Tesco misprice discussion area part 17

spa2k

ben500 wrote:

An excellent explanation of the difficulties in identifying the individuals that have been overcharged, however a morally upright company would simply refund all customers purchasing that item at the offending store during that particular misprice period. But then again we are talking Tesco.

morally upright my !!!!. Since when have morals ever come into the business plan of ANY business when trying to make a profit......

Discounting Fair trade companies of course.

Odd_Fellow

foreignshopper wrote:

I must bow to your greater knowledge as I'm certainly not a computer 'expert'. However, a similar situation occurs many times every day i.e. bogof. The computer is set to recognise that if a 2nd item is bought which qualifies then either the 2nd item is reduced or a credit given to make the bogof price correct.

I would have thought this was similar i.e. if a certain barcode has already been scanned then another would be 'disqualified'. A simple "If .... Then ..." statement. I find it hard to believe that a company the size of T does not have a top-notch I.T. dept - thereagain perhaps it doesn't.

All I know is that if it were my business being hit in this way I would try very hard to make this 'abuse' (if indeed that's what it is) extremely difficult to continue. The clothing coupon fiasco ran for nearly six weeks without any problem for the customer.

I agree entirely with the logic. But at such a high level viewpoint, it's simple to debate how easy or hard things should or can be. When you start getting down to business process and policy, it probably becomes less distinct and when you get to code level, it's a different kettle of fish altogether.

I develop relatively small database applications (by Tesco standards, anyway) and am well aware that the testing phases can be lengthy, troublesome, tiresome, arduous and downright booring. I can only speculate as to the difficulty presented by a system such as that used by Tesco.

I think this is as much a question of how quickly huge organisations can make decisions/change policy etc over one man saying, "that's a good idea, I'll do that now".

ben500

spa2k wrote:

morally upright my !!!!. Since when have morals ever come into the business plan of ANY business when trying to make a profit......

Discounting Fair trade companies of course.

See despite our obvious differences we have much common ground. :rotfl:

taxiphil

spa2k wrote:

Now lets say that after the first overcharge was noticed the label was corrected, how would you identify that with the clubcard data? All that would be recorded is that 2 cases of coke were sold at £7.25 each, not what the price label or product flashing said.

What you propose is simply impossible.

I accept the Coke one is particularly complicated and probably a bad example to use. But there have been many clear-cut misprices on many other things where many people were overcharged and didn't notice before the misprice was finally corrected.

For a company with Tesco's massive IT systems I don't see why they couldn't see which customers bought item X before the misprice was corrected. The system does record the exact time of every transaction, so why couldn't they automatically credit all those who paid with Clubcard with XX points equivalent to the amount they overpaid by, together with a box on their next statement saying "In the last quarter you were overcharged by a total of £4.29. 429 points have been added to your account".

True, it would take extra resources and probably a whole department devoted to this, but shouldn't it be imperative to make reasonable attempts to give back money to its rightful owner(s) when it has been unlawfully taken from them?

In my earlier post some pages back (which I appreciate you might not have seen, spa) I did propose that if the logistics of this were prohibitively difficult, they could give the lump sum to charity instead.

spa2k wrote:

Further edit: Its not about having balls to answer, its realising how rediculous your suggestion is and not giving it the time of day.

My whole point is that Tesco are making a lot of money by unlawful overcharging (surely you can accept that?) and that it should be a matter of importance to either give that money back to its rightful owners or to give it to charity, instead of keeping it. Is that really so ridiculous?

spa2k

Coupon-mad wrote:

Spa, I normally agree with most of your posts but I don't think the 2 boxes of coca cola do have the same barcode? IMHO price-flashed products have a different barcode, that's how they can go through at a cheaper price isn't it?

Flashed products do have different barcodes to normal stock but the coke example had the same barcode on both flashed products, i believe it was a case of old and new stock hence the reason that the overcharge occured.

spa2k

taxiphil wrote:

I accept the Coke one is particularly complicated and probably a bad example to use. But there have been many clear-cut misprices on many other things where many people were overcharged and didn't notice before the misprice was finally corrected.

For a company with Tesco's massive IT systems I don't see why they couldn't see which customers bought item X before the misprice was corrected. The system does record the exact time of every transaction, so why couldn't they automatically credit all those who paid with Clubcard with XX points equivalent to the amount they overpaid by, together with a box on their next statement saying "In the last quarter you were overcharged by a total of £4.29. 429 points have been added to your account".

True, it would take extra resources and probably a whole department devoted to this, but shouldn't it be imperative to make reasonable attempts to give back money to its rightful owner(s) when it has been unlawfully taken from them?

In my earlier post some pages back (which I appreciate you might not have seen, spa) I did propose that if the logistics of this were prohibitively difficult, they could give the lump sum to charity instead.

lets use another example then. The gordon ramsay book. The product came in prestickered. The sticker price was wrong. As soon as this was noticed in our store the error was corrected. What you propose is to take the total sales of the book for that day and give them to whoever but the error was corrected at say 10am. Therefore any sales after 10am arent overcharge but as this is a stickered item there is no system showing when the price was corrected. How would the system know? How would the system know which ones were pre stickered and which not?

I genuinely dont understand why you keep banging on about something possibly done that by your own admission is prohibitively difficult.

leadhead

spa2k wrote:

therefore you need to know all the numbers of the coupons that it shouldnt work with in order for it to be programmed that way. This means that the programmer needs to know all the coupons that are out there in order to know which ones it should and shouldnt work with. If you look at the clothing ones they came from several different leaflets, probably produced by different departments.

While i see your point that "all" unsuitable coupon numbers could not be input to the system, the clothing £10 and£7 were from the same leaflet, and the £6one from the Quit Kit.

2x £7 wouldnt scan together, neither would 2x£10, so it shouldnt have taken much more work to prevent the £10 and £7 scanning together.

To stop the 2x(£6 off £30)from the QK scanning may have taken a bit more work, but having said that, does one department not know what the other department is doing.

I mean, who was the clever guy who put a £1 off plax voucher in the quit kit(valid March) then decided to put the plax on bogof.

Everyone and his dog has been picking up 4x£2.88 plax bogof costing £5.76, then using 4 x£1 plax coupons and 2x£1.25 toiletries (off £5)(there were lots more than these used) which equals £6.50....so paying me to take them away.... or taking money off my other goods.

Odd_Fellow

cheapskate58 wrote:

The fact that Tesco generates profits is neither here nor there although people seem to regard that as a good reason to fleece them.

Given the thousands upon thousands of product lines sold by a big supermarket, it’s daft to think that they will get everything right all of the time – particularly when Local versus National versus tactical pricing will be, by its very nature, dynamic and fast-moving.

When you take into account Tesco’s total sales versus whatever mis-prices people here and on other sites have found, the proportion will be tiny and certainly would be considered reasonable when measured against any other standard. People do make mistakes after all and technology is not perfect – even this site crashes from time to time!

Furthermore, when you take into account Tesco’s total sales versus what their R&R policy has cost them, the amount is insignificant. The point is that some forums, (and it must be said this forum in particular), have rubbed their nose in it to the extent that they believe it better to withdraw the policy than continue to be shafted by a bunch of chancers. Taking the p*ss by effectively nicking XBOX 360s and then boasting about it on a public forum was never gonna be a good idea was it?:p

1) I was not using Tesco's record profits as a stick to beat it with OR as some kind of "it can afford it" excuse for exploiting its policy. I was using it as demonstration of the company's lack of will to get its pricing in order.

2) It is not stealing, "nicking" or any other emotive phrase that implies that I or any other R&Rer has broken the law.

I agree that the cost to Tesco for its "mistakes" or otherwise must be insignificant in the grand scheme. If Tesco is worried about having it's nose rubbed in it, it should have fixed its problems rather than tampering with the policy which is likely to earn it considerable negative publicity.

Odd_Fellow

spa2k wrote:

edit....

I genuinely dont understand why you keep banging on about something possibly done that by your own admission is prohibitively difficult.

Whilst I don't want to get into the debate as to how difficult or easy this is (personally, I feel it's quite possible, but would cost a fortune to implement), I think it's the spirit of the thing that's important.

Odd_Fellow

leadhead wrote:

edit....

Everyone and his dog has been picking up 4x£2.88 plax bogof costing £5.76, then using 4 x£1 plax coupons and 2x£1.25 toiletries (off £5)(there were lots more than these used) which equals £6.50....so paying me to take them away.... or taking money off my other goods.

Not quite everybody, I'm afraid. !!!!!!! I've been missing out for so long.

Is there a sepatate forum for Tesco Coupon tactics somewhere?