Tesco Price Checker: do your maths

geordie_joe

Botany wrote: »

The Asda offer was of course in place when I went to the store (yesterday), as I checked their prices against T's before leaving home.

It was never an offer, it's an ASDA roll back price. Maybe Tesco don't recognise what a roll back price is.

Perhaps Tesco didn't programme their system to take account of roll back prices, because they are not "offers", but they are also not normal prices because there is something different about them.

"Our system doesn't understand roll back prices" would seem like a good excuse for not including them.

rufydoofyM

I had a wrong result with T's price checker a couple of months ago. I was careful to select identical items, but added a couple of fresh reduced items and some cat food on special offer at the last minute. I got home and entered the reciept details at about 9.50pm. The next day I had an email telling me that my shopping was 18p cheaper with T's and so no voucher. Not impressed. Later that day we went to Asda (38mile round trip) and bought all the items on my original list. Then back home and collected Shopping got at T's the night before and took it all back for a refund (round trip 2 miles) the cs was not ammused. When asked why I was returning the items I explained Asda was £7 or so cheaper. It was about £27 in total returned.
Same cs asked for my clubcard today to deduct points for a £3.50 returned item. Bit of a trout I think.

Botany

geordie_joe wrote: »

It was never an offer, it's an ASDA roll back price. Maybe Tesco don't recognise what a roll back price is.

Perhaps Tesco didn't programme their system to take account of roll back prices, because they are not "offers", but they are also not normal prices because there is something different about them.

"Our system doesn't understand roll back prices" would seem like a good excuse for not including them.

I have yet again looked at the T&Cs for the Price-check and nowhere does it say that Rollback offers are not included. As far as I can see there is not even a 'hint' that they may be excluded.

I've also done a quick search here on MSE and I can't seem to find posts which warn of Rollback items being excluded.

I guess I'll have to wait until 9 so I can call CS and ask them what on earth is going on :mad:

Botany

I have called Customer Services at the strike of 9 am.

Spoke to a very nice lady who confirmed that Asda Rollback prices should be included in the Tesco Price Check guarantee. She said that the Price-Checker compares Tesco prices with the prices on the Asda website.
She then went online to Asda's while on the phone and checked it all for me and confirmed that I should have gotten 0.89p back on each of my 4 packs of 750gr Special K.

In very simple terms, the voucher I received is indeed wrong -I should have obtained £4.55 back, not 63p.

Fine, I thought she would solve the issue there and then, but no....

She said that they 'used to' be able to solve these things over the phone, but they no longer can as they (customer service staff who answer the phone) no longer have access to the price-ckecker online receipts, which is what they need to solve the issue.
(Wonder why this access has been removed? Surely Tesco is not trying to make customers jump through more hoops???)

Anyway, what she told me to do is to write to customer services attaching a copy of my paper receipt. I said how do I do that if I don't have access to a scanner? She put me on hold then said that I could just write to CS attaching a link to the reply obtained by Price-Checker.

All this took 20 minutes on the phone, plus a good 10 minutes to compose a detailed mail to CS.

We shall see what comes out.

In any case, this experience has confirmed the following:
1) price-Checker should compare against Asda Rollback;
2) price-checker does make mistakes so it is advisable that people do their calculations at home and don't take the result they get as gospel;
3) if you are given a wrong result/voucher, then you will not be able to solve the situation by calling customer services; you must compose an e-mail, preferably have a scanner handy, and surely expect a longer wait for the matter to be resolved;

I cannot shake off the feeling that this is exactly how Tesco wants it to be.....:mad:

Botany

Well, it's Friday 10 am now, my first mail to Customer Services was sent Monday 10 am and guess what? Not a pip!

I have of course composed a second e-mail.

Tesco may of course just ignore me in the hope I go away (dream on Tesco...)

Or, they may have realised that the problem they've got in their hands is not simply that of one customer (me) needing a top-up voucher following one mistake on their part. The fact that Price Checker returned the wrong result to me may well mean that there is a programming issue in the Price Checker itself (so it doesn't calculate things properly), which clearly could lead to a major hassle if more and more people start checking the value of the vouchers they receive and complain when things don't add up.

Anyway, I'm not giving up. I know it is a small amount we're talking about here, but what if the PriceCkecker 'malfunction' had happened after a big weekly shop? Also, and regardless of the amount spent, it irritates me that a large multi-national can pat its back for having a 'price guarantee' and look good, when tin fact their computer cannot calculate a very simple money-back voucher.

I'm also still perplexed by the fact that only one person in this thread seems to have noticed mistakes in the system because surely PriceChecker is an automated computer programme so if there is a mistake in the programming of the software, many more people will have been hit by it?

Anyhow.... I shall continue m battle with CS and keep you posted

Botany

I got a reply at last, but it wasn't actually a reply, more a generic letter (surely pre-written and copy/pasted by someone who could not be bothered to even read my complaint).

Basically it says about how it is difficult to compare items if they're not the same size, volume, flavour etc.
This is balderdash because Special Ks Original 750gr are exactly the same everywhere in the country and they are certainly sold in both tesco and Asda in the same exact format.

Then it says "Furthermore, Price comparisons for in-store purchases are compared with the Asda website on the date specified on your till receipt. Price data used for the Tesco Price Check is obtained daily from the Asda Home Shopping site. Therefore, price comparisons made after the date of purchase may result in a products being listed as 'Not Available' or we may not able to compare retrospectively."

This is also balderdash because the prices I based my calculation on were available online on the day I shopped, on the day I called Customer Service, and throughout the week. Indeed, the same prices are still available today.

Basically the price-checker does not work properly, hence the price guarantee is not a guarantee at all. ...Not that they'll ever admit it...

Anyone know the e-mail address for Tesco's new CEO Philip Clarke?

Botany

Just as I posted a stern reply to Customer Services, and forwarded to Philip Clarke (figured his e-mail would prolly be philip.clarke@tesco.com), literally minutes later the phone rings, it's Tesco CS offering an apology and a 'goodwill payment' of £10.
Coincidence? I suspect not.

I am now much calmer because what upset me today was the generic nature of the reply I got earlier -the fact that i felt nobody had even read my complaint. Now they've showed me that they have, so my irritation has gone.

The reason, however, why I write victory 'of sorts' is that this is a battle won with a war still raging. I mean, the problem with the price-checker not calculating stuff properly is still there.

Hopefully now this thread is out there in internet-land, if the same happens to someone else they will be able to see that it is worthwhile to stand one's ground when we have a wholly legitimate and fair complaint.

Very good luck to you all :beer: