Tesco's Attitude

kittykate_2

The way she went about asking wasn't right. Perhaps she felt uncomfortable asking you for id. I used to work in a supermarket and used to hate it when people came for beer/cigs and they looked older than 18 but younger than 21 and i still had to ID them. Luckily I always turned it into a laugh when they showed me their ID - I would tell them not to worry as I'm 21 and still get asked and sometimes even in that store and I worked there. Anyways, perhaps she just felt a bit uncomfortable and handled the situation wrongly. I wouldn't report her for it, there's no point. You got your beer in the end, why kick up a massive fuss about it? Life's too short to waste time complaining, especially when there's newly bought beer about

matty_art

I've just found this thread so apologies for digging it back up, but I feel like sharing my experience. As far as I am aware, the only legal responsibility of the retailer is to ensure the person buying the alcohol is over 18. The purchaser can quite rightly get prosecuted if they are purchasing it for an under 18, however the retailer cannot. I'm 26 years old, do look young for my age, and have no problem with being checked for ID, in fact it's a compliment. However I do have a problem with Tesco creating its own laws.

I went there a couple of months ago on Sunday afternoon to buy about £60 worth of food for the family, my 15 year old bro wasn't doing anything so I dragged him along to help.

Amongst this shopping was 6 bottles of French red wine.

When we got to the checkout, the woman asked for ID. I smiled and said yes, I do, to which she replied "no for both of you!".

To cut a long story short, Tesco refused to sell me the wine because supposedly I could have been buying it for my brother. I went through four levels of customer service representative in the store up to the duty manager, none of whom would let me have the wine, even if I sent my brother to the car. When querying if I could come back in 5 minutes, I was in fact told I was banned from buying alcohol in Tesco for the day!

Now the problem is that it would seem their staff could not tell the difference between a 19 year old buying a 17 year old a bottle of diamond white on a Saturday night, and what was obviously a family shop. They also could not tell me what the difference was between me buying wine with my brother, and a mother buying wine with her son (which they weren't stopping, obviously). When pushed, they said "well your brother looks like he might be interested in drinking alcohol illegally". Great customer service!

Eventually after numerous phone calls to the store manager, I (and my brother more specifically) received an apology, although they denied ever saying he looked an underage drinker, pity i didn't have a dictaphone. Also had wine delivered to the house, and assurance it wouldn't happen again.

However, today, it did. The supervisor at the store actually remembered the original incident and the conclusion, but still had to get manager approval, and the manager took great delight in first telling me that it was "the law", then backtracking and saying that Tesco were "responsible", seemingly implying I didn't care about social ills, and even implying that I was being sexist when I asked if they were able to differentiate between family shop and a group of boys buying diamond white. He also examined my driving licence for a good 20 seconds, it seemed like he was trying to find something wrong with it.

I just wonder how many other people this has affected? The funny thing is that he's a 15 year old boy, who quite clearly would have no interest in drinking wine!