Tesco Leads UK Retail Christmas Sales Misery

Snooze

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Fresh chicken. As in refridgerated!

Never tried their coooked ones tbh.

Okay. Not tried their chilled ones. The cooked ones put me off their poultry for life.

abaxas wrote: »

Tescos - like a more expensive ASDA but with crap unhelpful staff.

Says all you need to know.

A long lonnnnnnnng time ago Asda used to be okay with fairly decent food but like you say, Asda = Tesco with different colours and slightly better staff.

Not that long ago me and my mate used to have bets on how many shards of bone we would find in our shepherds pie/cottage pie ready meals... :mad: Never used to have that problem back in the 'old days'. :cool:

Joeskeppi wrote: »

I can't stand Tesco, mainly because it's full of mothers screaming swear words at "Jade" and "Hunter" while running round causing chaos. Our Tesco is slap in the middle of a horrible area. I suspect it's different in other towns.

No it's the same here in Leeds. The nearest Tesco to me is the one in Seacroft, chav central.

MiddleWill wrote:

People are finally realising that despite their ClubCard points, the food is actually horrible, none of the meat is from UK farmlands and it's generally a filthy place to do your shopping. Or maybe that's just my view.

The majority of it is down to their approach this Christmas. 'The Big Christmas Sale' or whatever it was just fell flat on it's !!!!. People want the points, not another 'Sale' which is on at every store these days, 24/7. Can't remember the last furniture shop I went into that didn't have one on. Ridiculous.

Good news is Waitrose, M & S, Morrissons all did well. Much finer institutions.

Morrisons is alright if you like cakes. That's all they seem to do. Half the stores are stuffed full of cakes. If you want anything else, forget it. :cool:

trillion

I worked for Tesco when it was on the way up when it was drummed into every staff member that customer service, share a smile and 'living the values' was what made Tesco different from all the rest.
We were well trained, listened to and treated with respect by decent managers who were equally valued and nurtured by the company.
I made some good friends there who never tire of telling me how bad things have become.

Checkout staff are now disciplined if they don't hit their target of transactions per hour, aisles which used to be filled by three shelf stackers are now (poorly) filled by one, the store used to have three night cleaners - now it has one poor guy coming in at 4am and having to litterpick the car park, sweep and wash the shop floor and clean both the public and staff toilets by 7am.
Managers are bullied and lied to from above, and the culture works its way down to how a section manager interacts with their staff.

Clark admits the stores have been 'running a bit hot' for a while now, but that sounds like the understatement of the year.
He underestimates the intelligence of his customers by running an overhyped, cynical price drop campaign which most shoppers know was all smoke and mirrors - the day the price of my cat litter was 'slashed' by 5p, my dishwasher tablets went up by 29p.

His contempt for his customers in underlined by his comment on Wednesday that Tesco 'gave their customers a good shopping experience over christmas'. No, you didn't. You haven't done that for at least the last couple of years.

The corner turned during Leahy's time. Perhaps he could forsee the damage that his cost cutting measures would cause in the longer term.
New starters have been employed on so called 'flexible' contracts for two or three years now - they have as little as 7.5 core hours per week, with possible overtime as a carrot, but of course there's no overtime in January and the poor devils can't afford to live.

I used to always shop in my old branch because there was no reason not to.
Supermarket shopping is not a pleasure for me, but I could get everything I wanted in a generally hassle free environment and with pleasant staff and plenty of help.
I now do my main weekly shop at a Waitrose a couple of miles further away and only pop into Tesco if I need to top up with a few basics.

They need to remember who is paying their wages and start treating their customers with a good deal more respect before they go all Woolworths on us,

A._Badger

Excellent post. Trillion. But, unlike Woolworths, if Tesco starts to slide there will be widespread public enjoyment of its fate. People were sad when Woolies died - they had affection for it.

In a nutshell, that's Tesco's problem - it has a PR disaster on its hands - it's hugely disliked and seems unaware of it.

Graham_Devon

Anyone else think that maybe instead of concentrating on the customer, they (Asda, Sainsburys, Tesco) are concentrating too much on each other?

For instance. Sainsburys give you a receipt to tell you how much cheaper your shopping was compared to tescos. However, it only works on branded goods that they can make a comparison on. If Sainsburys price their own bread at £1.50 and tescos price theirs at £1, they won't compare that. Equally, they won't compare any deals, BOGOFs etc that tesocs may have running. They WILL however, compare their own price reductions and specials against tescos normal price. I noticed on a £25 shop the other day, I had saved £5.18 with them. But that was pretty impossible. Until I realised it must have been based on the "half price" washing powder. If Tescos had have been half prices and sainsburys full price, that wou;dn't have been compared.

Tesco's seem completely intent on price wars against the other supermarkets. So much so they cut their clubcard points (which was going really well) and embarked on a phoney price cut, whereby they actively put prices up for 2 months and then cut them back to what they were. There was (and probably still is) a site which listed prices...and they had simply been cut back to what they were or higher. People could see this with their own shopping. BUT, it made tesco's look better on paper on adverts and comparison sites. Contempt for their customers was pretty awful though. Even my mum and dad, who are pretty blase when it comes to prices noticed tesco's trick on this one when their favourite coated chicken went up 20p, then in the price reduction went down 10p, all in the space of 2 months.

Seems whichever shop you go to now, you are told how much cheaper it was shopping there. But it's all based on different items. "Comparable" items as they like to call them. People are not stupid, and they seem to be competing with each other, rather than competing for their customers.

It's not really price reductions which brings customer loyalty anyway. Especially not the penny price reductions they seem intent on declaring war on. Tescos have Clubcard. They should concentrate on that, as it's arguably their biggest asset. People WILL go to tescos for the points. It may be mre expensive, but people like collecting points. I love it myself. Give me a 500 point coupon and I WILL shop in Tescos that week. Silly, maybe, but a pint of milk 1p cheaper than Asda doesn't really do anything for me. Tescos and Asda appear to think that 1p is the be all and end all.

Snooze

Graham_Devon wrote: »

It's not really price reductions which brings customer loyalty anyway. Especially not the penny price reductions they seem intent on declaring war on. Tescos have Clubcard. They should concentrate on that, as it's arguably their biggest asset. People WILL go to tescos for the points. It may be mre expensive, but people like collecting points. I love it myself. Give me a 500 point coupon and I WILL shop in Tescos that week. Silly, maybe, but a pint of milk 1p cheaper than Asda doesn't really do anything for me. Tescos and Asda appear to think that 1p is the be all and end all.

I agree. Several of my friends will only shop at Tesco for that reason. In fact this whining about the points reduction is all I've heard about from them for weeks now. My "get a life" response didn't go down too well, however.

The bottom line is that there is only pence between all 4 major supermarkets when you average it out. Even the deals are nothing to shout about because they just get rotated around each retailer every few months anyway.

My last shop in SB came to around £25 but just as I'm about to collect my receipt from the self-serv, a ticket popped out of a machine above it. I pulled it off and it was a coupon for 4p off my next shop and then gave me some spiel about how their computer had noticed that some of my items were cheaper at one of their competitors. I was like, !!!!!!? :cool: If the "computer" already knew this then why weren't the prices already reduced to match? It's just nothing more than 'look at me' attention seeking and playing the customers for being fools. It's the sort of hassle that actually puts me off shopping at such places. I don't care for your points schemes, I don't care for your coupons and vouchers, I just want to be left in peace to do my shopping without having it rammed down my thought about how I've saved FOUR F*******K PENCE. :mad: I would like to think that someone would put me out of my misery and shoot me before I got to a stage in my life where I would be worried - or even the slightest bit bothered - about a 4p saving. :mad:

RUN_RABBIT_RUN

Graham_Devon wrote: »

It's not really price reductions which brings customer loyalty anyway. Especially not the penny price reductions they seem intent on declaring war on. Tescos have Clubcard. They should concentrate on that, as it's arguably their biggest asset. People WILL go to tescos for the points. It may be mre expensive, but people like collecting points. I love it myself. Give me a 500 point coupon and I WILL shop in Tescos that week. Silly, maybe, but a pint of milk 1p cheaper than Asda doesn't really do anything for me. Tescos and Asda appear to think that 1p is the be all and end all.

very true and as i mentioned earlier

without their clubcard points tesco would be dead in the water

funny that we're discussing this topic, i got my latest which? magazine through this week and the main feature is on supermarkets, tested in a variety of categoriies. waitrose came top, guess who came rock bottom?

Graham_Devon

Snooze wrote: »

I agree. Several of my friends will only shop at Tesco for that reason. In fact this whining about the points reduction is all I've heard about from them for weeks now. My "get a life" response didn't go down too well, however.

The bottom line is that there is only pence between all 4 major supermarkets when you average it out. Even the deals are nothing to shout about because they just get rotated around each retailer every few months anyway.

My last shop in SB came to around £25 but just as I'm about to collect my receipt from the self-serv, a ticket popped out of a machine above it. I pulled it off and it was a coupon for 4p off my next shop and then gave me some spiel about how their computer had noticed that some of my items were cheaper at one of their competitors. I was like, !!!!!!? :cool: If the "computer" already knew this then why weren't the prices already reduced to match? It's just nothing more than 'look at me' attention seeking and playing the customers for being fools. It's the sort of hassle that actually puts me off shopping at such places. I don't care for your points schemes, I don't care for your coupons and vouchers, I just want to be left in peace to do my shopping without having it rammed down my thought about how I've saved FOUR F*******K PENCE. :mad: I would like to think that someone would put me out of my misery and shoot me before I got to a stage in my life where I would be worried - or even the slightest bit bothered - about a 4p saving. :mad:

The 4p is a good point. Why not just take it off your bill there and then? All of the supermarkets make you jump through hoops to claim the money back. It seems pointless.

As for Tesco clubcard, I enjoy it, or used to when I was shopping there due to the deals. The points add up and I get a lumpsum. I took my son on a day out with some of them, so it works for me in that respect. I never notice the 50p I might have saved shopping at Morrisons over Tesco's. I do notice the lumpsum that comes in in the mailing.

It's all mindgames, but it works. Tesco seem to be making their very best asset worse though, not better. Reducing points everywhere and reducing what you can spend them on and how much they are worth. That, to me, is their biggest downfall at the moment, and it seems others think the same. They seem quite willing to save 50p on a £50 shop in order to spend loads more advertising they are 2p cheaper on a certain bottle of bleach for a few days as they are so intent on forgetting the customer and trying to outdo the other supermarkets.

Just look at Asda's nonsense where you can get some money back. What a load of fuss over a few pence.

Graham_Devon

Seems Tesco are trying to hit back now. After admitting their big price reduction was a bit of a flop, they are now offering you much of the same.

You will get a £5 voucher if you spend £40 instore or online. However, to use that £5 voucher, you have to spend anoter £40 instore or online within the following week, and various products don't count.

Absolutely nothing original about it as they have been doing it for ages. If the voucher didn't expire within the next week, then it might have been alright.

Just get the clubcard points back! It worked! However, I notice on the shareboard, investors themselves want clubcard gone altogether, as they see it as costing them their profits.

In my experience people just want to know what they are getting. Hitting an arbituary amount before getting "rewarded" and then having to hit that amount again in the next week to use their reward is a load of nonsense. Double clubcard points, or extra points even, works. You dont have to hit aribituary targets, and everyone knows what they are getting.

worldtraveller

I see that Warren Buffett has been filling his boots with some more Tesco shares after the fall in the SP and has increased his stake from 3.6% to 5.1%.

Graham_Devon

worldtraveller wrote: »

I see that Warren Buffett has been filling his pockets with some more shares after the fall in the SP and has increased his stake from 3.6% to 5.1%.

He needs to bring that average down!

Wonder how much he lost!