousports loves posting on threads with lots of new users .. as usual..

Hes been doing that for years.

C_Ronaldo

hollydays wrote: »

Funny how dangerousports loves posting on threads with lots of new users .. as usual..

how do you know its dangerousports

amandaooo

I have sent THREE chickens back. On the third I wrote out a rambling letter to be passed to the manager as this chicken was organic and had another three days until sell by date, I mentioned things like "so I return this rotten flesh back to you" and I demanded a night for two in a restaurant - as long as it wasn't KFC - you know what.. I asked "Customer Services" (newspeak methinks) to forward letter to manager... in letter I also asked them to send to their head office - nothing .. nada.. not even a polite "we know you are insane and sorry about you feeling that way" response... just thin air.

Rant over

uktim29

amandaooo wrote: »

I demanded a night for two in a restaurant

I'm not surprised you don't get far complaining.

I am surprised though that after sending a second chicken back you still kept buying them there.

IvanOpinion

kitekat wrote: »

Wowser thats some rant you patronising prat,calling people stupid and customers ignorant, i take it you are included in this as by your own admission you are a customer,or is it only us lesser mortals who are labled as this,after all you seem to know more than any of us idiots about customer service.

Maybe disco did not express it perfectly but in the main they are correct. One of the most common expressions CS operators hear is 'I know my rights' and 99% of the time you can be guaranteed they don't and that their legal advice has come from some drunk down in their local pub.

Emails and letters sent to CEOs may get to a personal secretary who will redirect them to the normal call centre for handling ... however they may pass them to someone more senior. Quite often though the CEO email address is automatically redirected to the normal call centre (the CEO (if they have any sense) will have a totally different email addess).

The vast vast majority of complaints to CS are from peope 'trying it on' or basically are so bored they have nothing better to do .. these are the ones that clutter the lines and the systems up meaning people with genuine issues are on hold for longer than necessary. For some reason they get themselves all wound up ready for a fight and despite a call centre rep being pleasant to them they are going to have their rant .. such rants are good for a laugh during training sessions but little else (if people only knew how much pi$$ was taken out of them during such training they really would have something to complain about). If you consider a call centre agent as being abusive then it is highly likely that they are just reflecting how you are treating them.

Another interesting one is when people finally get through and they then complain that they have been on hold for 15 or 30 minutes. In many cases the call centre agent only has to look at their screen which will show EXACTLY how long they were on hold (usually less than 5 minutes) .. at that point the CS agent gets a good idea about how honest and trustworthy the person is.

Respect is a two way thing ... if you treat someone with no respect you will get none back .. if you treat them with respect it is much more likely you will get respect back.

Ivan

Brooker_Dave

amandaooo wrote: »

II demanded a night for two in a restaurant

Demand compensation!!